April's Musings

December 08, 2006
"Urban jungle part three"

I think I wrote about our Urban jungle by the train tracks in Burlington, Vermont, where monarch butterflies cocoon and then launch their southward journey and wild purple asters grow and white throated sparrows hop and where it feels like brush even though the cities largest hotel looms behind.

Then there was the Nature Corridor in Central Park in New York City where I saw a massive red tailed hawk just above my nose and a flock of male and female mergansers; where weedy patches and spans of water invited passing birds to stop. Again the hop of the white throated sparrows near the path.




And this morning—early morning on the other side of the planet—where a misty haze delayed sunrise, I walked the DNL highway and in the grassland and waterway below I saw a solitary open billed stork, searching for breakfast, a band of Indian water hens tripping through water weeds, a massive rusty winged coucal, so large and magnificent but loving the low brush and bush close to the ground, I saw pariah kites courting in the air, aerial acrobatics and a pair of pied mynas on a small thorn tree, clinging by the their toes and playing tag with each other. And a whole band of dusty crag martins zooming under the bridge. A large white egret was bright in the mist and behind me, the moon went down and in front a large red sun rose up.

I love our world and I love cities that allow for urban jungle. There is such a temptation to clean everything up and pave it over. When I find nature in my urban mist I thank the civic leaders who have had the foresight to let it be.