Cooper's Hawk / Accipiter cooperii (020215)

  

 

After the blizzard, this Cooper's Hawk decided the little birds enjoying our bird feeders were table fare.

It perched up high and watched for prey.  
I watched the carnage. 

Cooper's Hawks are incredibly fast and agile in flight, but more often than not, this hawk was unsuccessful in its pursuits. When it failed to catch a bird, it varied its tactics, making each subsequent maneuver faster, trickier and riskier. Sometimes it would drop low to the ground, hidden from its prey as it raced toward a snow-covered bush before suddenly darting up and over to surprise a little bird on the other side. At other times it would thread its way through a maze of tree branches at top speed, grab a bird in its talons, and fly away. 

Cooper's Hawks are skillful fliers that tear through cluttered tree canopies at high speed in pursuit of other birds... but dashing though the forest's tangled branches is dangerous. I found a Cornell University study of 300 Cooper's Hawk skeletons, reporting 23 percent showed healed-over fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the furcula, or Wish Bone. 

Now I'm wondering how fast I can go without breaking bones, breaking relationships or breaking my own soul. I wish I could speed up and cover more ground in less time, packing more life into the days GOD gives me... but it's not lost on me that the Wish Bone is often the one that gets broken by flying too fast.

If I could break a Wish Bone and make a wish, I'd wish I could go faster because faster is better... unless it's not. 

Sometimes I need to slow down. Goals are good, and it's good to go after them, but how we pursue our goals is important too. How we dash through the dangerous tangles of life is important, so we're "Grouping-up" to work on how to love, help, live on mission, add value, face our limitations, grow and succeed.

Do you wish you could live your fast-paced life... and live it well?  Sign up here and let's do this.

 

Job 12:13  -  True wisdom and real power belong to God; from HIM we learn how to live, and also what to live for.