I’ve been reading about falcons recently, and not only because William Shakespeare, Marco Polo, and Ghengis Khan were falcon enthusiasts, but because I saw a falcon.

According to everyone’s uncitable source, Wikipedia, the word “falcon” comes from the Latin word “falx,” because of the shape of a falcon’s wing. A “falx” is a sickle-shaped weapon. Peregrine falcons are the fastest moving creatures on Earth, clocking up to 220 miles per hour. Wikipedia lists over forty different species of falcons, and I’m not quite sure which one I saw, but I am sure it was a falcon.

The first interaction I had with a bird of prey was at the local Audubon society when I was in first grade. The Audubon was a place for excursions: my brownie troop had weekly meetings inside, and my elementary school took us there on frequent field trips. Arthur, the barn owl, called the Audubon home because he could not be released into the wild. He only had one eyeball; the other socket was completely empty. There was some horrible incident involving Arthur and a car collision that brought him to his humble abode in the Birds of Prey exhibit. Most of the time when I saw Arthur, he was asleep. I liked Arthur.

I come from the home of the Falcons, Fairfield Ludlowe High School, where at pep rallies some unfortunate tall freshmen wore the smiling falcon mascot and clapped the bulky wings to rile up the crowd. The cheerleaders screamed “F-A-L-C-O-N-S” while jumping and smiling. The girls had falcon Vineyard Vines totes to carry the plethora of books that we studied from, and everyone proudly wore their Falcon-gear hoodies after pulling all-nighters. In the lobby all the ceiling tiles formed a giant falcon mural that the Advanced Placement Art class had painted. I ate my breakfast at “The Perch” and read my Caelum yearbook.

You might not believe me, but here is how I saw a falcon: I climbed the forty-four stairs that it takes to get from d-hall to my dorm room after a newspaper-filled late lunch, and I was sitting down at my desk to start deleting the endless F&M Events e-mails or perhaps to go on Facebook, when I was compelled to look outside.

And there he was. Perching on the corner railing of my balcony, a mere three feet away, with nothing but window glass and a little air between us. I looked at him and he at me. Then he looked away, uninterested in my technological pursuits. He surveyed his location for food or view or something that falcons look for. I couldn’t look away, mesmerized by the precise curve of the wing and the dappled feathers and the encrusted claws that connected to the body with a few tufts of feathers slightly displaced. He started rocking, pondering whether to stay quietly close to me or to go into the sky. I was afraid to move and let him break away while I blinked.

My first instinct was to call out to someone to witness this event. It was eerie, and I thought no one would believe me, but I stayed quiet. My second instinct was the one I followed and was perhaps even more feeble than calling out to someone. I made the embarrassing mistake of pulling my digital camera from its case in my desk drawer. I just wanted to bottle an untouchable moment. Shaking, I pointed the camera through the blinds and at the bird. I snapped a single crooked shot of the falcon through the offending glare of the glass window before he decided that he was no longer comfortable with his perch or my gazing.

He moved onto his falcon activities with a swift lift of wings and feathers. I was left disappointed, camera in hand and frozen and with nothing to speak for the experience except a blurry picture with window blinds blocking most of the bird.

This morning I woke up and was looking out my window from my pillow and I remarkably saw him again, circling in the distance against the clouded sky. For a moment before rising, I wished to be a feral and liberated falcon before becoming once again consumed by books and pages and pencils and human pursuits that I love.