Does Ezra Have A Tender Heart?

I’ve been watching a short video on YouTube, made by a fellow blogger at Hawks and The City. Shot last week, it features a family of red-tailed hawks in their nest at Cornell University in upstate New York. It’s raining, and Big Red (the mother hawk in the foreground) is brooding over her newly-hatched young, which are out of camera range. Pressed up against her is her mate Ezra, who, we’re told, was sitting on the nest and then came over to shield Big Red and her eyasses from the hail and rain. For three minutes and sixteen seconds, we see the tail view of Big Red pressed up against Ezra. His eyes move about; her dark feathers glisten in the rain. That’s it.

The tableau has a soundtrack, the rock song “Starting To Rain Again.” At first that seemed like a weird juxtaposition — but on second thought, the match felt right: the tender behaviour of predatory birds and the rock lyrics with their undercurrent of tenderness. In fact, it’s quite moving. I don’t know why — I’d like to explore my reaction. Am I being silly or does the music only underscore the fact that Ezra has a tender heart? Are hawks evolving into predatory softies or have I caught the avian version of Online Cute Cat Syndrome?

Having studied theology, I know that most people have trouble talking about good and evil in the animal world, given the freighted meaning of those human words. Big raptors show parental affection and solicitude; they also kill and eat small mammals and less powerful birds. Because they lack language and a developed moral consciousness, we don’t assign virtue or guilt to their behaviour. This is appropriate, but I’m not convinced that we should draw an absolute distinction between the nature of their actions and our own. From my own observations, it makes intuitive sense to think of tenderness — or cruelty — as a spectrum of behaviour, in which all animals, including ourselves, participate.

On the other hand, we’ve all been taught that humans act out of a complex set of good or bad motivations, while animals act out of instinct. The classical Judeo-Christian take on the world allows us superiority and a moral edge, despite having eaten the forbidden fruit of Eden and needing a saviour to tidy things up. According to this narrative, good and evil came into the world with humankind. Animals are outside this moral realm. Our friends the hawks can “behave like beasts” but they can never be good. That’s reserved for us, along with grace, salvation, etc.

Poor Ezra. Nice try.

Yet evidence now points to the fact that creation is a work in progress. We learn this from the study of evolution, from its counterpart in process theology, from hanging out in nest-watch chat rooms, from loving our kids and each other. Online and off, we’re magnetized by the presence of life abounding, by the obvious goodness of creation, by a sense of mystery and wonder that never grows old — and that embraced this universe long before our species came along.

Does Ezra have a tender heart? He may not know it, but yes, he does. He has take-’em-out talons, too, but that doesn’t bump his slight gesture from the vast spectrum of instinctive self-giving that keeps this world alive. In his brief moments of protecting Big Red, he showed himself to be a true expression of nature’s generosity, of a gift much larger than himself. Whatever else may be true, I’m awed that Ezra did what he did. So rock on, raptors, and let it rain — avian or human, there’s no such thing as too much love.

Watch the video “Ezra Protects Big Red At Cornell” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xajeASw80kU

 

The Hawks’ Gift

(photo: WingedThings)

Spring’s back, and so are those cute little bobble-headed hawk chicks — properly called eyasses — and their parents, Bobbie and Rosie Red-Tail, the pride of New York City’s Washington Square Park.

And so is sorrow.

Yesterday, I wondered if the third of three chicks would make it out of his/her shell as promptly as the first two. It did. Little Judson (named for Judson Memorial Church, where its parents mated on the cross) squiggled out into the nest, joining siblings Kiku (whose name honours a late member of the online chatroom) and Archie (for the famed Washington Square Arch). Terminal cuteness all around; virtual champagne and cigars and congrats to the parents from a raft of virtual aunts and uncles. On my wall is posted a birth announcement, provided by a chat member when Kiku hatched last Friday.

Two hours after little Judson poked his way into the world, two bombs exploded on Boylston Street in Boston, disrupting the marathon and claiming three lives, including that of an eight year-old child. In the chat room, the conversation had become agitated, and this was when I realized that something dreadful had happened.

