Two young raccoons gaze out at Riverside Park as the sun sets over the Hudson.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a video of urban raccoon babies venturing out from their den in the retaining wall of Riverside Park. Amusing and cute, like babies everywhere.
But life in the urban raccoon world is complex and so is the intersection between urban humans and the wildlife that lives among them.
Three masked animals regard each other.
Since we’re in the middle of a pandemic caused by a wildlife disease, let’s start with raccoon health.
Check out the raccoon on the left in the photo below: No tail. Not even a stub! This could be due to a genetic abnormality or the result of a scuffle with one of its many siblings or perhaps with an adult raccoon.
No tail.
More worrisome is that many of these young raccoons are suffering extensive hair loss.
No pants.
They look, well, mangy.
Mange is, in fact, my guess as to what’s ailing them. Sarcoptic mange is caused by parasitic mites that lay eggs beneath the surface of the skin where the larvae hatch. Some burrow to the surface, while others burrow deeper into the skin, causing intense itchiness. The mites are highly contagious, so it’s hardly surprising that most, if not all, of these raccoons are showing signs of the disease.
Bare-chested.
Mange is not lethal in itself. But infected animals tend to scratch excessively in an attempt to relieve the itch.
This well-furred if itchy raccoon was photographed in 2011. It is not one of the current crop.
All the scratching can inflame and break the skin, causing secondary infections which in turn can lead to death. I reported the situation to the Urban Park Rangers who confirmed that it sounded like mange and said the rangers would check on the raccoons to assess the situation.
About ten years ago, Riverside Park’s squirrel population suffered from mange. The following year, I talked about the disease with a man I met in the park. He fed the squirrels when he could afford to and called them his friends.
“I was afraid they was all going to die off,” he said. “Lot of them did die. But they came back. Yes, they came back.”
A friend to Riverside Park’s squirrels.
I’ve been watching raccoons in Riverside Park since 2009 and this is the first year I’ve noticed mange. Which is not to say the raccoon population has been healthy all this time.
In 2018, an outbreak of canine distemper killed hundreds of raccoons in NYC’s parks. And in 2010, a rabies epidemic swept through Manhattan’s raccoon population. You can read my coverage of the epidemic here, including the painstaking, humane and remarkably effective response by USDA, the Parks Department and the NYC Department of Health that involved trapping, examining and vaccinating the entire non-rabid raccoon population. Non-lethal traps were baited with … well, who knew raccoons like marshmallows?
But then, what don’t they like?
Garbage raider along Morningside Park.
Which brings me to the ongoing problem of New Yorkers feeding the wildlife, which seems to me worse than ever during the pandemic. I understand. We’ve all been shut up and confined. Many of us are craving connection with nature and more people are out walking in the parks at all hours of the day. People often feed animals out of a genuine, but misplaced desire to be generous and to help. But please, for your own sake and for the sake of the animals: don’t do it!
As of mid-May, large amounts of food were being left out nightly on the retaining wall, directly above the den. And as you can see, it did not go to waste. (Of course, whatever raccoons don’t eat simply helps to sustain our bloated rat population. But that’s another story.)
Nuts, sandwiches and take-out dinners have all been left for the raccoons.
Instead of learning to forage effectively on their own in the park, these curious babies are learning that food comes from humans. They’re already coming to expect it.
Is the buffet laid out up there yet?
This is not healthy for either species. We need our wildlife to stay wild. Our parks offer plenty of natural food, even discounting the raided garbage cans.
I haven’t been able to check on the raccoons since mid-May, but will post more about them as soon as I can.
Meanwhile, stay healthy and keep our wildlife healthy.
Over the past two weeks, I have twice strolled across Central Park to the Conservatory Gardens to see the blossoms.
I’d like to go again today, but with temperatures going up to the 70s, there will be too many people to easily maintain social distance.
So today, I’ll walk vicariously by sharing these photos with you.
Let’s enter the Gardens through the grand gated entrance at Fifth Avenue and 105th Street.
There are spirals on either side of the iron gates.
A wisteria-drenched pergola at the western end is not yet in bloom but already lovely.
Inside the gates, there are three gardens, Italian, English and French in style. Here’s a taste of what lies inside…
Click on any photo below to see it larger and to click through the gallery.
Romance blooms between the dancers.
Glorious.
Blossoms like fallen snow
Still tulips.
Fallen blossoms.
