Last week, I saw red-tailed hawks on four of seven days. Once was at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and therefore not strictly in the city, but the other three times I was just doing errands near home, not looking for anything. This is a pretty good season for spotting hawks, as the young ones have started moving north, trying to establish territories and find themselves mates.

Still, being able to see hawks regularly in the sky turns out to be totally different than tracking and finding one when it's convenient. Getting good hawk footage for the movie may really be hard! Most nature films you see on TV have huge crews of guys who camp out in exotic places, waiting to capture what you see on your screen. Those few seconds of thrilling animal action may be the result of a hundred hours in the field.

I have no budget, no crew, and I'm borrowing all my equipment. How am I going to make this movie?

The first day I went out with a camera looking for hawks, I was lucky. It was November, and I was joined by M., who'd seen a hawk devour a pigeon on the ledge of a Harvard library window.

We met outside the physics building. M. looked up and said, "Jen. Isn't that a hawk?"

We watched it soar for a while , and then saw a second one join it. I thought, "OK, maybe this isn't going to be as hard as I thought."

When the soaring hawks moved beyond our vision, we walked towards Harvard Yard. I caught a flicker of movement from a roof in the Yard, and YES! it was a hawk, perched on the roof of Weld Hall. It stayed there, perfect, while I set up the tripod and the camera and filmed it. (The picture to the left is made of stills from that video. It's not really what it looks like when a hawk takes off - but it does show how the bird moves its body when it flies.)

The next day, filled with confidence, I went out again and found and filmed a red-tail on the weathervane of Hemenway Gym. But that was the end of my streak of luck. And the footage is not that great. I'd need a better lens, steadier hands, and a lot more time to make a film that really showed the whole gamut of red-tail behavior.

So I'm thinking I'll enlist the help of other hawk-watchers. For example, Stephanie Mitchell of the Harvard News Office staff took fantastic pictures of Harvard's red-tails last year, which were originally published in the Gazette. She got the pictures because someone called her and told her there was a hawk eating a squirrel in Harvard Yard, and she'd better come right away. And she had a long lens. And she's an excellent photographer.

So for this segment I am not only collecting stories about hawk encounters and sitings; I'm also looking for people who will let me use their pictures and film. Hawks are much more solitary than house sparrows or pigeons, but making a film about them will be a community effort. Although I still think I might just spend a day or two out there, trying my luck.

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