Editor’s Notebook: A pair of hawks, another year of The B Square, things are looking up

Last year, a pair of red-tailed hawks nested in the white pine at the northwest corner of the courthouse square, right beside the historic Monroe County courthouse. They hatched two fledglings.

This year, I have not noticed any nest-refurbishing activity there. When I checked with the Monroe County sheriff’s deputies who staff the courthouse, they said they had not seen much of the hawks, either.

In past years, the pair has nested on the western edge of Indiana University’s campus, in the big sycamore next to Bryan Hall, visible from Indiana Avenue.

So on Saturday evening, my wife and I took a walk from B Square headquarters on 6th Street, just off the courthouse square, over toward campus. It was mostly out of curiosity. The idea was to see if we might happen upon a hawk and maybe, if dumb luck would have it, allow us to follow the hawk to this year’s nest.

As it turned out, we saw a hawk perched on top of the Swain building clock tower. As we got closer, it flew off. But we were able to spot where it landed—next to its mate on the branch of a pine tree on the north side of Franklin Hall.

For a guy who earns his livelihood by looking close at the ground-level mechanics of local government—boards, commissions, contracts, tax rates, agendas, packet materials, and all the other minutiae that makes local civic life grind forward—it felt like a useful reminder, to look up every once in a while.

That has long been my standing advice to Indiana University students arriving in Bloomington: Look up. You don’t have to be that lucky to spot a fancy bird perched somewhere within easy eyeshot. Saturday’s sighting was one more piece of evidence that this is solid guidance.

It also feels like a decent occasion to touch base with readers, about a year after the relaunch of The B Square Bulletin.

A one-man local news operation is, in some ways, a bit like trying to keep track of hawks in a college town. You scan the horizon, make your best guess, follow movement where you see it, and hope your eyesight is still good enough to distinguish something flying through the air from a floater inside your own eyeball. Sometimes you find exactly what you were looking for. Other times you discover that the thing you were looking for was perched a little higher up than you expected.

But you’re never gonna see anything unless you get up off your butt, go somewhere, and look. If you’re not doing that, you’re not even living here.

The B Square lives here because of readers who live here.

The B Square lives here because of people who live here and read the words on the screen. It is here because people say hello when they run into me in real life. It is here because some of the people I bump into will ask me for a B Square sticker. It is here because some of them contribute financially to keep the publication afloat.

I am grateful for all of that.

This coming week is Indiana University’s spring break, which means the campus is ensconced in one of its periodic quiet periods. But hawks do not care about spring break. The nesting season does not pause for the academic calendar. Life keeps going. Nature keeps its own schedule.

That is part of what I like about Bloomington. The university shapes this town in big ways. But the rhythm of the university is not the only rhythm of the place, and it is not even the strongest one. Even as students leave town for a week, the red-tailed hawks are still busy being red-tailed hawks. The rest of Bloomington is still Bloomington. Government meetings are still on the calendar. Sidewalks still crack. Taxes still get levied.

Anyhow, thank you for reading. Thank you for caring. Thank you to everyone who has done anything to help keep this enterprise in flight. There is also now a fledgling corporate sponsorship program, which I hope can eventually be leveraged into something more substantial—maybe even a full newsroom, and not just one guy peering at public documents and occasionally wandering around town looking for hawks.

And on that point: It is still not clear exactly where the hawks are nesting this year. So I’ll make a modest request of the Indiana University community, and really of anyone who spends time around campus: Keep your eyes skyward. If you spot the hawks and can help pinpoint this year’s nest, send me a note.

The B Square has always had a soft spot for the hawks of downtown Bloomington. The Hawk v. Fish Sunday comic is proof enough of that. So it seems fitting that, a year into this revived version of the publication, the hawks should again provide the excuse for a short editor’s note, a brief look up from government documents, and a chance to say thanks.

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Video: Red-Tailed Hawk fly-off from north side of Franklin Hall