My friend Kate points out that my tendency to over-confess, that is, to confess to people every transgression, failure, and regret in my life, is the last vestige of my unorganized Catholic upbringing. , I said there was no need for that anymore.
She’s probably right. In other words, the following declaration will only get me into trouble. Because lately I’ve been wasting a lot of time that I could have been spending on paid work instead watching a live webcam of a mother peregrine falcon and her three chicks in Melbourne. She carefully watches over them until the moment they leave the nest.
The two-camera roost has attracted local and international attention over the years, after the owner of 367 Collins Street noticed that the west-facing gutter roof was being used as a nest by a variety of female peregrine falcons. I’ve been collecting them. Human contact was cut off, two cameras were installed, and they provided the Truman Show of the greatest kind: birth, life, death, conflict, survival, in real time, non-stop, 24 hours a day.
Melbourne’s Peregrine Falcons have been attracting local and international audiences for many years. (Facebook: 367 Collins Falcon Watcher/Helen Matcham)
Spend a lot of time looking at it. Oh, you should say it out loud…
I’m intrigued by the long daylight hours that these vulnerable little bundles of fluff spend, defenseless and defenseless, on the roof of this building with all kinds of predators and peregrine falcons competing above. They are so helpless and so alone. Do they band together and hunt while their mother is on vacation? Lunch with the girls? — One of them seems to be testing the strength of its soft feathers against the reality of gravity, occasionally sauntering up to the ledge.
Somehow they always know not to meet that fateful fall.
This scene looks familiar…
When their mother finally returns, they crowd around her, squawking as she pulls the pigeons out of the air, wondering who will get the most favor, who will be best fed, and who will be the best. Who will be at the bottom or the eternal battle between the brothers will begin. literal hierarchy.
As I write, she is plucking an unfortunate sparrow. I want to jump over the screen and push the rebellious chick behind me forward. There’s always something disturbingly nostalgic about this scene to me.
An important day for “bird nerds” who can observe the hatching of peregrine falcon chicks in real time
(Side note: The various female peregrine falcons that nest here have male companions who guard the nest even after mating, guarding her while she builds the nest, feeding her, and helping watch over the chicks.) This year she is a single mother and spends her nights quietly napping somewhere on Bourke Street, alert and alert. I hope so.)
You can see raw instinct as well as logic at work here. Some chicks fall, some die without being fed, and some are eaten by other predators. That’s just the way it is. The baby sits in a high position suitable for helicopter moms, but that rule doesn’t apply here.
All of this would make Keith Hayward, a criminologist at the University of Copenhagen, very happy. He just wrote a book called Infantilized: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood, which describes how most children under the age of 18 have to spend some time on the rooftops of city buildings, finding food and sustenance. I get the impression that they might want to see it. Ultimately, I hope to take flight with faith and fly in the sky.
In fact, I think he calls it all growth.
Are young people being overprotected?
Hayward’s argument is that young people are less mature than previous generations, and Western culture is to blame for this. He talks about kids in college crying being corrected, coming to school in one-pieces because they feel “more comfortable,” and claiming that “adulting” is too difficult. listed.
He says fewer young people are following the established paths to maturity – marriage, work, mortgages, children – because they are actively shielded from these expectations. Some of the peregrine falcon’s energy seems to be missing here.
(Courtesy of Hachette Australia)
Yes, you’ve heard it all. From avocado on toast to “Peter Pan syndrome,” boomers have long been passing it on to the next generation from their negative-minded comfort zone.
And we see this eye-opening discussion everywhere. The algorithm pushes out my own version of satirical content, with tearful calls to HR from Gen Z and Gen Y employees who don’t want to go to work (“You messed up my coffee order! “I don’t go to work!”). . It’s funny, silly, and unkind, and has enough grains of truth to work into comedy. And that probably explains Hayward’s argument as well.
I really wonder what Hayward and many others before him are trying to claim. Because not only are we leaving this generation with a worse ecological, economic, social and geopolitical storm than any other period in our remembered history, but also because young Australians Because I reserve the right to arrogantly ridicule and belittle you for just feeling a little insecure. The wind they reap.
A recent review of Hayward’s book in The Economist called his arguments slanderous, and I agree with them.
His worldview is not only heretical and common sense, but also the percentage difference between his generation and this generation: how much it takes to buy a house, pay for groceries, pay the bills. Deliberately ignoring the economic reality of the percentage of income required. And given the environmental and housing crises, who would race to have children?
Are we to blame?
This persistent argument also ignores the reality that, for better or worse, we have raised these children differently. That is, we have kept our children close, sought their companionship, and made friends with them much more than our parents did with us.
Are we to blame? Time will tell that decision.
Back at the nest, the baby peregrine falcon grows rapidly and begins to grow tail feathers, but it must adapt just as quickly. Infancy in animals has always been surprisingly rapid compared to us weak humans.
Who or what will force them out of the nest? And the eternal and universally applicable question: how do we teach flying?
This weekend we’ll be covering all your eccentricities, including road trips, Hitler’s bathtub, native rats, and more.
what to read this weekend
Have a safe and happy weekend! Join us in celebrating the exciting news that New Order will be returning next year to complete their scaled-down 2020 pandemic tour.
Some bands live forever after just one or two songs, a fleeting moment, and a grasp of the zeitgeist. New Order has a little more to offer than this, but one or two songs like this are enough.
Good luck.
Virginia Trioli is a presenter on Creative Types and former co-host of ABC News Breakfast and Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne.
