Saturday, April 23, 2022

Urban Wildlife

 




Last Wednesday, while I cleaned out the garden beds on a rare sunny morning, three Cooper's hawks gave me quite the show, swooping and diving and calling back and forth right above the garden and nearby neighborhood. It was magical. 

Just as magical, but also gruesome, was the sight we came upon week before last as we pulled out of the alley behind the Clintonville Resources Center after doing our pick-ups and deliveries of donations to the food bank. There, where the alley met the street, was a Cooper's hawk, valiantly mantling over a pigeon nearly his/her own size.  The pigeon was squirming, and the hawk was having a hard time making the kill. A delivery truck turned onto the street from the alley across the way, and it was too much for the hawk. It flew away. I used a plastic-bag-covered hand to move the pigeon up into the yard, in the hopes that the hawk would come back, finish the kill, and have a meal.

City hawks give me hope. We are losing lots of species, but some are adapting to life in urban environments. These wild neighbors are precious to me.

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