Flower, falcon

Anybody know what kind of flower this is?


Saturday afternoon near five at the intersection of Fulton and Washington in Clinton Hill, several flurries of pigeons swirling overhead. A fancier on a two-story building on the corner was looking at them, then whistling. The birds were all over the place. Something seemed rather wrong. Then I noticed the falcon. We watched it cross back and forth through the birds, the powerful wings rowing through the cloudgray sky. Two kids crossed Fulton. “See the falcon? one of them asked. He must have seen me pointing out the bird to OHS. Most everyone else around us just continued on in their heedless course, oblivious to the great drama above. The kid turned out to keep pigeons himself -- in this day and age kids still do this? -- just a few, and said he’d lost six birds to raptors, but that the guy on the roof, who was a professional, had smarter birds.

Let’s let the monomaniacal J.A. Baker, take it from here: “The sky shredded up, was torn by whirling birds. The falcon rose and fell, like a black billhook in splinters of white wood.”