FreeLists / va-bird / [va-bird] An editorial followup on yesterday's Hawk article

[barbara chambers <bj.chambers@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

EDITORIAL 

Squatting Rights

Published: December 9, 2004

Birds
New York City

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There is no historic preservation district or landmarks commission for
hawks' nests. But if there were, the red-tailed hawk's nest at 927 Fifth
Avenue, overlooking Central Park at 74th Street, would surely have
qualified. Until Tuesday, the nest stood on a 12th-floor cornice with a
sublime aerial view of the urban forest in our midst. Since 1993, 23 young
hawks have been raised there, sired by a bird called Pale Male. Thousands
and thousands of bird-watchers over the years have followed the lives of the
hawks in that nest. But this is not an homage to bird-watching - it's an
homage to birds.

On Tuesday, workers took down the nest and, apparently, the metal
anti-pigeon spikes that had helped hold it in place. So far, no one from 927
Fifth Avenue has spoken up to defend the co-op board's decision to remove
the nest. Perhaps residents were annoyed that the hawks didn't do a better
job of cleaning up after themselves by using a pooper-scooper or putting
their pigeon bones in the trash, the way a human would. Perhaps they simply
wearied of the stirring sight of a red-tailed hawk coming down out of the
sky to settle on its nest.

It's always tempting to think that a city like New York has utterly effaced
the natural ground on which it was built. Most of the creatures that lived
on Manhattan Island several centuries ago would stand no chance of doing so
now - not in these new canyons of steel and glass. But the presence of a
nesting pair of red-tailed hawks, sequestered on the edge of an apartment
building, feels like a memory from a past this city has long since
forgotten.

The hawks have gone out of their way to learn to live with us. The least the
wealthy residents of 927 Fifth Avenue could have done was learn to live with
the hawks.



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