This is Bird Note.

A hawk is hunting in the kingdom of cars and 18 wheelers.

This is the American dream of freedom on wheels.

An automotive age, traveling on time-saving super highways.

In 1956, the Eisenhower administration announced plans for the nation's new interstate

highway system. Forty-one thousand miles of superior highways with limited on-off access,

multiple lanes for high-speed travel, and often a grassy border on either side and down the middle.

These grassy byproducts of highway construction created ribbons of wildlife habitat,

soon occupied by small mammals such as voles, favorite prey of the red-tailed hawk and other raptors

that are now common along many stretches of

interstate, as are deer, coyotes, and other animals.

At a conservative guess, if the average grassy verge is a modest 50 feet wide on each side of the

freeway, that's 12 acres of grass per mile of highway.

Multiplying by the current 47,000 miles of interstate, that's about 881 square miles of green.

And that's only the interstates. There are hundreds of thousands of other highway miles that

crisscross the country

and often offer equally prosperous hunting grounds for a multitude of birds.

Accidental gifts from the age of the automobile.

For Bird Note, I'm Michael Stein.