NO MATTER WHERE WE ARE, THERE ARE BIRDS AMONG US

I started watching online bird cams because I missed the city. In 2017, I had just moved to North Carolina from Manhattan when my friend sent me a link for hawks nesting on a building by Washington Square Park. I was amazed that such a majestic bird had probably f lown over my head while I walked to work with my head down and earbuds in. So much of my life in the city had been focused on blocking the rest of the world out.

I kept the cam open in a separate tab during the workday, and whenever I was feeling homesick, I’d watch the red-tailed hawks. The cam had a big enough following that there was an active chat where other watchers posted updates; I learned that the hawks were named Aurora and Bobby. The more I watched, the more I grew to recognize their subtle differences, like the darker pattern of Aurora’s feathers and her larger size. The nest was on a window ledge, and I could see the city down below, the people on the sidewalk, the ebb and f low of chaos and calm.

One day Bobby disappeared, and Aurora found a new mate. Then, when the world shut down in 2020, Aurora was gone, too. The eggs didn’t make it. There was no sound on the hawk cam, but I felt the aching absence of what used to be: people laughing and children shrieking, affirmation of all the life the city contained.

The cam was deactivated. I found others, but more than anything I wanted to feel connected to a physical place. I left North Carolina for Wisconsin and joined a community science program called Bald Eagle Nest Watch where I could observe nesting bald eagles once a week, in person. My eagles had made their nest at a farm outside of Madison. The farmers were careful not to disturb the nest when they tilled their field, and the eagles observed them from their tree. Whenever I parked my Subaru down the lane to watch the nest from a safe distance, I felt the eagles’ eyes on me.

Before I was a birder, I thought of birds as something separate from the cities I lived in; I thought our two worlds didn’t mesh. But now I notice eagle nests everywhere, in fields or on the edges of rivers, in public parks and sometimes right off the side of the highway.

That’s what I love most about birding: All you have to do is start paying attention. Whenever I see an amazing bird, I often see several other people nearby, completely unaware that they are in the presence of something magical. In cities across the country, snowy owls perch on traffic lights, yellow-rumped warblers flit around construction sites, and merlins call from the tops of telephone poles. At the airport in San Diego, endangered least terns nest between the runway and airplane taxiway each year. It’s a bit early for their nesting season, but I’ll still look for them next week when I f ly in for the San Diego Bird Festival.

And there are eagles who, each January, start the arduous work of sustaining life in this world. They sit on their eggs no matter the weather, and they persist in spite of all the things that could mean their end: avian flu, lead bullets, cars, humans with guns. There’s something about this that makes me sad and hopeful all at once. If birds can fight, then so can we.

Across the country, people are signing up for nest watch programs like my Bald Eagle Nest Watch, and they’re sharing links to bird cams, spreading the word that birds need our help. Here in San Diego County, you can help the San Diego Audubon Society restore bird habitat, and you can join the Ternwatchers program to help monitor California least tern nesting sites for predators, giving the birds a better shot at survival. No matter where we are, there are birds among us, and every day they are trying to find a way to live in this harsh world, just like us.

This is my fourth year watching my eagle nest. I haven’t named the eagles, but sometimes when I sit in my car on the edge of that field, binoculars in hand, I wonder if they’ve named me.