Today is a little chillier, but the last few days have made the birdies sing. Here is the song I heard them singing.
Oh, it’s spring. Yes, it’s spring.
Magnolias are budding.
Peacocks are showing.
Fruit trees are blooming.
Turtles are basking.
Willows are greening.
Yeah, it’s a beautiful day.
Can I have an amen?
Atop the head of Saint Andrew high on the Cathedral of St John the Divine.
I’m a charter member of NYC’s Hawk-a-Day Club. Anyone can join, and the entrance requirements are, well, not too tough. Basically, all you have to do is spend some time outside, preferably in or near a park, and look up. Because these days, the city’s raptors, particularly its burgeoning population of red-tailed hawks, are pretty easy to spot.
Over the course of the past six weeks or so, I’ve regularly – even, yes, daily – seen red-tails…
in Riverside Park.
Red-tail in Riverside Park at dusk.
On the back of the Cathedral of St John the Divine.
Nesting on the shoulders of St Andrew.
In Central Park.
Red-tail (Pale Male?) near Fifth Avenue.
On a high-rise near Morningside Park.
High above the city.
On another high rise on Broadway between 109th and 110th Streets – on the same spot where I recently watched a pair of hawks copulate.
On a tree near the statue of General Franz Sigel at 106th and Riverside.
Hawk above 106th and Riverside.
On a water tower, looking over 110th Street.
Beautiful.
Seen from the front, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine at 112th Street and Amsterdam Avenue is a lovely, forever unfinished hulk of stone.
A lovely, perpetually unfinished hulk.
But for now I’m more enamored of the Cathedral’s less commonly appreciated back.
St. John the Divine, as seen from Morningside Drive
Because on the shoulders of a long-suffering saint (well, aren’t they all?) high on the back of the Cathedral is one of the most picturesque hawk nests in the city.
Nest resting on the shoulders of a saint.
There a red-tailed hawk often perches atop the saint’s head and gazes east over Morningside Park and Harlem Valley, as it did a week ago when I showed the nest to Kelly Rypkema, biologist and host of Nature in a New York Minute. (Thanks, Kelly, for letting me use your camera that day!)
Red-tailed hawk on saint’s head. (Thanks to Kelly Rypkema for letting me use her camera!)
Esau and I visited the nest again last Thursday as a light March snow fell.
Hawk and saint in the snow.
A pair of hawks has been nesting and raising young here since 2006. Robert of Morningside Hawks gives a fine history of the nest. For two years, the female, known as Isolde, nested with a male known as, you guessed it, Tristan. When Tristan died in 2008, a male called Norman, for (possibly ecclesiastical) reasons beyond my ken, paired with Isolde. According to Morningside Hawk’s history, the pair has successfully fledged a total of nine babies since 2008.
Another view of hawk and saint.
Sadly, Norman is rumored to have died during Hurricane Sandy. But in the past month, I’ve watched two hawks at a time bring twigs to the nest. I never learned to identify Isolde or Norman as individuals, so I can’t tell you which hawks I’m seeing. I assume one is Isolde, and the other a new male. Whoever they are, I’m thrilled that nest-building is going on apace.
In fact, NYC’s upper Manhattan hawks have been incredibly active over the past month. I watched a pair copulate on a building at 109th Street and Broadway, and have been seeing at least one raptor almost every day, whether in Riverside Park, Central Park, or outside my window. Red-tails are by far the most frequently sighted.
Red-tail at 106th and Riverside Drive.
But I’ve been lucky enough to spot my first Merlin zooming north along Riverside Drive, and two peregrine falcons, one a mature male perched on a water tower, the other a juvenile perched on a school.
So look up, New Yorkers.
Raptors are all around us, perched on water towers and tree limbs, soaring overhead and swooping low, mating on high-rises and nesting on bridges. Keep your eyes open, and LOOK UP.
A Riverside red-tail.
Walking just got easier along Riverside Park’s upper promenade on Riverside Drive.
