Accipiter

(Thank you wikipedia for this photo of the Northern Goshawk.)

An accipter is "any of several hawks with short wings and a long tail." (American Heritage Dictionary). Wikipedia lists a long line of these birds. They are different colors and shapes, and native to varying locales. They are noted to be "birds of prey."

It is the natural order of things for some animals to eat other animals. Such as birds of prey. Animals know innately what to eat in their environments. For humans, however, it's more of a struggle. It doesn't come so easy to us. Some of us are omnivores, some are vegetarians. I myself have gone up and down the scale of being a non-vegetarian, to a partial vegetarian, to a vegetarian, to a vegan, then back to a partial vegetarian. At times my decisions have derived from others giving me new information. At other times my decisions have been based on how my body was feeling. I wonder if humans are the only species who vacillate back and forth so much with regards to the foods that they eat. I doubt that any non-human animal, on its own devices out in the wilderness, has switched from being an omnivore to an herbivore. Or has it?

I think about the sad ambivalent dynamic of a snippet of a "BBC's Planet Earth" episode I saw once. I don't remember the specifics, but it involved some animal of prey who was starving, hadn't eaten in weeks or perhaps months. The animal was skinny, on its last leg. It was trying in vain, in the snow, to find some animal that it could eat to stay alive. I believe that it ended up finding another animal. But I don't remember what happened after that. I think I blocked it out.

At any rate, I end this post with a photo of a "Little Sparrowhawk", 9 inches tall and weighing 3 ounces, perhaps the smallest in the family of birds Accipitridae. It looks kind of like a cartoon to me, with its slight triangular smile and colorful nose.