Seeing a hawk
Seeing a hawk has counted as an omen since ancient Rome. Around homes, hawks turn up where people have made hunting easy for them, so it is worth checking who else your own setups draw in.
What it may mean
Put out a bird feeder and you are feeding more than finches. Within weeks a Cooper's hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk may learn that your yard is a reliable place to find small birds, and one morning the chatter stops and every bird freezes. Nothing has gone wrong; you built a gathering place, and gathering places draw hunters as well as guests. The same pattern runs through human life. A generous friend attracts people who only take, a busy office attracts endless requests, a popular post attracts trolls. When a hawk appears, it pays to check what your arrangements draw in beyond what you planned, and whether a small change would protect the guests you wanted. Hawks have stood for victory, danger and divine favor in different lands; this one may simply be watching your feeder.
Depending on how you saw it
A hawk perched on a highway light pole
Red-tailed hawks love the mowed strips along highways, where mice and voles have nowhere to hide. A pole gives a wide view for no effort at all. Which high, ordinary vantage point in your week lets you see more than you normally do?
A hawk at your bird feeder
If a hawk keeps returning, many birders take the feeder down for a week or two so the small birds scatter and the hawk moves on. A pause can protect a place without closing it for good. Which gathering spot of yours could use a short break to stop drawing the wrong visitor?
Crows chasing a hawk across the sky
A big hawk harried by two or three noisy crows is a familiar spring scene. The smaller birds mob it to drive it away from their nests, and it generally leaves. Who could you team up with to push back on something larger than any of you alone?
Finding a hawk feather
In the United States, hawks are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and keeping their feathers without a permit is not allowed, even a feather found on the ground. You can photograph it and leave it where it lay. Which find of yours is better kept as a memory than taken home?
Why it happens in nature
Hawks hunt where prey is easy to find, so they do well around people: red-tailed hawks over open fields and road edges, Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks around yards with feeders. Small birds often mob hawks to chase them off. In the United States, native hawks and their feathers are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so found feathers should not be kept without a permit.
What folk beliefs say
Ancient Rome
The ancient Romans watched birds before any undertaking, and the sight of a hawk was taken as a promise of victory to those going to war.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 584. View the page
Ancient Egypt
The Egyptians held the hawk sacred because it was the form taken by the gods Ra and Horus.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 642. View the page
Madagascar
In Madagascar, meeting a crow or a kestrel when setting out was thought to foretell a fortunate journey.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 903. View the page
London, England
It was long considered a very unlucky omen for a hawk to get caught on one of the iron crowns of the White Tower in London.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 3 (1903), vol. 3, p. 1355. View the page
To reflect on
What have your own arrangements been attracting that you never planned for?