Many of us worried about friends in Boston while we eyed the nestlings. Since the hawks’ turf is in downtown Manhattan, memories of 9/11 began to surface in the online chat. As our fear and dread scrolled by to the right of the screen, the webcam continued to show fluffballs Kiku, Archie and Judson — the oldest only three days old — tussling, squawking and grabbing for food. In innocence, they carried on, the image of solace in the midst of grief and pain — Bobby Hawk bringing fresh rodent meat; Rosie putting the “kids” down for a nap under her enormous cape of feathers. As we tried to unravel the tragedy in Boston, we would pause to look at them, to observe Rosie’s patience and to enjoy those three tiny packages of life.

It’s not surprising that hundreds of people love watching hawks and their nestlings online. These big raptors rescue us from narcissism because they have absolutely nothing to say about the human condition. In the face of our sufferings, they eat, sleep, romp, make love and catch rodents. They invite us to ooh and ahh, to laugh and cry, to receive the gifts that life has to offer. They bring us hope in sorrow. They are nature’s sign of goodness in the world.

Visit Bobby, Rosie and family at http://www.livestream.com/nyu_hawkcam

Innocents

Photo: Sharon Hicks, Newtown Bee

It happened that we’d scheduled our Christmas tree trimming for Saturday, the day after the Connecticut shootings. I wasn’t at all in the mood. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever experienced this festive event as a leaden and depressing chore. Thinking that some reflective Christmas music might help, I put on a CD of a Christmas Mass, then dug with a grimace into the big box of frosted balls and sequined kitty-cats. It wasn’t until the choir sang the Coventry Carol that I stopped to listen.

In case you don’t know it, the plaintive song tells the story of the flight into Egypt by Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus in advance of King Herod’s army.  Fearing the birth of a rival for his kingship, Herod sent out his troops to slaughter all boys under the age of two:

Herod the king in his raging/chargèd he has this day

 his men of might, in his own sight

 all young children to slay.

The lyrics stopped me cold. I hadn’t expected anything quite so pointed and so resonant, a long shadow cast from ancient times to fall upon our own. I had forgotten that Christianity commemorates those Holy Innocents (as the slain children are called) as martyrs, and it chilled me, that their long-ago suffering found its terrible echo in the twenty lost children of Newtown, Connecticut. Yet whether or not you’re a person of faith, the atrocity told in Matthew’s gospel gives no special insight into our own slaughter of innocents, other than the fact of our sad human state. Part of God’s unfathomable plan? What a sick idea. Someone with a gun did this and lax laws let it happen. It has nothing to do with God.

Carols and liturgical works tell a Christmas story that offers us both light and darkness, birth foreshadowing the image of the Cross and death and whatever unfathomable resurrection lies beyond. As I reflect on this, I’ve come to think that we often find Christmas saccharine because of our sentimental insistence on good vibes when the birth of Christ augurs the messy complexity and the terrifying mystery of life itself. These slain children, like the innocents of old, belong to the season and its hidden shadows.

I grieve their loss, and our collective failure to protect them.

Along with Christmas itself, our beautiful tree is alight with hope and sadness.

 

Written in memory of the 27 children and adults who were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut on 14 December 2012, and with the resolve of an American citizen to resist the tyranny of the gun.

Bright Lights, Two Birds, One Strange Week

Over five days, I’ve twice faced a volley of flashing cameras — not the norm for a less-than-famous writer. These occasions involved those two verboten dinner-table subjects: politics and religion (a rule ignored in my home, where 8.1-on-the-Richter-Scale arguments were common). Only this blog isn’t about either. It’s about the profound strangeness of life as I sometimes experience it.

So those of you who didn’t vote for Obama please don’t unsubscribe, just grab a quick look at the photo on the far left (the placement is accidental, not political). In this picture — taken at the Sheraton Hotel ballroom in Toronto last Tuesday evening— your Less-Than-Thoughtful Blogger is going berserk, raising high her beloved Big Bird (festooned with campaign regalia) like liberty’s torch. Sweet little BB drew an impressive array of video hardware to our table, resulting in interviews with CTV and CITY-TV in Toronto (asking me questions such as “Why Big Bird?” and — duh — “Why Obama?”). Your momentarily-crazed blogger also appeared in the Metro tabloid (standing on a chair, holding BB aloft and cheering) and in NOW, the city’s weekly news and entertainment weekly. So I’ve had my fifteen minutes of fame, thanks to a yellow fluffball, an attack of the sillies, and, oh yeah, a presidential victory.

