Dr. Christian Hunold, a political scientist at Drexel University, is a dedicated wildlife photographer and wrote a paper, Why not the City?, about the hawks of Center City Philadelphia, the humans who watch and love them, and what all that says about how we regard wild animals in urban settings. Tony and Billy go hawk watching with Christian Hunold around Logan Circle in the heart of Philadelphia. As soon as you’re done listening, head on over to the Field Guides podcast for their own urban hawk episode looking at Cooper’s hawks!

Mom, a hawk of Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

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It’s the worst thing humans do, but nature fills in the scars on city landscapes. We discuss how naturalists from London to Berlin studied the ruins, and we hear from the Urban Birder, David Lindo, about the black redstart, a bird that took advantage of England’s bombed spaces after WWII. Seth Degginger joins us to talk about the wildlife he saw while in training and on deployment with the Army Reserves. We conclude Nassrine Azimi and an introduction to Green Legacy Hiroshima, a program that shares seeds from trees that survived the nuclear bomb blast.

Black Redstart (by Devid Lindo).

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