On Wednesday, it looked like this at 107th Street and Riverside Drive.
But yesterday, all that was left of the tree was sawdust and a pathetic bit of stump.
Gazing south to 105th Street, we spied the heroes of the scene toiling away on yet another downed tree.
The tree crew from East Greenwich Tree Service has been working in Manhattan since Sunday.
Yes, Sunday. The city hired them to cut down potentially hazardous trees before Sandy reached its peak.
This gentleman told me of working up in the bucket on Sunday in 50-mile an hour gusts.
He also showed me impressive photos on his iPhone of cars smashed by trees. He said he likes to take the photos before they clear the trees, and he remembers exactly where each car was located. The job now is to clear streets and sidewalks.
After that, they’ll move into the parks. And in fact, directly below the team inside Riverside Park, a large tree with a huge root ball was blocking the upper path. To get a sense of just how huge, look at the little pedestrian coming along the path on the left.
A man from the Parks Department conferred with the team.
I asked him how much damage Riverside Park had sustained. He said he didn’t know exactly, since his priority has been to clear the streets for emergency vehicles and to keep people safe.
The tree at 105th Street took part of the playground fencing with it.
I told him I had heard that Morningside Park had lost a lot of trees, which he confirmed. (Scroll down for information on volunteering tomorrow in Morningside Park or your local park.) We talked about the storms over the past couple of years that have caused our parks to lose a substantial number of trees in the parks, including last October’s freak snow storm that took down 1,000 trees in Central Park.
“You know how they talk about a once-in-a-hundred years storm, well, we’ve had four of them in the past few years,” said the man from Parks. “Well, they’re gonna have to think of a new way to describe these storms.”
And they – I mean, we – are going to have to face the facts about climate change, and come up with new ways of living and working to protect our city and our planet.
Meanwhile, thanks to the tree guys for their hard, necessary work.
Post Sandy Volunteer Cleanup in Morningside Park
- Saturday, Nov. 3rd from 10am – 12 pm
116th Street and Morningside Drive- Dress for outdoor work. Equipment will be provided.
- Email info@morningsidepark.org to let the Friends know how many people you will be bringing.
Once upon a time, cats were common fixtures in NYC stores, greeting customers in the doorway of the fishmonger or lounging in a patch of sunlight among resoled boots in the display window of the shoe repair store. The corner deli, the candy store, and the Chinese laundry – Manhattan’s equivalent to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker – each had a resident feline.
They weren’t pets, these cats. They were working animals, who paid for their room and board by working nights in rodent control, and days in customer development, allowing people like me to scratch their ears.
Several cats still work my stretch of Broadway. Most impressive is the fine, fat beast attached to Samad’s Gourmet between 111th and 112th Street. Friendly and self-assured, the cat loafs outside the store in fine weather, and has been seen trundling into neighboring shops, just to say hello. On a mild January day, it helped out in the sales department of the neighborhood vintage record seller.
Would you buy a used record from the cat?
But not all neighborhood cats are living the good life of Samad’s cat.
Ten days ago, I encountered this black cat on the retaining wall of Riverside Park.
Maybe the cat is on the lam from a nearby apartment. Or maybe it’s a member of Riverside Park’s small feral cat colony, which shares an indoor space with the occasional homeless person.
Riverside Park cat colony. Photo from April 2010.
Volunteers have trapped each animal, and taken it to a veterinarian where it is neutered or spayed before being returned to the park. By preventing the cats from breeding, the proponents of the Trap-Neuter-Return program hope the colony will eventually die out.
Feral cat in Riverside Park, 2010.
Meanwhile the volunteers quietly provide food and water,
Who else eats at this buffet?
and advocate for the protection of the cats.
A hodgepodge of baskets and boxes
I don’t know how many cats are cared for in Riverside Park, although I have never seen more than three.
But surely, as the presence of the black cat on the wall indicates, there will always be a new recruit, whether an unwanted pet dumped in the park, or a runaway in search of greener pastures, finding its way to the easily accessible food and shelter.
