Red-shouldered Hawk and Blue-gray Gnatcatcher : David or Goliath?

This is a Red-shouldered Hawk and a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. The Hawk was perched, hunting, waiting for the opportune kill. He is large and powerful, a predator imbued with every natural advantage. The Gnatcatcher hardly even registers on any comparative scale: it’s minuscule, without talons, and its usual “combat” is limited to eating insects. This photo is a snapshot of time, eliminating context, and forcing us to question, “Why did the Hawk take flight?” More broadly, “What am I actually seeing? What is just outside the frame?” Something in us likes the little guy’s victory.

“David versus Goliath” is among the most common biblical references in modern life. The young shepherd boy with his sling confronts a battle-hardened champion and scores an upset victory. Simple. Better - ask David if he was the underdog. Fighting alongside Adonai Tzavaot, the Lord of Hosts, David never questioned his battle’s inevitable victory. David’s ally, cropped out of the meme-version of the story, insured a victory just as certain as those of Moses and Joshua. Seen holistically - including HaShem - David versus Goliath was a demonstration of righteous power, not a paean to a supposed underdog.

Conflict analysts too often today employ a narrow field of view. Combatants are automatically slotted into a pre-existing narrative, with the scantest attention paid to the wider picture. What’s happening on streets outside the combat zone? Is the “oppressed” instead another’s pawn? Painfully rarely do these analysts indulge the humility to ask, “What might I be missing?” Outside the frame, are there more birds harassing the Hawk? A snake working its way up the branch? A photographer getting uncomfortably close? David versus Goliath is not a simple tale; neither is our today.