Pet Blogging

I have grown fond of Harley through Albatrossity’s photos and stories over the past few years, even holding my breath in the fall when Harley arrived a bit later than usual.  Today, Albatrossity has a Harley update for us.

I hope you’ll take a minute to read the Albatrossity post from almost exactly a year ago, which provides an interesting perspective as we were heading into the realities of the pandemic.

What follows is an update on Harley from Albatrossity:

Lots of jackals have cats, dogs, ducks, rabbits, or some other pet. I don’t (for lots of reasons), but I do have a nice hawk in the neighborhood who has been my wintertime companion for the past 8 winters now. His given name is Harley (my kids gave it to him), and he is a dark-morph Red-tailed Hawk of the Harlan’s subspecies, Buteo jamaciensis harlani. I wrote a bit about him here last March, at the onset of the pandemic.

He and I have made it through that summer and another winter. He is free to fly elsewhere, I am not. Although I have had both shots of the Moderna vaccine, travel by airplane will probably not be happening for a while, since much of the rest of the world remains unvaccinated and still threatened by the coronavirus. I suspect Harley, however, will head home within a week or so, and I will have to wait until next fall to greet him again. His summer home is somewhere in Alaska or Canada, almost certainly, and calling him with some urgency right now. His mate is probably also on her way home.

I, for one, will miss him here in his winter home. So here are some shots from this last winter to help me remember him until we meet again.

Near Manhattan KSMarch 29, 2020

Here’s a shot of him, with a nice snake snack, from about the time when he was last seen here in March 2020, before he headed north for the summer.

Open Thread: Albatrossity’s Harley Heads HomePost + Comments (20)