Albino Red-tailed Hawk

On October 11, 2012, I was driving my sick confuser to Elan, the Mac repair place in Columbus. Yep, it's a solid two hour drive from my Appalachian home to anyone who will so much as look at a sick Mac. I very much mind having a sick computer, but I never mind going to Columbus. It's my Bright Lights, Big City. 

I'm tooling along on I-77N through Woodsfield, Ohio when I see a kettle of circling turkey vultures. And in that kettle is a snow- white bird. I try very hard not to drive off the road. Because Woodsfield is where the leucistic turkey vulture I saw twice back in the mid-90's used to live. I pull over as fast as I can and grab my big rig. Something told me to bring it to Columbus with me, even though it didn't make sense at the time.

It made sense now.

Smaller than the vultures. By golly, that looks like a redtail!

And a redtail it was, a true albino as far as I could tell, pale beak and pale blue or perhaps even a pink eye, not a mark on it. What a sight, what a heart-soaring, breath stopping sight it was.

I stood there gasping at the roadside, thankful to see it, thankful I'd brought my camera, saying a silent prayer of hosanna to whatever powers of nature, sky, and serendipity had brought this wondrous sight before me.

A sign, a sign, certainly a sign. Of what, I cannot say. Just good. Hope. Strength. Triumph of light over darkness, positivity over bitter negativity. Surely a sign of simple genetic, but not necessarily deleterious mutations. This bird has somehow survived into adulthood, fully functional, blindingly, gloriously white. Long may it fly.

I hereby apologize to all the people who've called and written me over the years to tell me about albino hummingbirds, redtails, cardinals, blue jays, expecting that I would jump in the car forthwith and come see them, too. If I have seemed a bit bored with it all, rather non-commital and unimpressed, I was not now. I was shot through with lightning, as you were upon seeing your special sign bird.

It was not my leucistic turkey vulture, the one dear Charlie Macaw spotted for me so many years ago, the same one I saw again the next summer in Woodsfield. But it was something, something searingly beautiful, transformative, a vision, a bolt from the blue.

Beautiful sky pilot, fly on. I'll be watching for you.