Stopping By The Woods

Back on September 13 of this past year, my friends Linda and Dean were with me on a 40 mile bike ride around the Indiana countryside.  It was a great day to ride; sunny, crystalline blue skies with interspersed, puffy, cumulus clouds, the kind of late-summer day that I absolutely love to go riding in.  I am not much of a “group” rider, but I do enjoy having a few close friends around, people who know me, and will not necessarily take offense when I do not say a word for miles, or when I seem to be in a daze.  When I really get into a ride, I tend to get lost in my own thoughts and feelings, and the surroundings.  Sometimes riding to me is just a shade shy of mystical that way.
This particular ride was one of those rides.  I don’t remember much of it, other than the event I will be shortly describing.  I know that we rode out past Memphis IN, out almost to Henryville IN, then made our way back.  I wore my Garmin watch that day, and I have the route recorded, which you can see by clicking this link.
When I first saw the hawk, Linda and Dean were a short distance in front of me.  I was looking off to my left on a road called Bud Prather Road.  I am very much a lollygagging, take-in-the-scenery kind of rider.  One of my favorite things to do, on rural rides especially, is look off to the side of the road at the tall grass rushing by in a delicious golden blur.   Sometimes I enjoy looking at my shadow on the rolling grass, cast by the sun, if it’s low enough in the sky and I am in the right position.  At this particular time, there was no shadow, but I was still grooving on the colors, the smell of sweet farmland, and the sounds of the wind with the soft purring of my freewheel, gears and chain.
Suddenly up ahead, I noticed what I first thought was a brown dog standing by the side of the road.  I always have a sixth sense “radar” operating for dogs or any other creatures that may give chase or dart out in front of me, but as Linda and Dean had both ridden past it and it had not given chase, any such worry was practically non-existent.  I was more curious than anything else.
We were all going slightly fast, about 26 mph, on this one little stretch with a very slight decline in elevation.  As I sped past, I realized it wasn’t a dog at all, but a large bird.  Its eyes met mine as I rode by it.  I immediately got the feeling it was in some kind of danger or distress, and my heart just leapt inside my chest.  I hollered out “A bird, a bird!” and Linda and Dean slowed.   “Stopping, stopping,” I called out, and they both stopped with me.  I told them there was a bird back there, a big one, just standing by the side of the road.  I may have sounded like I just saw a UFO, but they know me I guess, and understand my idiosyncrasies.  At least I am sure Linda does, as she has known me longer.  She knows if I see a large bird just standing there, it’s something worth getting excited about.
We all rode back, slowly, and we all saw it.  At this point, I will call it “him,” because I believe it to be a juvenile male red-tailed hawk.  We did not ride up directly to him, but instead dismounted and walked very, very slowly, to not disturb him or appear as a threat.  He let us get really close, about eight to ten feet, before he flapped his wings and sort of fluttered back a bit towards a fence behind him.
We stood there and speculated.  What could we do?  What was wrong with the bird?  Was he injured?  Old?  Ill in some way?  On one side of the road, the one opposite the bird, is a large electrical substation.  It is the only really industrial looking site in an otherwise scenic and rural locale, and often when I ride by it I can “feel” the electricity in the air, as well as hear a noticeable hum and crackle.  I speculated that perhaps the big bird had received a shock of some sort, but how were we to know.  The main thing was, what could we do for him?
Continue reading ‘The Hawk Rescue’