Bright, sweet.
Bandit in the Garden.
A closer look.
A mesmerizing allée.
I left the gardens and ambled down Fifth Avenue.
Not Art. Good to know.
Let’s look a little closer at what is Not Art.
Hello, I am not art either.
I took a look at the field hospital set up in Central Park’s East Meadow by an evangelical not-for-profit called Samaritan’s Purse. Partnering with Mount Sinai Hospital across Fifth Avenue, the field hospital has treated over 300 COVID-19 patients, but will be closing down its NYC operations and leaving under a cloud of controversy.
The organization’s leader Franklin Graham, son of preacher Billy Graham and a staunch ally of President Trump, has repeatedly made homophobic and anti-Muslim statements. And although the organization maintains it does not discriminate, medical personnel are required to sign a “declaration of faith” that opposes same-sex marriage. According to Gothamist, ‘Graham has previously said that homosexuals will burn in the “flames of hell,” described Islam as “wicked and evil,” and railed against the “transgender lie.”‘
Oy vey. Can I just receive my charity straight up, no chaser, please?
Back inside the park (whew), I saw a multitude of robins on the hunt for earthworms. Some worked the ground like tiny pneumatic drills in feathers. Like this fellow.
Before I say farewell, I want to thank my friend Jane for sending me a beautiful handmade owl mask. Jane runs Bridgetown Bow Ties where she makes, you guessed it, bow ties.
At the northeast corner of Central Park is the Meer, a small lake stocked with fish and home to birds.
At the edge of a small island, I saw bright movement: a great white egret.
A mighty hunter seeking prey.
It flew across the small expanse of water and landed on the pathway.
How still it holds itself and how extraordinarily flexible is its neck. We humans have seven cervical vertebrae while an egret has, count them. eighteen.
Solitary human and solitary egret.
After a few minutes, the big bird opened its wings and swooped low along the shoreline to try its luck a little further on.
Hunting, waiting, flying ..
Beautiful.
For more on bird necks, including photos of bird contortionists and a brief anatomy lesson, see Bird Neck Appreciation Day.
Long-time readers of this blog may remember my obsession with a raccoon den on the huge retaining wall in NYC’s Riverside Park. Well, ten years on, the joint’s still jumpin’ at the Raccoon Lodge.
All year, a raccoon or two will quietly emerge as the sun gets low to loll about on the ledge, grooming and stretching. Eventually they’ll move out along the wall to begin their night of foraging.
But it’s spring, people. And springtime is a whole other thing, because … BABIES! This year seems to have yielded a bumper crop with little guys pouring out of the den like clowns from a clown car. I counted seven the other night, bumbling up and down the wall and bumping into each other like furry Keystone Kops.
It’s cold here in the Northeast. Today the dog and I went down to the river.
Looking south along the Hudson River Greenway.
We were surprised to see the river flowing freely with just a few large ice chunks floating by the shore.
Looking north toward the George Washington Bridge.
You can see ice over by the Jersey shore, but virtually none on our side. Yesterday, the river had an ice crust stretching out to the middle of the mighty waters.
(The images below are drawn from the past three weeks of wintry walks and window watching.)
Nothing stops the dogs or their walkers, not even the deep freeze machine.
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Dogs gotta walk, and birds gotta eat.
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They also have to stay warm. Look at these mourning doves, puffed up like little Michelin men.
And this flock of starlings trying to catch some eastern roof rays on a morning when the temperature hovered in the teens.
The feral cats in Morningside Park are fed hearty meals year-round by well-meaning humans. Feeding cats also feeds rats, which contributes to a burgeoning rat population, which leads humans to set out poison for the rats that eat the cat food which leads to the death of the hawks that eat the rats that eat the trash that humans set out to feed the cats that live in the park. (Read that five times fast.)
It’s a regular “This is the house that Jack built” scenario, except that the cats (indirectly) feed the rats instead of just eating them, as in the old nursery rhyme.
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Here are a couple of our apex predators, viewed from my window, that do their best to keep our rat and pigeon population under control.
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I haven’t seen a Riverside Park raccoon for some time. They must be laying low inside their snowy den.
There may even be babies snuggled up in there, or, if it’s still too early in the season, a pregnant female, waiting for spring. Come spring, I’ll hope to see the whole family out and about on the retaining wall and in the park.
I know how bad the storm is for people to our east, west and north. But if there was a blizzard here in Manhattan, I missed it.
