Every spring in California I would make a trip to Audubon Canyon Ranch, north of San Francisco in Marin County.  The Ranch, or rookery, was on Bolinas Lagoon, an inlet to the sea, and every spring, great blue herons and great egrets found their way here to mate and raise their young.

A small climb up a hill yielded a viewing area with benched risers and viewing scopes.  Shaded by oak and manzanilla trees, we could see the birds but they could not see us.  Usually, there were one or two students on the highest risers, taking notes, marking which nests were where, with how many young per nest, and how many fledged. 

I spent an hour or two there, content to fix my binoculars on birds nesting and raising their young.  Parent birds would fly in and out of the nests and feed their young small fish or regurgitated fish parts.  I marveled at the graceful moves of the large herons, and the feathery white elegance of the egrets, at the tenderness with which these big birds with extremely long beaks would lean into the small but widely stretched mouths of their babies to feed them.  One wrong move and they could have knocked a baby out of the nest. 

One spring, something unforeseen occurred when two young were vying for food from their parent.  Jabbing hungrily at their parent, two young blue herons were met with one rapid jut of the parent’s head, which broke the neck of one of the babies.  It died on the nest. 

Not everyone saw it happen, but I did.  With a cry of dismay I alerted the students who seemed baffled by the incident, but made note of it nonetheless.  They put their binoculars on the nest, confirmed the sighting and buried themselves in their papers, seemingly not as perturbed as I.  The man sitting next to me noted it as well, and for about five minutes or so, we shook our heads, pointed this out to others, and shared our shock with as many people as would listen and look.  I felt really sad about this death, and left early that day.

When I moved back to Chicago five and half years later, I didn’t think to look for rookeries here.  I assumed they didn’t exist.  I kept my binoculars on hand and occasionally used them.  My first apartment in the city had a back porch.  One fall, a small, dark orange raptor well adjusted to urban life surprised me.  I saw it flying between two buildings, over a concrete walkway, as urban a setting as could be.  It had prey in its mouth and was flying low between the narrow passageway between two tall walkups.  I recognized it as a sparrow hawk, or kestrel, as it was known in these parts.

I was also surprised one spring morning by the presence of a yellow-bellied sapsucker lying stunned on a sidewalk in the walkway alongside my building.  The night before a terrible storm had ravaged the city with hard rain and 40-50 m.p.h. gusts of wind.  I called the Ryerson Conservation Area and asked them what to do, and this is what they told me. Find a box with a lid, punch some holes in the lid for air, and keep it overnight, outside if you can. In this dark place, the bird might recover. 

I went back downstairs to collect the bird.  A neighbor who saw me sliding the sapsucker onto a piece of cardboard showed up later at my door with a worm she found, also upturned by the storm, forced out of its soaked earth home and onto the sidewalk.  At home, I found a box with a lid, punched holes in the top, and set it out on my unenclosed back porch, as close to outdoors as I could get.  I set the bird in the box, with a little saucer of water and the worm, secured the lid, and went to sleep that night knowing the bird was at least sheltered.

The following morning, a brilliant sunny spring day, I hurried out to the porch and opened the lid.  The bird was up, looking fine and ready to fly.  The water in the little saucer was gone, and so was the worm.  I rejoiced.

I lifted the box up, clambered down the back stairs, and placed my parcel on a patch of lawn.  I lifted the lid off the box, and the lively, revived bird hopped about, but did not fly out.  I puzzled over this for a moment, and then tilted the box on its side, so the bird would not have to fly over the side of the box but could just step out and onto the grass, and it did.

It took some seconds to get its bearing, hopping forwards and backwards and then side to side. Then, tilting its head back, it looked up, and saw the sky.  It gave a bold little cry, and with a great, energetic beat of its wings, lifted into the air and took off.

I felt uplifted too, to see this once inert bird transformed into joyous flyer.