Canberra is still an abnormal city, but for how much longer?

(From Canberra Times)

O NE OF the things we like to do when a biologist visits from the United States, or from Mexico, or Europe, is take them to an eagle's nest inside the city limits. We struggle up a hill somewhere, through forest, and find a spot to sit on the forest floor and peer through binoculars into an eagle nest containing one or two snowy young. We are usually a little childish in our pride - ''Show me another city where you can do this''. No biologist can. They are amazed because the close relatives of the Australian Wedge-tail or Little Eagles, like the Golden or Booted Eagles in the Northern Hemisphere, don't nest in cities.

With 11 species of raptors nesting inside our city limits, Canberra is unique, it is special, one of a kind - it is abnormal.

There is a strong sentiment amongst many Canberrans to make the city more normal, like American cities I know, like Los Angeles, or Spokane, or Seattle. If you lived in LA in the late 1960s, as I did, you would agree that some of the new suburbs to the south of Canberra look amazingly like new suburbs did south of Los Angeles towards San Jose. We are catching up. We are an abnormal town now, but each year we are becoming more normal. None of the 11 species of raptors nesting inside our city limits are vulnerable species, but they are living with us all the same, and it says something that wilderness birds of prey can live, sleep, hunt, breed, and survive long life-spans among us. (We know this from colour-banding).

For a number of reasons, only one of the nine or so pairs of Little Eagle that used to nest inside the city limits in the 1980s still nests here. And ...