Hawkish Guardian Spirits -- Or Feathered Coincidence?

I've recently seen more hawks (as in birds of prey) than ever before. On a lunchtime walk yesterday, saw a red-tail zoom from a blue spruce to snatch a starling in mid-flight. It was a titanic tussle at first, as hawk and starling rolled and caromed in feathered combat. But you can guess who won -- the hawk must've been as hungry for a warm entree as I was.

The thing is, I rarely stop on my mid-day power walks. I'm always too eager to get the maximum aerobic benefit from my few minutes of outdoor freedom. Yet not this time. It was all joy to watch an ancient drama play out near a vacant lot, in a Midwestern city known more for breakfast cereal than aerial poetry.

And again, he's just the latest of many. I've also spotted hawks near woods, highways and rivers and watched one sail -- magnificently -- just a few feet from my window at work. Twenty years in the same office and that's never happened before.

So is there some spiritual meaning behind these frequent visitations? Have these winged messengers come to prod my mind and spirit to new heights? Are they the closest thing to angels that I'm likely to see this side of paradise? Or could it simply be, as my wonderfully practical wife says, "that there's just more hawks now than they're used to be?"

Time will tell -- but I hope the hawks do, too.