Across the country, there is a dawning awareness that domestic cats, both feral and pet, are fierce and effective predators that can have a devastating affect on birds and other wildlife. A recent study cited by the American Bird Conservancy estimates that cats may be responsible for over half a billion bird deaths each year. Approximately half of that astonishing number is attributed to feral cats and the other half – that’s 250,000 dead birds – to pet cats that are allowed outside. Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute told the New York Times in 2011, “Cats are way up there in terms of threats to birds — they are a formidable force in driving out native species.”
Don’t get me wrong. I love cats.
Pudding (1999-2012), an indoor city cat, ponders what to read next.
But if cats are truly an invasive species causing potentially serious harm to the ecosystem, then free-roaming cats raise surprisingly complex and far-reaching questions, among them how to ethically and humanely manage feral cat colonies and even our own pet cats.
Feral cats are found all over New York City in parks, parking lots and alleys between buildings.
A small colony lives in Morningside Park. With its population of ground-nesting birds, its rough terrain and bushy undergrowth, Morningside is well-suited to the little feline predators.
White cat soaks up some rays on a mild January day in Morningside Park.
On Randall’s Island, in the shadow of the Triborough – er, I mean, the RFK – Bridge, a marmalade kitten stretches,
while its sibling, or friend, keeps pale green watch on passing humans.
Two grown cats groom and watch the world go by from an East Harlem lot,
while a few blocks away, on a rare grassy patch, two kittens hone their predatory skills with a game of hunter-and-prey.
Readers, I welcome your thoughts on cats, both feral and pet.
On a recent walk through Morningside Park, Osage Oranges, also known as hedge apples and horse apples, littered the path below Morningside Avenue.
Osage Orange, aka Hedge Apple
Wondering whether the strange orbs provide a seed bonanza for squirrels and raccoons, I gazed up at the overhanging branches where plenty of the softball-sized fruits were still hanging on the branches. (For an Osage Orange fruit dissection, visit Birder’s Lounge.)
Osage Orange on the Tree
The Osage Orange is a curious tree. Native to eastern Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, its wood was used by the Osage Indians to craft superb hunting bows. French trappers who encountered the native population and their bows named the tree bois d’arc, literally meaning “wood of the bow.” In the Protean, shape-shifting tradition of living languages, the bois d’arc eventually transformed into the Bodark tree.
“Growing up on the prairies of Oklahoma, one of the first trees I learned was the hedge apple or bow dock, as we ungrammatically called it,” wrote Gerald Klingaman, retired University of Arkansas Extension Horticulturist in a brief and lovely article on the Osage Orange. According to Klingaman and other sources, settlers in the Great Plains planted the fast-growing Osage Orange in hedge rows to create a living fence, a thick, thorny barrier that kept livestock in and unwanted varmints out. Barbed wire, invented in the 1870s, would eventually replace the Osage hedge rows, but the trees are used even today as fence posts. A stand of them is said to make a fine wind break.
My trusty field guide to New York City Trees asserts that the “state champion” Osage Orange is growing in someone’s yard out on Staten Island. (That would be 342 Seguine Avenue, if you care to visit.) I don’t know what it means to be a state champion tree. What qualifies a tree as a champion? Is it size or conformation or age or health or connections in high places or … what?
Well, whatever it is, my obsessive research has to stop some time (sadly, I do have other things to attend to), and there are, after all, things in the world that I really don’t need to know. I’m pretty sure the meaning of being a tree champion falls into that category. So, enough. We will now draw a veil around the New York state champion Osage Orange tree, and move on with our lives.
Until next time.
On Halloween morning, Canada geese and pigeons grazed the ball fields like a mixed herd of small ruminants on the Great Plains.
Sparrows were almost hidden in the brown grass.
Snow from the freak weekend snowstorm lingered on the little island across the pond,
while turtles basked on the northern bank – the day after a storm storm!
An amorous mallard pair courted, perhaps mistaking Halloween for Valentine’s Day.
