Monday, October 29, 2007

Better than the Aviary

I wrote this column with one of the local Pittsburgh newspapers in mind, but since they didn’t pick it up, I post it here.


It was a typically humid summer afternoon in Pittsburgh, a few days after my twenty-sixth birthday, and I had birds on the brain. Not the ordinary robins and sparrows, or even the vibrant cardinals and blue jays I grew up watching in the backyard of my parents’ house, but something much bigger, fiercer, and more striking.

For the past few years, my father has been observing a family of hawks that moved into the neighborhood, first nesting in the hundred-foot oaks in the backyard, then relocating to other spots, expanding their territory, but still appearing almost daily in the foliage or sky immediately surrounding my childhood home.

Watching these birds has become a favorite pastime for my dad, right up there with “Seinfeld” reruns or a day on the links. On Fathers’ Day a few years ago, we gave him a pair of binoculars that he keeps by a window on the porch, brandishing them whenever he wants to get a closer look at a full-grown hawk in flight, or a fledgling going about the grisly business of picking apart some unfortunate, furry thing in its talons. While the latter scene is far too gruesome for my mom to watch comfortably, my dad takes it in with a naturalist’s awe. When I visit, I can’t help but share his enthusiasm.

On this particular day, I had already caught a good glimpse of two hawks. I had watched through my dad’s binoculars as a young hawk, perched on a thick limb, was pestered and screeched at by a group of smaller birds. Soon one of the parents, sensing something amiss, had swooped into view, landing majestically on a nearby branch and scattering the birds by its mere presence. Now, a few hours later, I was strolling through the yard again, hoping for more.

What I got was as strange as it was satisfying. I had wandered to the edge of the grass, where a thin wood separates my parents’ backyard from their neighbors’ property. Having seen no feathery action in the trees, I was about to put my birdwatching on hiatus for the day when I heard a light rustling. Out from behind a pile of old bricks, just a few feet from where I stood, something hopped into sight. It was a hawk. I could tell by the mottled white and brown of its feathers that it was a young bird. A fledgling. Not in the trees or the sky but on the ground, standing there, in a bed of green ivy.

The hawk raised its wings, striking a pose similar to that of the bald eagle on a dollar bill. Except that instead of looking sideways, the hawk was staring right at me. If it was threatened, it was also eerily cool and composed, ready to act.

My first instinct was to duck behind a nearby tree. I did this, slowly. Then my eyes turned to the canopy above. I was suddenly seized by an irrational fear that the hawk’s next of kin had gathered in the trees and were about to stage an aerial attack on my head. But everything above seemed quiet, so I turned back to my original subject. I wondered what its curved beak and talons might do, in a moment of avian panic, to my twenty-six-year-old face. I decided I would be better off without this information.

Then I thought of my dad. He had to see this. I yelled up to the house, hoping the noise wouldn’t spook the hawk, and soon my dad came hurrying across the yard with my uncle and sister in tow.

The hawk seemed unfazed by the new onlookers. My uncle was bold enough to approach it, getting as close as a foot or two away. It spread its wings farther, puffed its chest a bit more, but didn’t move from the ivy. After this, questions arose. Why wasn’t the hawk flying away? Was it sick or injured? But despite our concerns, what we felt most in those moments was wonder, the thrill of being near to something wild and alive that would normally require a good hiding spot, binoculars or a cage to observe close up. And this encounter wasn’t happening on a wildlife preserve, or even on a hike through the park. It was happening in the backyard.

As it turned out, the hawk wasn’t hurt. We decided to leave it alone for a while, and when I returned only minutes later it had disappeared.

Describing the experience to my relatives that night, I couldn’t help thinking it was a fitting end to my birthday visit, something my dad and I would recall with eagerness, and a reminder of the simple, outdoorsy marvels that are so easy to miss or forget about as we move into adulthood.

But even more than that, the encounter seemed to sum up two worlds that for a moment were on the verge of coming together: the young hawk watching from the shallow woods, and all of us bewildered humans, only a few feet away, staring back from the edge of a crisp, manicured lawn.

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