Published June 2, 2010

Lucky, Lucy and Larry in the nest (Ernie Sarro)

Humans have been gathering at a strip mall on Alewife Brook Parkway in Cambridge, staring up at a nest of red-tail hawks: Buzz and Ruby and their young ones, Lucky, Lucy and Larry (Bird). A community has formed there, rooting on the birds’ every move.

Cambridge’s own Robin Young decided to pay a visit this week, and she witnessed a moment everyone had been waiting for: Larry, the youngest hawk, fledged. But the crowd gasped as Larry slammed into a glass-walled office building and spiralled down into the street. An observer stopped traffic and shooed the stunned little bird off the road. The bird is reportedly all right now.

Robin met Ernie Sarro, a fitness instructor for the elderly who has become a community documentarian, capturing what he can on video and blogging all the avian drama. It has become a compulsion, he says.

“Life is unfolding in front of you. I don’t have to worry about this the way I have to worry about the oil leak in the Gulf, which is depressing to me. It’s a sickening thing, and I think of all life that’s being hurt as a result of that. These are issues that are hard for me to face, hard for me to take, and I don’t see the way out of it.

“And then I look at something right here, right in front of us. … It’s nature in a very unnatural place. Nature has a life force. It’s why grass breaks through the ground! I get to document that, I get to see that happen in front of me.”

Robin’s story aired Tuesday on Here & Now.

• Ernie Sarro’s blog