Then came Sober Saturday, and the sizzle of a goofy persona flipping over like a pancake on a griddle.

Cut to the nave of St. Basil’s Church in Toronto, where a barrage of flashing cameras and smartphones greeted a colourful array of academics, floppy-hatted PhDs, and other degree recipients, including the Thoughtful (gowned and hooded) Blogger. She was there to receive her Diploma in Theological Studies  — ten courses over eight years of part-time study at the University of St. Michael’s College, which is where Thoughtful B. goes to the brain-gym and works out.  Theology? Can’t imagine what else I’d study. I’m curious about everything in life, including how a clown, scholar and writer of fiction may abide in one compact speck of creation in a strange and ineffable universe. Theology’s fantastic for a lover of language, engaged in the never-ending task of naming the unnameable, which, in any case, is what we do when we write fiction with truth at its heart.

This time, the flashing cameras belonged to friends and families who mobbed for a huge photo-op outside the church where a brisk wind was snapping at hoods and gowns. Well, who knows — maybe it was the flapping of wings, Big Bird ceding his role to the Holy Spirit, roosting, nesting and abiding in mystery.

My head’s still spinning.

What an incredible week it was.

The Home Within

What more can we say about Hurricane/Super-Storm Sandy? Stunned silence at the images of destruction, shock and concern for loved ones who can’t be reached — apart from that, I share with everyone the sense of bewilderment that clings like seaweed to the hard rock of the unexpected. A seaside image to be sure, which may hint at the depth of my attachment to this place.

Almost a decade ago, I came across an article in the New York Times which included a map of Long Island Sound. I saved the map of this ancient channel and its stretch of coastal cities, suburbs and beaches, the region I come from and still think of as home. As Hurricane Sandy struck the area, I’ve felt both dismay and the strength of my connection to the geography of my birth and my youth, its wooded oaks, beeches and sycamores (so many uprooted), its stretches of sand and ocean surf (now in flood), its overlay of Dutch settlement and cosmopolitan verve (no lights, no phones, no subways). As I thought about its woes and looked at the map, I saw that in its breadth, Long Island Sound encompasses — and somehow resolves — the paradoxes I love and that have formed me: the passionate urbanity of New York City so close to the leafy ambiance of Westchester’s towns, the summer beaches on the Sound’s north shore and the powerful beauty of oceanfront Long Island to the south.

As it does elsewhere, nature and ancient geologic time underscore everything on the Sound. New York City is an archipelago, entangled in the tidal estuaries of the East River and the Hudson; the Taconic Parkway that ambles south through Westchester County echoes the Cambrian era, the earth’s eruption into primeval mountains of the same name. The ocean’s beaches evolve and change and the tides form a relentless, underlying rhythm that became all too apparent during the storm surges in New York City earlier this week.

In light of this, the hurricane has made me reflect on the fact that nature itself has a claim on my existence. It’s a mystery, that my beloved place has, in nature’s inarticulate way, loved me also, has given solace and comfort, beauty and inspiration. Yet the roots of blessing and catastrophe are tangled up in knots I can’t begin to untie. Consider the circumstances of life in Long Island Sound. Here, millions of people cluster at sea level, home (along with skyscrapers and outdated infrastructure) to an abundant wealth of wildlife, vegetation, and aquatic activity. Do we humans belong there? Moot point. Devastated now, the area remains dense with human vitality and rich in natural beauty, and I hope it will always remain so.  Paradox is the gift that my home place has given me, the home I carry within.

Summer’s Finest Day

As I say a reluctant farewell to a long, warm summer (which “officially” ends Saturday), my mind wanders back to a July day when time ambled along as it does in childhood, when I turned off the iPod and cellphone, and, along with my spouse, sat on a park bench and did nothing. We were in New York City, on the south side of the famous arch in Washington Square Park — a day made for lemonade and ice cream, sunbathers, chess players, and guitar strummers sitting in the shade. Birdwatchers, too; my spouse had the latter skill and I had the camera. I’d come to see “in person” those two baby hawks, former fluff-balls Boo and Scout, now a pair of fledged juvenile red-tails who’d spent summer in the park learning to fly and hunt with their solicitious parents, Bobby and Rosie. The young take off by August, leaving the home turf to mom and dad and the next brood, so this was our only chance to see the two fledglings.

