This
is what is left of the mine portal. It has a sort of dignity.
There's a pile of rotting lumber I cropped out of the photo.
There was also some spray painted grafitti about a girl loving
some guy. Although it's not more than a hundred years old, it has
the feeling of antiquity about it, looks a bit like Abu Simbel in 5000
AD. What the mines did was produce the metals we all use,
meanwhile unlocking poisonous biproducts, which, though perfectly
natural, had been mostly secure in the rock matrix. So this relic
is both a monument to progress and stupidity.
It
was a nice quiet day at the Mill Pond. I bicycled around to the
big rock, then walked along the shoreline. There were several
shorebirds that I flushed without first noticing them. Then I saw
a hawk agitated at something fly away, so I went to look, and found
this other hawk (probably the source of agitation) about 10 yards away.
It perched there long enough for me to circle around it so the
sun was behind me for better lighting, which is how I took this photo.
I think it's an immature Cooper's hawk, by the stripey tail.
I did wonder if it was wounded, but soon after the picture was
snapped, it flew off. In this photo it's balancing on one foot,
but others show both...