The Surprise Gifts of December

December 17, 2023

Sunrise, December 15, 2023

The gifts of December are the best surprises of all. Perhaps it’s because I expect so little from this month, especially without the ice and snow. Migration is over and nature is in her quiet period. Yet this month the surprises abound, each one a delight, each one a gift.

The sunrise above was a gift, the kind I call the “secret sunrise”. It looked like the photo below from the time I first looked out the window until 7:23 AM:

Would you guess that would turn into this by 7:25?

That tiny slit of light on the eastern horizon had possibilities but no guarantees. Sometimes nothing happens, but sometimes there is just enough of a gap to produce five minutes of brilliant color. By 7:30 it was gone and only the gray remained. A December gift!

Sometimes the gifts are small, but small things come in beautiful packages. I was walking down towards the water, not hearing any of the mallards that sometimes hang out in this particular cove when suddenly this lovely duck shot out from the grasses:

A green-winged teal! I hadn’t seen any in migration but with the warmer weather I guess this one found a nice cozy spot. I only wish I hadn’t scared it up so I could have seen a little more of its colorful plumage.

Sometimes the gifts are delivered to my doorstep, or at least to my neighborhood. I was looking out the window in the late morning on Tuesday when I saw a dark-looking hawk sitting in a tree in the field at the end of the block. I thought maybe it was just sitting in a shadow, but then I saw another dark bird circling high overhead that was definitely not a hawk and my curiosity required me to find my binoculars and go outside. My brain was trying to contemplate two very dark birds - were there turkey vultures still hanging around? I hadn’t seen one for weeks.

The bird in the sky was an eagle, but with the binoculars all I could tell about the bird at the end of the street was that it was interesting. Red-tailed hawk shaped, were my eyes deceiving me on the color? I was on the phone with my best friend and I am so lucky to have a best friend who expected nothing less than going along on a ride while I went to find out what was up with this hawk. It’s good to be loved unconditionally!

This is the beautiful hawk I found when I got to the end of the block! A red-tailed hawk, but not one of the subspecies that are common here. I have seen dark-morph hawks before but I’ve never seen one with this white bib, dark eyes and a white tail when she flew.

Winter can be a time for migrating raptors here in the middle of the country. I don’t see as many of them as I did when my schedule allowed me to be out in the late morning more often. Raptors seem to be late risers in winter, preferring the times when the wind picks up and makes hovering over the fields easier perhaps.

I searched the guides, trying to identify the subspecies type for this bird and I posted it to a raptor ID group on Facebook. It seems to be a red-tailed hawk of the “harlani” variety, sometimes referred to as a “Harlan’s hawk”. You can see on this guide from the Red-Tailed Hawk project that this subspecies is thought to spend summers in Alaska and Yukon! She’s a long way from home. What a gift that she stopped by my neighborhood at just the right time.

For comparison, here is one of the red-tailed hawks who are typical for our part of the country:

In December there isn’t nearly as much bird song as there will be in spring. The occasional cardinal or wren sings, the jays squawk, and the robins are anything but quiet. Yet to hear an unexpected song coming from the bushes was a treat! I didn’t know the song and it took me a while to locate the fox sparrow hiding in the branches. They do not like to have their picture taken, but they do have a sweet song! (The first song here is pretty close to what I was hearing.)

December often finds a way to surprise me and no two years are ever the same. Here was a surprise December gift two years ago:

Sometimes the surprise appears in the clear blue sky, like this tiny rainbow:

Sometimes the surprise is sitting in the middle of the lake where I can’t photograph it but I can surely take it in. There is still a loon hanging out here and given the forecast she will be safe here for a while. Maybe she’ll com in close enough for a photo like this loon did a month ago:

There is always beauty. There are surprises. Little gift drops from the universe to remind you of the unseen beauty all around.

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