Oh, it snowed, all right. Here’s what the city looked like yesterday, back when we still believed in unicorns, elves, and being buried beneath the “storm of the century.”
Disappearing city.
By 6 PM, all city parks were officially closed. The subways started shutting down at 7 PM. At 11 PM, all mass transit and all roads were closed.
– Wait, did you say the parks closed at six?
– Uh-huh, that’s right.
– But at six, there was, like, hardly any snow, and no wind, and great visibility, and …
– Don’t worry about it.
Because this is New York, baby, and this is what a closed park looks like.
Night sledding in Riverside Park! Woot woot!
You can’t tame the night sledders. Not in New York.
Wheeeeeee
Only the wildlife took the closing seriously. The raccoons were nestled all snug in their snow-frosted den.
Raccoons who live in the wall were wearing fur slippers, drinking cocoa and watching the weather on NY1.
All night and this morning, the city was eerily, wonderfully quiet. And the streets remarkably clear, thanks to the snowplows that had free rein of the streets all night.
Broadway this morning, light snow coming down.
The ever-present city hum was almost imperceptible, and even now, late in the afternoon, it’s unusually quiet. Although not in the parks.
The parks, with their five or six inches of fresh snow (a bit short of the predicted two feet), are bustling.
Sledding in Riverside Park – looks like a Currier & Ives.
Everywhere are walkers, sledders, little kids in snowsuits, dogs in boots, and parents hauling children in sleds.
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Last but definitely not least, here is an adorable little man in brand new boots, enjoying his first big snow.
Photo by Christopher Sadowski. Visit The New York Post for more of Mr. Sadowski’s photos.
Last night in Manhattan’s Riverside Park, a coyote was captured by the police. As far as I can tell, this is the first coyote sighting in Manhattan since March 2010 when a beautiful young coyote spent about a month in the city. She quickly found her way to Central Park’s Hallett Nature Sanctuary and made her base in that protected acre in the shadow of the Plaza Hotel before being captured down in Tribeca. In 2012, coyote tracks were found in Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights in northern Manhattan, but I can find no report of a sighting.
Coyotes have been resident in the Bronx for some time now. More recently, they seem to have taken up residence in Queens, and in 2012, a coyote was spotted in Staten Island. Manhattan’s coyotes probably come down from the Bronx over one of the bridges at the northern tip of the island or, possibly, by swimming.
Wildlife biologists at the Gotham Coyote Project are currently studying our coyote population, using camera traps to answer the question: “Where in NYC and its surrounding suburbs can you find coyotes?” The Munshi-South Lab is also involved with monitoring the establishment and dispersal of coyotes in NYC. A camera trap captured this gorgeous image.
Last night’s coyote, a female, resisted arrest, as one hopes any healthy wild animal would do, and led the police on a chase through Riverside Park before being tranquilized and captured in a basketball court. According to the Twitter account of the 24th Precinct, the police had the coyote “corralled inside fenced-in BB court, but so cold out, the tranquilizer in the darts kept freezing!” They had to wait for a second Emergency Services Truck to arrive with “warm darts” as they “wanted to stun it as humanely as possble.”
Police report the animal was unharmed and was taken to Animal Care and Control where it will be examined before being released somewhere outside the city.
Who’s that walkin’ around here?
Sounds like baby patter.
Baby elephant patter, that’s what I calls it.
– Fats Waller, Your Feet’s Too Big
Ah, it’s a White-throated Sparrow, digging through the leaves for tasty morsels hidden below.
Beautifully camouflaged in the ground litter, the sparrow nonetheless called attention to itself by kicking up an absolute ruckus. If you’ve never seen a little bird dig, it’s quite an impressive flurry of activity with wings, feet and beak all in motion at once.
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White-throated Sparrows have two color morphs, the striking white-striped bird above, and a subtler tan-striped variation.
Here’s what Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s “All About Birds” website has to say about the color morphs:
The two forms are genetically determined, and they persist because individuals almost always mate with a bird of the opposite morph. Males of both color types prefer females with white stripes, but both kinds of females prefer tan-striped males. White-striped birds are more aggressive than tan-striped ones, and white-striped females may be able to outcompete their tan-striped sisters for tan-striped males.
Okay, got that?
