“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 602 (Monday)

As I walked down John Street from the garage to the office, I noticed white and gray feathers strewn on the brick sidewalk amongst the fallen leaves. Then a few more floated down to the ground from above. I looked up to see a bird sitting on a branch over the sidewalk. It was larger than a pigeon and smaller than a turkey which comes close to summing up most of my bird knowledge. The bird was pulling out feathers with its beak and releasing them to float through the air, then tearing at the flesh of what it was eating. Judging by the feathers, I guessed it was pigeon. 

Breakfast bar diner.

As I took photos with my phone of the lone diner at the breakfast counter, a tall, thin man with a yellowed and scraggly beard appeared. I pointed up to the bird and he asked if it was eating a squirrel. I pointed to the feathers and he said “oh, pigeon.” The bird shifted on the branch and the scraggly man said it was a red-tailed hawk. A few minutes were spent moving around trying to get a vantage point with less tricky lighting for photos to keep the bird from showing as just a silhouette in a tree. After about 20 photos of varying clarity and focus, the bird on the branch stopped eating and swooped down towards a flower bed bordering the sidewalk and a parking lot before turning sharply and heading skyward. It was dramatic, as if he was putting his flight skills on display for us.

The new 5:00 dark.

Scraggly beard and I began walking, because as pleasant as our chat was, I still needed to get to work. He told me about other birds he has seen downtown and pointed out crosses on a couple buildings on Merrimack Street. Some of the “crosses” looked like repairs to the buildings, but one was clearly a decorative carving in a stone façade. Then he stopped at the bus stop and I kept walking.

When I got out of work, it was already quite dark, so there was no returning to the scene of the breakfast crime. Then, it was all about admiring the glow of white lights in the trees and the shop windows. It’s been a long time since I was downtown after dark.