FLYING THE CO-OP:

City Hawks Evicted From Fifth Avenue Nest Trying To Return (WNBC, December 8, 2004)

They can't go home again, but two world-famous hawks booted from their Fifth Avenue nest were trying on Wednesday to do just that. [...]

The urban drama started Tuesday, in the rain, when workmen raised a scaffold to the top of the building and tore out the nest that lay over an arched cornice, anchored by spikes originally intended to keep pigeons from depositing their droppings there. The workers removed the spikes too.

For the past nine years, thousands of birdlovers have flocked to the nest on the 12th floor ledge that's been home to Pale Male, so named for his whitish plumage. There, he fathered 25 chicks with a succession of mates -- the last three fledglings in June.

The Fifth Avenue hawks gained fame through television specials and a book, "Red-Tails in Love."

The raptors are no strangers to city life, but they normally nest in trees, and there is no previous record of a pair taking up permanent residence on a high-rise building.

The birds are not merely a spectacle of nature, said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of the Riverkeeper environmental organization. They are natural predators, helping limit the rat population in Central Park.

Bird-watchers and neighbors reacted with anger and dismay at the nest's destruction, apparently on orders of the building's co-op board.

"What strikes me is the selfishness of a small group of residents who are scarcely affected, but have robbed thousands of people, including children, of the pleasure of these magnificent birds, right by Central Park," said Matthiessen. "These animals are a wonderful show of how nature can exist in the city. This was a violent, disruptive act."

But there was not much either parks authorities or environmentalists could do: Unless there are hatching eggs or small chicks in a nest, it is not illegal to remove it from private property.

Dump some toxins on the roof and the owners won't be able to do any work on the building.

MORE:
PLUCK YOU (Nick Paumgarten, 2004-12-27, The New Yorker)

A couple of weeks ago—on a real Christmas-miracle kind of day, cold and heartless in every other respect—the city’s two most famous homeless guys both caught a break. First, of course, there was Pale Male, the celebrity hawk and victim of the hour, who had been rendered nestless six days earlier, when the co-op board of 927 Fifth Avenue semi-surreptitiously dismantled the rampart of sticks that he and various mates had called home since 1993. Hounded and shamed by the usual coalition of bird-lovers and co-op haters, besieged by hawk chic, the building agreed to take Pale Male back. Crisis, if not revolution, averted.

Pale Male News (Robert Winkler, January 1, 2005)

The Jan. 3 issue of The New Yorker has a rant against Pale Male (disguised as an interview) by one Nick Paumgarten. His "Talk of the Town" column, titled "Pluck You," begins on a paranoid note, describing how the "usual coalition of bird-lovers and co-op haters" came to the defense of Pale Male when the hawk's Fifth Ave. nest was destroyed. Yes, folks, it's an environmentalist plot to bring down New York society. Whom does the writer seek out for an opinion on the matter? Al Goldstein, the now-homeless founder of Screw magazine, who thinks that Pale Male should be baked in a pie and that birders should do something useful with their lives, like help the homeless (or, I suppose, become pornographers like ol' Al). As humor, which I think is what this bizarre exercise was meant to be, the piece falls flat because the writer clearly sympathizes with Goldstein's views.

It seems to aggravate The New Yorker that people could have an interest in birds. The magazine's editors, those great arbiters of taste, apparently haven't a clue about such things—I mean, when was the last time you saw nature writing in The New Yorker? It must aggravate them even more that mere birders and concerned citizens could force New York City's rich and powerful to right a grievous wrong. The co-op board of 927 Fifth Ave., who ordered the nest removed, recently replaced it with a structure designed to support a new nest. Instead of celebrating this decisive and amazingly quick victory, The New Yorker belittles it. "Besieged by hawk chic," Paumgarten glibly writes, "the building agreed to take Pale Male back. Crisis, if not revolution, averted." Hawk chic? Try nationwide outrage.

Goldstein is sick of hearing about Pale Male. Paumgarten seems to feel the same way, calling Pale Male "the celebrity hawk and victim of the hour." Here's what I'm sick of: First, word-play headlines like "Pluck You," which I've had to endure for weeks as so-called journalists have felt compelled to dumb-down and sell the news rather than just report it. Second, misguided columnists who call Pale Male homeless, and then take bird lovers to task for not fighting with equal fervor to help homeless people.

There's a bit of a problem in comparing a hawk without a nest to humans without a home: it's a false analogy. Pale Male is not homeless—never was, never will be. He's a wild animal. He lives outdoors. He captures live squirrels, rats, mice, and pigeons with his bare talons; kills them; and eats them raw (and in the case of mice, probably whole). He needs no shelter as we know it; his "bedroom" might be a treetop or a building ledge. He wears no clothes yet can probably withstand a temperature of -50 degrees F. The destruction of his nest was a criminal act, but a bird's nest, while crucial to reproduction, shouldn't be called a home. Birds build nests for egg laying and chick rearing. For much of the year, most nests are unoccupied, even those of hawks like Pale Male, who may use the same nest annually.

So please, journalists of the world, do your readers a favor and get off the "homeless hawk" kick. It's just plain silly. Please also remember that we who love birds and believe strongly in their protection don't have to justify our passion by providing those who can't understand it with a list of the charitable causes we support.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 14, 2004 6:53 PM