Although I haven’t spotted Morningside’s small pack of feral cats in quite some time, I did see one beautiful, well-dressed, and mostly tame kitten. (You can’t see her ears very well in this photo, but check out that beautiful, homemade tail.)
At the base of the 114th Street stairs, Esau posed with the park’s resident faun and bear.
I’ve always imagined the bear was stalking the faun, but Ephemeral New York, a blog I love, calls the statue “tender … sweet and magical.” I’ll be taking another look.
A pair of abandoned pants waited patiently for their owner.
Back on the street, a mid-sized devil helped himself to a friend’s take-out food.
Then the young devil headed into the corner store, affectionately known as Crack Deli (don’t ask).
Oh, I do love New York.
On Halloween morning, a flock of about fifteen mallards swam about on Morningside Park’s small pond.
Watching the birds, I realize that I’ve been a little confused about molting and plumage. I understand that differences in plumage may be attributed to the fact that some of our ducks are permanent residents, while others are migrants, just passing through. Still, I could have sworn that last month, the males on the pond were in full eclipse plumage, looking almost like females with most of their head color gone. Yet look at this handsome fellow with his head glowing green and shiny. Is he already growing back his breeding plumage? Or is he heading into eclipse?
To my surprise, this duck and his female companion proceeded to engage in some synchronized head-bobbing. This behavior, which ornithologists call “pumping,” is part of an elaborate duck courtship ritual, sometimes leading to copulation. In fact, on several occasions in spring, I’ve seen mallards copulate right here on the pond, and it’s a somewhat disturbing business. So I watched these two with interest. (Click the arrow to watch my video.)
A visit to Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s The Birds of North America clarifies all things mallard. Apparently, male mallards quickly move out of their drab, late-summer eclipse plumage. So this male is on his way back to his classic breeding appearance. And new pairs start to form as early as September with courtship behavior occurring throughout the winter. Since the ducks are infertile in the fall, they may copulate freely without the risk of eggs being laid in the cold season.
Interesting. Very interesting.
I’ve always found the idea of night herons mysterious, imagining I would have to go out in the gloaming or on a moonlit night to catch a glimpse of one of these intriguing creatures. Not so, at least as far as the Black-crowned night heron is concerned. Nycticorax nycticorax, to use the Black-crowned night heron’s marvelous Latin name, is found across much of North America. I saw members of the species this spring and summer in both Dallas, Texas and New York City. And, despite what the field guides say about the birds being active after dusk, these night herons were going about their business in broad daylight.
One bright day in May, I saw several of the stocky little herons, hunting from the island in the little pond of NYC’s Morningside Park.
Here is a gorgeous adult bird. Note the long white feather reaching down its back, part of its spring breeding plumage. Its legs are yellow, although they may turn pink at the height of the breeding season.
Nearby stood a juvenile in drab, streaky feathers and yellow legs.
A third bird seemed to be somewhere in between juvenile and adult with the colors of an adult but without the striking color-contrast.
Apparently, night herons don’t acquire their full adult plumage until the third year. So here in this highly urban park with its postage stamp-sized pond, we have a first year, second year and third year (or later) bird. Amazing.
A family of Canada geese, with the usual darling ducklings, also enjoyed the park.
At the end of June, I visited lovely Lakeside Park in Dallas. It was midday and over 100 degrees (the start of what would be a seemingly endless succession of 100-plus-degree days for Texas), which may explain the paucity of birds and animals. I had the park to myself. The only visible members of my own species were tooling about in closed automobiles with the ac cranked.
Many large nest boxes had appeared since I last wandered Lakeside’s almost alarmingly green paths.
Who are these boxes built for? Anyone know?
A fox squirrel, far more timid than his NYC Eastern gray cousins, dashed up a tree and gave me the evil eye
Panting Great-tailed grackles were the only birds on the lawn
Birds pant to cool themselves. It’s effective, but they need to replenish the water they lose. Luckily, Lakeside Park really is by the side of a tiny lake. There, huge lily pads created a solid green field that reached quite a ways out into the water.
