Madame Prospect Park

I see her when I don’t expect it. I believe in auguries, that birds are omens. I believe that there are animals, plants, and natural spaces that are meaningful to each of us. Red-tailed hawks are meaningful to me. I see hawks, and sometimes bluebirds, when I am most in need of a message from the world outside of me that what I am doing with my life is not entirely senseless.

I first saw the Prospect Park red-tailed hawk circling above Eastern Parkway by the Brooklyn Museum in those big, wide loops so typical of red-tailed hawks. If I had looked up a moment later, I would have missed her. I was walking in the middle of a run because my legs and my lungs hurt. I like those moments of runs the best sometimes. My runs after work were one of the only ways that I got outside in the winter months of Brooklyn. It was difficult to live in a city during the winter where I could not easily engage in the wintertime activities that I enjoy. I think that every New Yorker will agree that being stuck in your little apartment gets old after the second snow of the season. All the same, there she was above me as cars honked around the both of us, circling slowly overhead as if to tell me that the connection that I feel to the land has not ended simply because I live in a city.

I stood still off to the side of the sidewalk, marveling at the hawk. I am not sure what it is about red-tailed hawks that has drawn me to them for years. I think it began on our many drives from the mid-Hudson Valley to the central Adirondack Park along the New York State Thruway and the Northway. Red-tailed hawks dot the sides of the highway, sitting high up in trees and on power-lines with their smooth heads pointed downward to the fields below in search of small mammals. Their downy chests reminded me of the soft stomach of my cat, making these birds of prey seem familiar.

I continued my run home to my apartment thinking of the hawk. I marvelled at how lucky I felt to have noticed her circling high overhead. I could have easily kept my head down while I gingerly stepped around the ice on the sidewalk. I hoped that a red-tailed hawk was able to make a happy home in lower Brooklyn and that I would see her again someday. Though the odds of that seemed slim. In New York City, wildlife beyond pigeons, sparrows and rats feels nearly mythical. After I saw the hawk, I knew that I would be okay and that I would continue to be okay, even if the moment of time that I was occupying felt difficult and the walls of my mind were relentlessly closing in on me.

Weeks later, I was walking the Prospect Park loop thinking and still worrying about wintertime in New York City. I would have walked by her without noticing her at all, but nearly ran into a small group of people who had gathered underneath a light post. They stood in its small glow looking up. I paused to look up with them. There she was, the red-tailed hawk, perched confidently with her glossy breast feathers softly moving in the subtle winter breeze. The women next to me paused their conversation. One of them turned to me and asked, “Is that an owl?” I smiled and responded, “No, it’s a red-tailed hawk.” They were impressed with my (minimal) knowledge and we chatted about the kinds of larger birds we had all seen around Prospect Park on our respective walks. It made me feel good to talk with those two women about the wildlife that we had seen in our shared natural sanctuary. It felt even better to be in a small community of people gathered all together at the altar of this lamppost to marvel at a beautiful bird. As I walked away along the lamppost, I heard the excited voices of other groups of walkers noticing the hawk for themselves. I was not the only one who felt something special from that hawk.

I tried to hold back tears for the remainder of my walk. I needed to see her in that moment in time, and then there she was. It felt as if she was not going to let me forget myself - my true, inner self - no matter how small and tired my spirit was this winter. I wished that there had been a lull in the walkers so that I could have whispered a ‘thank you’ to her out loud.

Still weeks later, I was walking past Vanderbilt Avenue around Grand Army Plaza when a rapid movement in the small woods of GAP caught my eye. I glanced over just in time to see her, Madame Prospect Park, as she swooped down to the snowy ground, strong legs stuck straight in front of her as she honed in on her next meal. I stood dumbfounded on the sidewalk as the few other people around me walked by. Cars rushed around us, but if I squinted my eyes to see just her on her snowy perch, I could almost pretend that it was the two of us somewhere in the Northeastern woods.

A couple was unloading groceries from their car on the other side of the street from me, right in front of the hawk, but they did not notice her. I wanted to shout to them across the street to turn around to see the hawk, but the pandemic has made me shy. My eyes eagerly tracked the hawk as she returned to her tree branch to resume her watch of the park. Now, all alone on the sidewalk, I whispered, “Thank you. Thank you for seeing me.” I like to think that she heard me.