Raptor's Beak? What?

So I took the 8x12 watch so I'd have more time- and I do. Which means I'm
blogging less why? The 8x12 is much less interesting than the other two
watches but it is a much kinder schedule... instead of writing, tho, I'm
hitting the gym and pool, or watching movies, or sleeping the untarnished
sleep of the civilized. Sigh.

I slept as we passed the Rock of Gibraltar and left the Atlantic Ocean
behind so entering the Mediterranean Sea this time felt like being rocked to
sleep and waking up to perfect calm. The gray and navy seas morphed into
silver, the indigo water turned to many shades of jade. True to the nature
of green sea water, at night we churned up the green glow as we turn 18
knots on a bioluminescent highway.

The first couple of days in the Med were warm and overcast with a ceiling of
stratus and cumulous below. The following winds whipped up cat's paws
during the day, and when the engineers burned the soot out of the stack at
night ("blowing tubes") the sparks were carried on the wind from astern and
the fireworks looked spectacular intermingled with the stars as they drifted
forward into the night and disappeared.

As we rounded the point of Tunesia a gale blew in from astern and we
encountered the first swells I've seen in the Med in my 5 crossings. 6
meter swells caught us under the port quarter and the ship rolled 10 degrees
on way, then 10 degrees the other, over and over, and the green
Mediterranean water turned a deep cobalt blue with white streaks running
down the wave faces as whitehorses were knocked flat by the wind. Or in
other words, the Med looked more like the Atlantic, but less gray.

I saw a bird of prey (a falcon, I think) off Tunisia that circled the ship
and explored some of the containers looking for scrap (mice, lizards, etc.).
Its belly was white with dark brown spots and its back was a taffy, or
caramel color with a satin luster. It had a long tail but an abrupt, flat
face with a small... um... do raptors have "beaks?" Why in the hell can't I
recall what a raptor's beak is called? Anyway, it had a small, yellow
hooked raptor beak (shush!), dark wingtips, and at one point it came right
at the wheelhouse and I got a good look at it as it momentarily hung in
front of the window, all two-and-a-half feet of its wings spread out before
the updraft carried it aloft. When I stepped out onto the bridge wing I
caught it surveying the ship from a rail next to the light mast. He took
one disdainful look at me with his dark, intelligent, and predatory eyes and
took off like a bolt and was lost to sight behind cargo within seconds.

And now we're drifting outside of the channel in Egypt, waiting for a pilot.
My spidey-senses are telling me that the fiasco of today (my birthday, by
the way), wherein the bosun decided he wouldn't trust the delegate (me) to
steer him true so he made every simple task impossibly difficult and robbed
me of future sleep, will continue unabated. The Old Man got us here a day
early, so between being early and not being able to give us definitive
information... oh, nevermind. It is both nobody's fault and enough to get
me cursing at the stupidity of it all, so I'm willing to hang the new Bosun
in my mind even as I patiently try to bring him around to the way we do
things in my union while on deck.
How did I end up Delegate, again?