Michelle Smith is taking a well-deserved break, leaving me with some space to fill for the month of December. Rather than choosing a theme and trying to stick to it, I think I will simply write about whatever strikes my fancy each week.
This week is easy because something unusual happened and I actually captured it on film.
To understand why this particular event struck me so forcibly, you have to understand something about the Cape Breton Spectator logo, designed for me by the very talented Alison Uhma.
The “brief” I gave her was kind of vague, “It has to say ‘Cape Breton Spectator,’ it has to match the colors of my website and if it could include a bird (like Maureen Googoo’s owl) that would be very cool.”
Uhma gave me a logo that does indeed say “Cape Breton Spectator” (which was pretty much non-negotiable), that matches my Gazetti theme color scheme and that includes a bird — but not just any bird. As she explained to me at the time, the bird is a Sharp-shinned Hawk — an endangered species found in Cape Breton and known for its “keen eyesight” (it doesn’t really need the glasses it sports in the logo).
I love my hawk — so imagine my surprise when I looked out my front door earlier this week and saw this:
Spectator photo.
I didn’t recognize him at first, without the glasses, but I’m pretty certain that is, indeed, my hawk.
I’m also pretty sure he didn’t drop by to discuss the latest edition of the Spectator — I’m pretty sure he dropped by to try and eat some of the sparrows that frequent my bird feeder — but I was glad to see his endangered self nonetheless.
I have since consulted a number of bird resources to be sure of my identification and I’m pretty sure he’s the real thing. Here’s the (much better) photo from the Audobon website:
Source: Audubon https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/sharp-shinned-hawk
I think I have now accidentally set a precedent of capturing interesting things on film to fill this space. I’ll try, as long as we keep the definition of “interesting” loose.