I saw none of the usual egrets, ducks or cormorants. But at the base of the spillway, I spied an interesting shape.
Look to the left of the dry section below.
It was a Black-crowned night heron, patiently hunting from a relatively cool damp spot
Stunning birds.
So just how many of you guys are out here, anyway?
Back in 2010, I asked several wildlife experts how many raccoons were living in Central Park. Not one would venture an answer. But the Great Raccoon Rabies Epizootic of 2009-2010 has apparently yielded enough data for an estimate. Dr. Sally Slavinski of the NYC Department of Health places the population at close to 300 raccoons, according to a 2010 Powerpoint presentation that I unearthed on the web.
The estimate was based on analyzing the raccoons that were trapped and evaluated in the two-round Trap-Vaccinate-Release program managed by the USDA in 2010. Here’s a terrific video of the TVR Program in action in Central Park, narrated by Lee Humberg, Supervising Biologist with the USDA’s Wildlife Services.
The number of raccoons trapped was staggering. A total of 460 raccoons were trapped in Round One (February 16th – April 9th, 2010). Of those, a number were recaptured animals, meaning raccoons that had already been trapped, vaccinated, ear-tagged, and released – some more than once. Over 50 were sick or injured animals that were euthanized and then submitted for rabies testing. By October, 2010, more than 130 rabid raccoons had died of rabies. When the USDA conducted a second round of TVR in early fall, they didn’t find a single sick raccoon, indicating the immunization program was preventing further spread of the disease. The epidemic was over.
So how many raccoons were there, before the die-off? My personal, unofficial guesstimate is upwards of 400 in Central Park and Riverside Park combined. (How many raccoons make their home in the northern Manhattan parks of Inwood and Highbridge, I have no idea.) When I returned to NYC in 2008, after almost 20 years away, the raccoon population was overflowing the natural boundaries of the parks. They were regularly seen running along the top of the Riverside Park retaining wall, eating trash out of dumpsters near the basketball courts, and hanging out in sidewalk trees on West 108th Street, a full block and a half from Riverside Park. That means they were crossing busy Broadway. Why would they do this? Best guess: food.
John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times (click photo to go to article)
According to the New York Times in September 2008, raccoons were also turning up on 110th Street across from Central Park, to eat out of garbage cans and trash bags. The sightings prompted a range of responses from superintendents (“I don’t know what to do; they’re big, like dogs,”) and residents (“They’re lonely and they don’t talk back”). I speculate that the population had grown so large that some animals were venturing out of the protection of their park habitat in search of new food sources. In New York City, you don’t have to go far to find some easy pickings. Garbage is available 24 hours a day in the city that never sleeps, and is especially easy to come by on trash nights when plastic garbage bags line the sidewalks like miniature mountain ranges.
As a child living in New York in the 60s and 70, I don’t remember ever seeing a raccoon in the city or hearing anyone talk about seeing one. I’m not saying raccoons weren’t here. But if they were, their population must have been small enough to go unnoticed. (If you ever encountered a raccoon in Manhattan in the decades before the 2000s, please let me know by leaving a comment below.) As recently as 1995, Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern estimated the total Central Park raccoon population at a mere twenty. Twenty!
Why the tremendous increase? I have some ideas, but need to do more research. (As ever, your speculation is welcome.) Meanwhile, I’ve been delighted to see fewer raccoons on my walks in Riverside Park. With no natural predators, there’s little to keep a wildlife population in check, and too many animals means they’re bound to start showing up where they’re not welcome – and that’s when people start seeing them as pests. And as we have seen, when a population becomes too dense, disease easily sweeps through it. In the case of rabies, this places both wildlife and humans at risk.
Before the epidemic, I used to see five or six raccoons emerge from their den at dusk. For a long time now, I’ve seen only one or two. A week ago, one was chilling out at the usual spot.
