As I opened the front door, a giant hawk glided from the thorny bael tree that is a thirsty tangle of thin branches bleached bare by the harsh drought. The raptor stared at me with fierce golden eyes and casual indifference, as it settled on the neighbour’s soot-streaked roofline, before spreading strong wings and soaring into the silence of the smoking dusk.
He is the patriarch of a fine family that rules the rich hunting ground of our neighbourhood, fed by a small, polluted but vital stream and a tough strip of grown trees that wind their way along the curving dry banks, with eroded expanses of ochre soil revealing a network of roots. Some of these giants once looked over acres of green canefields, now left to shrivelled scrub and surviving stragglers of the grass genus Saccharum, which feed the frequent fires flouncing along the busy highway, flushing prey and predator.
I admired the birds diving and drifting in the air currents, their calls confident and clear as they circled high over a wide expanse of territory, ignoring the triangular flocks of elegant egrets flying home in elongated, white lines and the concerned chirps of the plentiful songbirds concealed behind the cascade of mango leaves. A few brave souls dared to dart out in a defensive display of dive bombs, but the hawks were full, relaxed and posed no immediate threat, wheeling and screaming their evening dominance.
