Hawk vs. Woodpecker

For a while, I didn't think I would see any birds this morning.

I heard them.

I could hear the hawk screeching from a distance, but I could not track it through the woods.

Once in the woods, I heard the cardinal, like a chortling car alarm, but his cries echoed through the trees and seemed to come from all around me.

It was only after I left the woods altogether that I found something else.

The hawk first sitting in the tree, calling to the unseen neighbor I couldn't see.

Then the pileated woodpecker sitting in the tree next to the hawk, seeming oblivious to the hawk's glare.

The hawk steady on his branch.

The woodpecker, a hair smaller than the hawk, unable to live in any one moment, darting from one side of the tree to the next.

In the end, the hawk won.  The woodpecker flew off and the hawk gave chase.

And I had been rewarded for my patience.