Queen of all she surveys (or King, I don't really know)
And then a little further north, I spied a second, looking remarkably like a little man in a bear suit.
Ledge walker
This surprised me, because they usually hang out together. And then, wait a minute, what’s this? Two more raccoons.
Is there room for me?
Okay, let’s be sure the first raccoon is still in place at the regular den.
Yup, still there.
Still there. So, hmmm.
Hey, careful with the face.
So who are you guys and where did you come from?
I’m guessing these are young raccoons just venturing out on their own, or two juveniles with their mother. But who knows? Size is hard to estimate, particularly when they’re climbing around high on a wall. Well, I’m sure USDA will be launching follow-up vaccination campaigns. Here’s hoping the new recruits stay healthy.
On Sunday, when the hurricane had passed, after strolling the grounds of Saint John the Divine to check on the peacocks, I continued east to Morningside Park. A downed tree completely blocked the 110th Street staircase:
The rain had been too much for it, and it had just toppled over from its roots:
The water in the little pond was as high as I’ve seen it:
A flotilla of more than 40 ducks swam about:
One or two dozed:
A few preened and nibbled at mites:
Two turtles swam near the water’s edge, looking for hand-outs, ducking under when I tried to snap a photo. Animals in the park seemed hungry after waiting out the storm. One squirrel dove straight inside a garbage can, then perched on the rim.
Robins fluttered through the trees on the hill, while sparrows foraged near the ball fields
A small flock of pigeons pecked hungrily in the grass
and one dark pigeon huddled behind a bench, clearly ill or injured.
I wondered whether I should do something to help it. I had tried once before to get help for a sick pigeon, but was shunted from one agency to another. All the while, I was standing in the rain on a street corner and worrying about being late for the theater. As far as I can tell, the city doesn’t help pigeons, because, as feral animals (once domesticated and now wild), they are considered neither pets nor wildlife and as non-natives, they are not a protected species. I abandoned the bird that day, and did the same on Sunday. But I’m not entirely comfortable with my decision, and have decided I need to formulate a personal policy, both compassionate and rational, on when, and how, to intervene with injured or ill animals.
Yesterday, I happened to pass the future home of The Wild Bird Fund.
The Wild Bird Fund is a non-profit organization that helps to save birds and wildlife in New York City.
Surprisingly, NYC is the only major city in the United States that doesn’t yet have a wildlife rehabilitation center, although it has its share of extraordinarily dedicated and skilled rehabilitators.
I crossed Columbus Avenue to Animal General Hospital, where Wild Bird Fund is currently housed, and asked the receptionist if the Fund helped pigeons.
“Of course,” she replied. “Pigeons are their star client.”
So if you find a bird in need, call Wild Bird Fund at 646-306-2862. Until their own home is ready, the rehabilitators are working out of Animal General on the west side of Columbus Avenue at 87th Street. They see wild bird cases by appointment only on Monday – Friday from 1- 3 PM. Their clients include owls, swans, kingfishers, ducks, hawks and, of course, pigeons. They welcome donations.
Please comment to share your own experiences and thoughts on when, and how, to intervene with wild (or feral) animals. And check back soon for follow-up posts on the subject.
I spent a good chunk of April out of town, and am happy to be back on my island home, now in full leaf-out.
Biblical Garden at Saint John the Divine.
Oh, yes, it’s spring, at last.
A peacock blossoms in a garden of Saint John the Divine.
Flowers are popping, and animals, too, are busting the confines of their lives.
In April. a baby pigeon rested in front of a flowering tree.
We’re all border crossers, every one of us animals, our lifetime of crossings prefigured by our natal departure from a watery womb world or hard-shelled egg into the dangerous but seemingly limitless possibilities of earth and air. It’s never more evident than in springtime.
Baby birds are cracking out of eggs
Morningside Park gosling
Raccoons are emerging from dark holes and hollows
Riverside Park raccoon emerges from retaining wall den.
Turtles are leaving their watery homes to lounge on warm rocks
Morningside Park turtles relax in the sun.
and seals are coming ashore in New York City, including a small beach in northern Manhattan.
