This will come as no surprise to anyone living in Houston. It’s been raining.

I decided that if a little rain could stop me, I didn’t deserve to call myself a naturalist. So, here I am, a nature writer with nothing much to write about because apparently, a little rain can stop me.

I did visit the Park today to see if I could take photos in the rain. Not so much. I took a photo of the rain, those wonderful water droplets collecting on the leaves of some ground cover I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to identify because I was getting wet.

I checked out the red shouldered hawk nest. Still no eggs, but when I visit (a couple of times a week), the hawks usually stop by. My money is still on them using the nest. Eventually.

Today, one of the hawks flew to the nest. She or he settled in (making me think I was going to be rewarded for volunteering to get wet), called a few times and then flew to a nearby branch.

I took a few photos because I was there. I didn’t notice it at the time, but the hawk looks very ragged. I don’t know if this is just a wet hawk or if it is a hawk who somehow lost a lot of tail feathers. Ok, all of its tail feathers. The feathers visible behind the bird are wet wing feathers.

I saw the hawk fly in and I saw it fly out and at no point did I exclaim, “Damn! That bird has no tail!” On the other hand, I have two photos and can’t find a tail in either one.

A proper naturalist would go back to the park and try to refind the hawk. But as I mentioned in the first sentence. It’s raining.