Beautiful

Yesterday afternoon I spotted a hawk in a neighbor's tree. I think it was a female Coopers Hawk from the tail feathers and otherwise muted plumage. She perched there for about five minutes, surveying the neighborhood before launching into flight, which is where I spotted the bands on her tail feathers. I caught a glimpse of another hawk soaring nearby.

Not long after sunset, I saw the two day old crescent moon hovering over Venus low in the southwest just above the horizon. The moon's entire disc was illuminated with light reflected from our humble planet and its thin crescent was a bright sliver on the lower edge.

None of this is unusual. Something like these events happen around the world all the time. I'm just fortunate to see them occasionally in my neighborhood and it reminds me that, for all our pretensions, we humans are pretty damn insignificant.