Skip to main content

City Nature, Nature's City

Support Provided By

I saw this morning, in rounding the entry to the office where I'm volunteering, two hawks and then a third. They were haggling in the branches of a fifty-year-old pepper tree overhanging the walkway, hopping lightly from branch to branch or nearly scrambling up the furred bark of the pepper tree. The three birds appeared and disappeared. Skee, Skee, Skee crying - something from the forest and not a suburban street - located one of them in the branches of a nearby sycamore.

These birds have been around for at least a week, chittering from the pepper tree or skimming under its branches to rest in a specimen Ficus benjamina in the city hall parking lot. I saw one of the hawks yesterday whetting its beak on the bark a few feet overhead.

From their size, I presume one is female (larger) and the other two are males (smaller). I don't know why there are three of them or if this is a season for mating or if nest mates hang together for a time after fledging. The nature of the these hawks is unknown to me. The little I've included here comes from a few minutes on the web.

I may not know their nature, but I know the hawks are in mine. They are not alone. The suburban street I've walked since I was a child is a concrete path cut from Nature, but from which Nature has never been absent.

Mourning doves, mocking birds, scrub jays, house sparrows, and finches have accompanied my walk for as long as I can remember, either in person or as a fugue of their calls.

Hummingbirds make their fierce Tzt, Tzt, Tzt - a sound so loud from so small a thing. Down the block, a woodpecker worked at the bark of a backyard elm for several days this spring. I'd never heard that before. Parakeets flock over the street.

I don't know if these hawks mean to pass by or stay. I don't know what effect they will have on the local bird population (although I suspect the resident mockingbirds will give them trouble). The hawks will have their way, nonetheless.

As Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: ". . . the achieve of; the mastery of the thing! Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here . . ."

That three hawks are here is a brute fact and a beauty over which I have no control.

We sometimes think that Nature has fallen back from our advance, a retreat from which there can be no return. A short walk will better inform us. This is nature's city, and these hawks have entered there in my wondering presence.

The image on this page was taken by Earle Church. It is used by permission.

Support Provided By
Read More
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.
A Black woman with long, black brains wears a black Chicago Bulls windbreaker jacket with red and white stripes as she stands at the top of a short staircase in a housing complex and rests her left hand on the metal railing. She smiles slightly while looking directly at the camera.

Los Angeles County Is Testing AI's Ability To Prevent Homelessness

In order to prevent people from becoming homeless before it happens, Los Angeles County officials are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict who in the county is most likely to lose their housing. They would then step in to help those people with their rent, utility bills, car payments and more so they don't become unhoused.
blue themed graphic including electric vehicles are charging stations, wind turbines and trees, 2023 in reference to year

A Look Back at Climate Solutions In 2023

The U.S. may have a long way to go in its decarbonization goals, but these stories show signs of progress in climate solutions.