Thursday was the day I started looking up at the treetops while walking, hoping to spot nesting Cooper’s Hawks.

We have them in the neighborhood, and we’ve had nests within a couple blocks of our house for the last two years. The right time to spot the nests is when they’re first being built, before the leaves grow in and obscure the view. By late spring, when the babes are born and starting to grow, it’s hard to see those nests through the foliage if you don’t already know where they are.

Thursday was warm and sunny, and I realized while out walking that this should be close to the time of the year when the nest-building begins. Perhaps a bit early, but better to start looking early than late. So upward went my eyes.

I haven’t yet spotted nesting hawks. But on Friday my search was rewarded with the discovery of a pair of nesting crows. I don’t think I’ve ever seen crows build a nest before, but there they were, two black tails wiggling together in a tree joint way up high, then one flying off southward and the other lifting off 10 seconds later headed east, both to return later to wiggle again side by side. Now that I know where to look, they’re easy to see.

As the March wind blows

I’m sitting on my front porch as I type, enjoying spring’s warmth and the bright, filtered sunlight of a partly cloudy day. The neighbor children are out, tossing baseballs and riding scooters, and winter seems truly banished even while the weather forecast threatens snow for tomorrow. The lilac has sprouted just the tiniest green buds, the forsythia seems from a distance to have done the same, and the tulips have shoved through the ground to soak up the light. Today is the day I’ll start seed pots indoors, filled with anticipation for the delicate seedlings to appear. Outdoors, I’ll leave the mulch of fall leaves untouched to protect everything that might be growing and sheltering beneath it.

I start my day grateful, for nature in all its glory and fury:

• Sunlight
• Warmth
• Newly sprouted buds
• Songbirds all around

The world around me is in chaos, and I’m worried about the state of my country and the future of our most vulnerable neighbors, our children and their children, not to even mention myself. That worry is ever-present these days, and I struggle to find a balance that lets me get through each day without ignoring what’s happening in the society around me. Looking to nature helps, but doesn’t make the worry go away. Nature and our actions are intertwined, and even as I carefully tend my own small place in the world I see the warning signs that show the damage we are doing on a much larger scale.