Gray seal on beach at Dyckman Street and the Hudson River. Photo by Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times.
(Read about my April encounter with a gray seal pup on Long Island here.)
In April, I worked in two midwestern cities, Indianapolis and St. Louis. Most of the time I spent in that strange, indoor world of theater rehearsals, a world that knows no seasons. But in each city, I managed one small adventure and found wildlife surprises.
One morning, I played hooky from the Bonderman Symposium at Indiana Repertory Theater to explore the city’s amazing collection of war memorials. (Visit my other blog, The Red Animal Project, to read an ongoing series about how we remember our war dead, including a look at the Indianapolis War Memorial Plaza.)
A robin gazed over the city from atop the head of a majestic lion at the War Memorial Museum and Shrine.
Indy robin and lion.
Trees clad in bridal gowns lingered along the paths of War Memorial Plaza
and a charmingly awkward American coot slowly revealed itself
Downtown coot
then strolled alone in an expanse of green.
No water here.
In St. Louis in the last days of April, I spied the first bird of the morning just steps from the hotel door.
Oh. So sad.
A gorgeous rose-breasted grosbeak.
Lovely, but dead.
The killer loomed above the tiny victim: a wall of glass.
Bird killer.
In the U.S. alone, collisions with man-made structures, particularly high-rise buildings, kill somewhere between 100 million and a billion birds a year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Solutions to the problem range from decals to dimming lights on high-rises, particularly during fall and spring migrations. If you ever notice a dead bird on the sidewalk, look up. If the bird lies beneath a building, please take the time to contact the building manager about the problem. If you live in a big city, you can volunteer with your local Audubon chapter to monitor collision deaths and advocate for changes in building codes and policies, such as Project Safe Flight.
Other top human-caused killers of birds are poisons and cats. Yes, cats. Pet cats take an enormous toll on wildlife. Accurate numbers are hard to come by, but it is clearly in the high hundreds of millions each year, if not well over a billion. Pet owners, please accept this inconvenient fact, and keep your cats indoors.
Indoor cat goes hunting.
Back in St. Louis, I headed toward the Mississippi River, and discovered the city is a hot bed of cardinals. The fact that the hotel is half a block from the baseball stadium might have something to do with the extraordinary number of sightings.
Welcome Cardinal Nation!
Cardinals perched
Two cardinals guard a baseball.
Cardinals dressed up in baseball caps
Cardinals swung bats
and cardinals kept score
The park by the river was a dazzling green, and filled with robins and brilliantly irridescent blackbirds.
Irridescence on parade
Sparrows on the steps to the river took a wildly active dust bath.
Rollin' in the dirt
And then, at last, there was the river
Bursting its banks, covering walkways and ramps, the Mississippi is spectacular, unpredictable and dangerous.
I loved working in other cities, and I love being home in New York, New York.
Trumpeter brings soundtrack to my block.
Morningside Park is in bloom, and its animals, many of them drawn by the little pond, are back in action.
On a sunny yet still cool April day, I spied fifty turtles basking on rocks (yes, that’s 50) as well as mallards, a goose, a cormorant, red-winged blackbirds, warblers, finches, rock doves and sparrows, a red-tailed hawk soaring east from the Cathedral, squirrels and a feral cat that delicately picked its way down the cliff to the water’s edge.
Let’s start with a unit of the turtle army:
Turtle army assembles
Five turtle species reside in Morningside Park: red-eared slider, common snapper, cooter, painted turtle, and mud (or musk) turtle. I didn’t come up with the number five on my own.
I heard it from Tom.
Tom
Tom is a herpetologist/zoologist with the Bronx Botanical Garden. He grew up playing in and around Morningside Park, worked in the park for a time, and knows it inside and out. He knows its flora, from trees to flowers to algae, and its fauna, from his beloved herps (reptiles and amphibians) to the songbirds, egrets, heron, falcons, hawks and kestrels that nest and hunt here to the bipedal primates that stroll, play, relax and cook in the park.
