Stories · By the Water

The Kestrel on the Clock Tower

13 min · Field and river · Calm · Wonder

In the grey hour before sunrise, a patient naturalist walks a small city park and watches a kestrel hunting above the rooftops, discovering that the wild has never left the city: it has simply learned the city’s shape, as all living things learn to live where they find themselves.

Retold from The Life of the Fields, by Richard Jefferies.

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Story 10 of By the Water, starting at 2:01:48.