And I was thrilled when we spotted them. One of the “babies” perched on the arch; one or another flew overhead, demonstrating the elegance of their new-found soaring skills. The camera did the rest. I’ve seen far better pictures of the great birds, but none I’ll cherish more.  

 

 

 

 

 

To observe these hawks in their fullness of life was an experience of true wonder and it left me with a profound sense of connection to the world. Those two cute roughhousing chicks I’d viewed online every day last spring had grown into a pair of magnificent raptors off to soar in an endless sky. What vitality and wildness in those feather-layered wings, those enormous eyes and majestic profiles, gifts of nature at its most extravagant.  Generous, too. Think about it: apart from evolution, there’s no reason why these beautiful creatures have come to live among us in the city. They don’t have to be here. But they are. So much of the world is inexplicable in this way; so much of it is a gift.

You might say that for a moment, our clouded vision cleared, that sitting in the park on a quiet afternoon, we saw into the radiance of the world. Apart from that, we hung out and relaxed.

It was summer’s finest day.

It’s Still Summer (What’s The Rush?)

By my calendars (both civil and sidereal), it was exactly six weeks until the end of summer when I received the first annual Fall is Here book flyer which read:  “Summer may be on its last few pages….” well, OK — time to buy back-to-school e-readers, backpacks, calculators and other “accessories with attitude.”  Dozens more of these ads will follow to the drumbeat of Autumn in August. However, as an organism chock full of southern European DNA and a heartfelt love of summer, I object to rushing the season, even in the interest of the Reality Principle that tells all responsible souls to Plan Ahead because Fall Starts on Labour Day.

Oh? Along with all the fall-rush goodies, isn’t there a back-to-school app that shows kids the Autumn Equinox thing? Since many of us live in a climate with long and dreary winters, what masochistic streak/compulsive work ethic prompts us to hurry along those long and glorious summer days? Regrettably, the ninth month has become Official Fall, a business bonanza for back-to-school purchases and fall season specials, and a sad disconnect from the astronomical cycle and the gentle transitions of the natural world.

Canada warms up late enough. We wait until the July 1st holiday to get serious about summer — and then in a scant two months, an advertising media blitz rushes us into the fall season. Nothing wrong with fresh new films and fashions, but the ad tsunami and the back-to-school rush tends to override September’s special joys: three summer weeks, often full of brilliant sunshine, azure skies and no humidity, the stunning lavenders, golds and pinks of flowering cosmos, asters, hollyhocks; a chunk of time when you can still wear shorts and hang out with friends on the patio — sure, the nights are growing longer and a tad cooler; sure it can rain, but that, too, belongs to summer, to its ebbing phase of slow retreat. It’s a season to be savoured like fine wine, “from the brim to the dregs,” as the old song goes.

Summer’s a gift, and one of nature’s kindest. It’s ours to enjoy for a while yet.

 *

 In the Northern Hemisphere, autumn 2012 officially begins on September 22nd at 14:49 Universal Time (10:49 am, Eastern Daylight Time).

Bright Wings

The baby hawks have taken flight at last.

This blurry photo from the New York Times shows them after landing.

Now in spite of my absence from this blog, I’ve had more to do over the past  seven weeks than sit riveted to my computer screen, watching the antics of two growing chicks, waiting for the momentous day when they’d spread their wings and soar into the wind. But busy as I am, life has been made wondrous by this unexpected gift, this intimate view of a world unknown to me.

Hatched in a nest on the twelfth floor of NYU’s Bobst Library (on the south side of New York’s Washington Square Park), the two chicks were dubbed Boo and Scout by New York Times readers (homage to characters in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird). They’ve attracted a huge group of webcam watchers and park birders, along with a very lively online chatroom.  And no wonder. Viewed up close, their young lives were filled with adventures, some of them gut-churning to a squeamish urbanite (mama Rosie’s delivery of fresh rat meat, the “kids” slurping down the entrails, spaghetti-like). Yet all of them inspired gratitude for our privileged view of hawk parents raising their young. Lots of mishaps; we fretted over the tangle with the plastic bag that got twisted around Scout’s leg (until she somehow dislodged it). Courtesy of an online FAQ, we learned more than we might have wished about the anatomy and chemistry of “slicing” (as bird defecation is called), leading one observer to describe their less-than-pristine ledge as a “poop deck” and another to name their tale a “life of slice.”