I met Tom last summer. He was gazing meditatively at a bullfrog that was lolling in the shallow northeast corner of the pond.
Summer day.
Tom still lives at the edge of Morningside park in a high-rise with a view over the treetops to Central Park. One evening from a window, he watched a pair of peregrine falcons chase a red-tailed hawk.
As for the turtles, Tom said they regularly nest in the area around the pond, but that the babies often don’t make it. Sometimes the ground becomes too “compacted,” and the hatchlings can’t dig their way out. A woman I met in the park on a separate occasion said she had actually seen a turtle laying eggs under a very exposed tree near Morningside Avenue.
Well, some of those babies must be surviving, given the extraordinary size of the pond’s turtle army.
Another platoon of the turtle army
Also on last week’s stroll, a cormorant spent time drying one of its wings
One wing drying
Cormorants are voracious eaters that can make short work of a fish population. Last summer, Tom was pointing out a school of tiny baby fish swimming near the shore, when a flash of gold leaped and plashed in the center of the pond. “Koi,”said Tom.” There’s a lot of fish in there: catfish, carp, crawfish.”
Watch out, fishies.
A red-winged blackbird waded in the shallows
What is this elegantly epauleted blackbird hunting?
A pigeon also waded,
and a solitary goose stood on a solitary leg.
Cantilevered goose
Until next time…
I love my NYC neighborhood. Where else in Manhattan do the strange cries of peacocks echo through city streets?
Regal? Yes. Bright? Um...
Three gorgeous, pin-headed, tiara-wearing peacock boys freely strut their stuff through the grounds of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. A recent stroll found the sole white peacock repeatedly displaying his astonishing tail to a green hedge.
The Great White Peacock of Morningside Heights spent a long time staring at, or into, the hedge.
Staring at the wall
I mean, a long time. As in minutes.
Getting a closer look.
But eventually, whether he found inspiration in the hedge or simply got bored, he began to display.
Opening...
Swirling ...
Revolving ...
Let’s do that again.
Opening ...
Raising ...
Spreading ...
Swirling ...
Raising ...
Profile ...
Lowering ...
Furling ...
And we’re back to contemplating the hedge …
Whats in there?
Check back soon for a look at the colored peacock in action…
To gain wisdom and a vision of the future, Odin drank from Mimir’s well, and plucked out his own right eye to pay Mimir’s price.
Odin's right eye still stares up from the bottom of Mimir's well. Illustration by Willy Pogany from The Children of Odin, Padraic Colum's beautiful retelling of Norse sagas
Here is my two-eyed prophecy for New York.
I have read the signs, natural and man-made, that tell the truth of the world, and the signs say:
Spring is coming. Prepare, prepare.
Spring! Spring! Spring!
Look at the signs, and interpret for yourself:
The Sign of Flowers:
First flowers in Riverside Park
The Sign of Spring Training:
Hitters on the Hudson.
The Sign of Multi-tasking Outdoor Muses
Playing the trumpet while reading the paper
The Sign of Al Fresco Dining
Starling gang fight over free pizza
The Sign of Strange Sports
Stylin' Frenchmen play bocce ball in Morningside Park.
The Sign of Mister Softee
The Sign of Bare Legs Despite Still-Bare Branches
Bare branches, bare legs
The Sign of Peacocks at Saint John the Divine
Blue guardian of the eastern wall
Skulker in the southern garden
And on every street: The Sign of Tiny Winged Macho Men Singing for World Domination
Small but fierce
These signs deciphered mean: spring.
O my prophetic soul!
Mark me:
Within a month, the secret garden of Saint John’s will explode into pinks and yellows.
All over the city, what grass there is will green.
In the parks, birds and squirrels will nest.
And the crack of baseball bats on balls will be heard throughout the city.
Rejoice.
Though the way be dark before us and cold rain fall,
yet spring approaches.
April 2010: Garden on the grounds of Saint John the Divine
