Laura Erickson's For the Birds

Air date, not file name, is correct. Pale Male

One of the most famous individual birds in the entire country is Pale Male, a Red-tailed Hawk that lives in Manhattan. He constructed a nest on one of the most exclusive, expensive buildings in the country, on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. Many city people are unaccommodating when it comes to wildlife—human residents of that building had already constructed heavy-duty iron spikes to keep pigeons off, and Pale Male took advantage of the spikes to secure his large stick nest on a twelfth story balcony. This was such an unusual and exciting happening for many New Yorkers—a large hawk living among people and doing his part to keep the city cleaned of rats and pigeons—that word spread quickly. Marie Winn, who often writes bird articles for The Wall Street Journal, wrote a book about Pale Male titled Redtails in Love. Birders visiting New York City were drawn to the building to see this exciting bird. My own family visited New York in 1993, the very year Pale Male set up housekeeping, and I noticed him flying and carrying sticks before he was actually famous—we happened to be staying with relatives who lived in the building next door.

Unfortunately, hawks produce huge, messy droppings, and also drop chunks of dead pigeons and rats here and there beneath their nests, and many of the people living at 927 Fifth Avenue quickly tired of having an avian predator for a neighbor. Some of them had tried to remove the nest back in the mid-90s when it was new, but legal action and public pressure stopped them, plus the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made it clear that it was illegal to disturb a bird nest. But that was during the Clinton Administration. Now, little by little, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is getting cleaned out of people who actually care about fish and wildlife, and many of issues that used to be settled in favor of birds are now settled in favor of intolerant humans. So after more griping by people in the apartment, the agency issued a “clarification” saying that only active nests are protected, and so the building maintenance people removed the nest, and the spikes supporting it, last Tuesday, claiming that since it’s December and there are no eggs or chicks, the nest is inactive. US Fish and Wildlife spokesmen have pointed out that this clarification is important or people couldn’t clean off an old robin’s nest from their windowsill. But that argument is bogus, because robins seldom reuse nests, and put their babies at risk of parasite infestations when they do. Red-tail nests ARE reused, year after year, and nesting success improves as nests get older and more insulated against the elements. Like Bald Eagles, many hawks tinker throughout the year with their nests. Pale Male and his current mate, Lola, had been actively adding sticks and remodeling when the nest was torn down. Hawks don’t have the same kind of pair bond that most birds do, but the shared work that a pair does on the nest puts them in synchrony and helps foster the spirit of cooperation so necessary when they settle down to raising babies.

Hawk nests do occasionally fall down in the natural world—trees get old and die, and heavy winds and tornadoes, ice storms, and lightning take a toll. Pale Male and Lola, or whoever is his next mate, will find a new place to nest. This action didn’t hurt the birds—it represented more of an inconvenience than anything. Adult hawks don’t take shelter in their nests—they use them simply as a baby cradle. The huge public outcry, making it sound as if the birds were homeless, is in some ways overdone, especially compared to the lack of outrage about some current policies that are doing real damage to both individual birds and to whole populations and even species. But it’s ever so much easier to really love individuals than whole groups, whether we’re talking about people or wildlife. If we had charming stories about an individual Sage Grouse, plucky and cool, struggling to make his way in the world, maybe people would be demonstrating about the habitat changes that destroy his nests and food supply. And really, the New York Audubon Society probably should have found volunteers years ago that could have helped building maintenance to clean up after Pale Male and his family so people living in the building wouldn’t have had to deal with quite so much unappetizing reality out their door as they left their building with a cup of coffee and a bagel in the morning.

Little by little, this society, growing ever farther from our roots in the natural world, has to come to some sort of reconciliation with nature. Caring about individual birds, or humans, is risky—suddenly our hearts are in jeopardy, and our happiness becomes dependent on their well-being. But to safeguard the natural world, we need more, not fewer, ties to individual birds. Whether we make way for ducklings, run out to save baby birds on the nights of the Pufflings, or thrill at red-tails in love, we’re recognizing wildness in our midst and taking actions to protect it. And as Thoreau said, in wildness is the preservation of the world.