Day 24 - Wed Oct 10: Last spring, I shared a post about both vulture species circling overhead during a fire drill. Today, we had some more safety practice birding.
Once safely out of the building and away from the make-believe flames, my instantly drift skyward. Imagine that - a birder looking up on a fall afternoon.
Immediately, the wobbly dihedral is observed circling across the street. In my softest fire drill voice, I share the bird with a few nearby classes (totaling about 60 kids).
To our delight, another bird materialized out of the haze. Before I could say a word, a student said, "there's another one . . . but it looks smaller."
As other classes were returning to the building, we lingered for a bit to work through the identification. Knowing that time was limited, I asked a few quick probing questions of these avian neophytes before giving away the bird's identity:
Red-tailed Hawk.
Despite the time constraints of a pending class change, there was NO WAY that bird was going to go unseen by my students. That would have broken a cardinal rule of mine:
NEVER PASS UP A TEACHABLE HAWKWATCHING MOMENT!
No comments:
Post a Comment