Yesterday I got up late, which irritates me. When I got to the deli for my tea I had to wait behind the guy from the construction site while he ordered eight guys' worth of coffee break. Which irritated me, because if I'd gotten up earlier I'd have beat him. Then I spent a few minutes chatting with the owner's dad, on his first day back in the store after a hip replacement. This didn't irritate me -- he's doing great -- but the whole thing got me to the river a lot later than usual. Which was about to irritate me, except as I crossed the street I looked up to see what seagull was hovering so low, treetop level, and so motionlessly, and it turned out it wasn't a seagull, it was a red-tailed hawk. A juvenile, so his tail wasn't red yet; but I inquired of Mr. Sibley when I got home. I'd also had advance warning: Urban Naturalist had run into this hawk the other day and told me about it.

The hawk hovered, perched, didn't give a damn how close I came -- nothing people-size is a threat to a hawk -- and occasionally swooped low to see if he could pick up a pigeon. I didn't see him catch anything. But I did see the seagulls catch sight of him. They weren't amused. I'm not sure why. They're too big for him to eat, and he doesn't eat fish, so what do they care? I don't even think hawks eat eggs, unlike, say, crows, whom the seagulls tolerate. But they weren't having any of this guy. Every time he flew a couple of them swooped, buzzing him, pecking him, until he hid himself in a tree again. Luckily for him seagulls have short attention spans. After a couple of minutes on a branch -- where I could see him perfectly, the leaves being down, but the seagulls couldn't get at him -- something else caught their beady eyes, and they flew away. The hawk did a little more hunting, then flapped those big wings and glided off south down the park.

None of which I would have seen if I'd gotten to the park when I'd wanted to.

Which just goes to show you.