Urban Birds

I may vacillate between calling my neighborhood rural and suburban, but one thing is unquestionably certain: it is not urban. I'm technically in a township -- not even within "town" limits -- and, as I said earlier this week, I have no sidewalks.

But if I were in an urban setting, I might consider applying for a Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant to encourage bird watching in urban areas. DNLee at Urban Science Adventures talks about the Celebrate Urban Birds project on her blog, and I hope that the idea takes off.

When I lived in Baltimore, I saw plenty of surprising birds, among them a pileated woodpecker and some kind of owl, plus countless others that I never took the time to identify. I wish I had, however, and had recruited friends and neighbors to join me.

In my nature writing course, we've been talking a lot this week about finding the green spaces in a city, and by "green," we aren't necessarily talking "environmentally-friendly" places, which would include recycling centers and solar panels. Those are great (I'm a big fan), but almost more important are the spots that are literally green. Community gardens, flower boxes, and dandelions growing through the cracks in a sidewalk are all little reminders that the concrete and brick still mix with the naturally-occurring ... nature. And my classmates agree that these green moments have succeeded in restoring our selves (hearts, minds, souls) from the daily drudge.

This Celebrate Urban Birds mini-grant would encourage city-dwellers to look for the natural elements that aren't green, too, by looking up. (I've never seen a green pigeon, woodpecker, or owl!) By interacting with each other and encouraging the neighborhood kids, especially, to look for birds like some kind of treasure hunt, we city- (and former city-) dwellers could start to once again seek out the "green" within the city.

Even here in the 'burbs (or sticks) we often forget to treasure the creatures both great and small that are as much our neighbors as the family in the house next door. With or without a grant, inside or outside city limits, we can all make the effort to notice the natural, appreciate the avians, and pass on our passion so that others can have those green, restorative moments, too.