Yet the fullness of life in these small, struggling creatures was a constant source of wonder. How quickly the hawk pair grew from fluff-ball chicks to spikey-headed young ones, complete with the solemn eyes, little hooked beaks and tiny talons of their species. Slowly — whether through instinct, DNA or some form of proto-consciousness — they appeared to sense that their floppy appendages were purposeful things, growing feathers that lifted them into the wind. Then came “jump-flapping” — a precise description of the young hawks’ exercise routine and flying practice. Scout (the larger of the two) flapped so hard and high that we often thought the wind would sweep her away. Days passed, an anxious fledge-watch started in the park and online, the nest looked like a public health disaster in the making and the young ones edged out of the webcam’s view, to a tidier corner of the ledge.

And then they flew.  It was still light, shortly after 8 p.m. Monday evening when Scout took off for her first flight of about two hundred metres, landing on an eighth-floor ledge of NYU’s Silver Centre at the northeast corner of the park. About twenty minutes later, Boo joined her. It’s uncommon for hawks to fledge in dwindling daylight, even less so for a pair of siblings. They did it their way — a pair of sassy New York raptors who preferred to fledge from one tall building to another, avoiding those weird green trees. In our human way, we’d like to think they wanted to stay close to each other, and the presence of their poppa Bobby on the new ledge seemed to confirm this.

So many of us were touched by this experience. In a short time, the birds changed — but so did we. They changed us. They brought us into a world made new, a world seen through fresh eyes, one that offered the grace of delight. So much about flying speaks to us of liberation — a rite of passage, a spiritual journey, a brave step into the unknown. It’s no surprise that one online hawk-watcher compared fledging to a bar-mitzvah, another to a graduation. I find it a lovely coincidence that the chicks hatched during Easter week, the great feast of life reborn; that seven weeks later, the baby hawks fledged at the time of Pentecost, the celebration of earth’s renewal through the Spirit who “…over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” (Thank you, Gerard Manley Hopkins).

For 2012, I’d add a soundtrack: the chorus of Leonard Cohen’s Alleluia.

Blessings as you fly, Boo and Scout. Godspeed.

*

A video of the fledging can be found at http://urbanhawks.blogs.com/urban_hawks/2012/05/washington-square-fledges.html  For more information and spectacular photos, visit http://rogerpaw.blogspot.ca/

Hatchlings

It began just over a week ago, when the New York Times’ webcam caught the image of the two eggs as they began to hatch. A young family had set up house in downtown Manhattan — a pair of red-tailed hawks and their young in a nest outside a twelfth floor window overlooking Washington Square Park. The cuteness factor runs high here, the numbers on the live-view ticker racing upwards as over a thousand of us play hookey from work and allow ourselves (if you’ll pardon me) a bird’s-eye view. Two fluffy little pompom-heads, nested in a collection of branches, string, and paper bits, open beaks wide as mama (or papa, hard to tell) delivers gourmet fare — dainty morsels of fresh rat meat — to the little ones (for the faint of stomach and heart, the rat carcasses don’t last long).

Like all newborns, these two are mesmerizing — fascinating and beautiful to watch as they reach out to the world. Their entry into life is wondrous — it’s the sudden burst of light at the tip of a struck match, the world beginning all over again. In both their fragility and fullness of life, there’s something primal and mysterious about this pair of hatchlings that I find very moving. Watch the chicks use their stubby wings like sense organs, reaching out to touch their surroundings. Trying to stand, they boost themselves up with these proto-wings, toppling over, flopping their little appendages about each other in what looks like a cuddle as they stumble into connectedness.  Already you’ll see the outlines of the elegant creatures that they will become.

Watch these two tiny bundles of hunger, play and sleep, beautiful and alive to the core, and you can hear the echo of all the life in the world. You feel awakened, and, if I may say it, blessed.

Visit the chicks at http://www.nytimes.com/pages/nyregion/index.html

Happy Spring!

It’s the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, but we’ve had spring weather for the past week or so, and it’s given us all a boost! Wherever you are and whatever your weather, here’s hoping you’ll enjoy new shoots of every kind and the many pleasures of the season. (If you receive this by email, click on the link to see the flowers).

Here’s a poem for spring — poignant, but hopeful. You can almost hear the leaves growing…

The Trees.

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

– Philip Larkin