Country mouse, city mouse

I live in a house in San Francisco that touches the walls of the houses on either side of me. A few blocks away is the hurly burly of the Mission District, with all its urban intensity. But every afternoon a pair of redtailed hawks flies over my backyard, letting out a couple of their characteristic screams. Some afternoons are so quiet that the bees on the echium cone flowers are the loudest sound I can hear back there.