sallyls:Sherill, perhaps they are actually less stressed
now than when Kay was so miserable and crying constantly and always
apparently unhappy with Jay. And they are free from the burden of
raising chicks.... It
is us who suffer the loss most I think....
Sallyls, I
appreciate very much the way you put that, for it may relieve our own
stress, as well. We care about the well-being of the two adults, even
as we regret the apparent loss of the embryos. But that doesn't mean we
choose the former over the latter. That's just the way it is, and that
requires no choice for us. What we have to choose is to carry on, just
as Kay and Jay instinctively will carry on.
I'm
reminded, of course, of the loss of little Spirit last spring, and then
of the Riverside (NYC) redtail pair who lost their three eyasses to rat
poison. Last August 11, we considered the latter in Raptor Rap
postings worth recalling now. First, reference this magazine
article about the Riverside loss, which sparked some Forum comment that
resonates today as we reflect on the apparent failure of Kay and Jay's nest.
Here is the link to that article:
http://nymag.com/news/features/49126/ It is well worth the read, or re-read. now, especially this passage on the female’s removal of her dead hawklet from the nest:
“Did
some avian version of the concept of good-bye pass through her tiny circuitry?
Or just the instinct to go on?
I will put this down over here. Now I will
return. The result was the same, either way. She went on.
”Kay
and Jay will go on. They have to, it's instinctive--remember Chinook's
poem's "ancient whispers"? Faced with losses, we, too, go on. It's a
puzzlement--perhaps we choose to go on, or (to shamelessly quote
myself from last August) "maybe it’s for us a choice so
impossible that in the end, we
have to,
as well.... Maybe we need to see ourselves in the hawks, our struggles in
theirs, to craft the best puzzle we can. Life is a coin toss for us all, two
sides to everything—gain and loss, joy and grief, breathing and not breathing. Whichever
the Truth, our curious kinship is that feathered or not, instinctively or not, most
of us keep on tossing--hawks, [and]
hawkwatchers.... And we go on."