Here, take a quick look at The Sordid Lives of the White-Throated Sparrow, Kelly Rypkema’s one-minute video:
After mating with whichever-striped chosen consort, White-throated Sparrows build their nests on or near the ground, which makes the eggs and nestlings easy prey for that most adorable of vicious predators, the Eastern chipmunk.
Eastern chipmunk in Central Park.
Yes, these cute little rodents don’t confine themselves to nuts and seeds. In fact, they are notorious nest-raiders of ground-nesting birds, helping themselves to a quick blast of protein in the form of eggs and babies. Interestingly, a 2011 study indicates that some species of ground-nesting birds, notably oven-birds and veeries, pay attention to chipmunk calls and avoid nesting in chipmunk-rich areas.
I don’t know if the White-throated Sparrow eavesdrops on chipmunks. But watching them dig up the leaves, I’d think they could put up quite a defense with those wings and feet. And speaking of feet (hey, sometimes a good segue is elusive, okay?), here is Fats Waller singing “Your Feet’s Too Big.”
A rustle in the leaves reveals a fat-cheeked, lovely chipmunk on a hillside near Central Park’s North Woods. Check out the large nut stowed on the side.
The Eastern chipmunk lives in many of the city’s larger forested parks, but until recently, Central Park was a chipmunk-free zone.
According to the Central Park Conservancy, the return of chipmunks can be traced to a decision in 2009 to remove trash cans from the Park’s woodland areas. The trash had served as a prime food source for the Park’s many rats. When the trash cans were removed, the trash diminished, and the rats left the Park in search of easier pickings. (Sadly, NYC’s system of leaving mountains of trash bags out on the sidewalk overnight means that pretty much any city street on trash night provides a self-service rat buffet.) Apparently, the rat exodus has created favorable conditions for chipmunks to move in and thrive. Whether the rats out-competed the chipmunks for food, preyed on them, or just generated general forest anxiety among smaller creatures, I don’t know. Anyone?
On Sunday, I was thrilled with my first sighting of a Central Park chipmunk. Now that the little rodents have awakened from hibernation with the warming spring temperatures, I hope to see them more often.
Eastern chipmunk gives me the hairy eyeball.
This little fellow ducked repeatedly in and out of its hiding place beneath the rock. Eventually, though, it rushed off, giving me a good look at its gorgeous back stripes and ruddy rear end before it disappeared into the leaves.
Eastern chipmunk, Central Park, NYC. Photo: Melissa Cooper
Two nights ago, around nine o’clock, I leaned over the retaining wall at Riverside Park to look for raccoons, and found a raccoon looking right back at me. It was perched, as it were, on the broad stone ledge outside its den. We stared at each other, each apparently curious what the other might do. Neither one of us did much of anything.
Just looking.
This raccoon and its family members have an ideal den spot with a broad ledge outside that makes it easy for them to loll and relax at the mouth of the hole.
I’m looking at you.
When a man and two off-leash dogs came into view on the path below, the raccoon turned its attention away from me to watch the newcomers.
The man was talking on his cell phone and kicking a ball for his rambunctious long-legged black mutt to chase, while a slow, imperturbable pug brought up the rear. Neither man nor dogs noticed the raccoon high above their heads, watching their every move. Nor did they notice this human, even higher above their heads, also watching every move.
As it watched, the raccoon curled partway into its hole.
We left it there, the dog and I, and continued our walk along the Riverside Drive promenade. On our way back, I again leaned over the wall.
But the raccoon was gone.
It had probably ducked back into its den. In my admittedly limited and unscientific observations, the Riverside raccoons are slow to actually leave the den for their evening forays into the park. They tend to hang out on the ledge for quite some time, singly or in twos, threes or even fours. They look around and sniff the air, occasionally ducking back into the den as if suddenly remembering they’d left the stove on. Sometimes, when the weather is pleasant, a raccoon will groom itself or a mother will groom a kit, although I haven’t seen any grooming behaviors yet this season. I can’t even say how many raccoons are living in the den this year. Eventually, though, one or another of the raccoons will leave the ledge and start making its way north along the wall. Only rarely do I see one heading south from the den, probably because the grand stone staircase quickly breaks up the wall, so that the raccoon would have to come down to the ground right at a spot that is well traveled by humans and dogs.
Here is the view from just above the den of Riverside Park, the Hudson River and New Jersey.
Not bad. You might linger at the mouth of your den, too, if you had this view to look at.
Spring is officially here. Red-tails are nesting, peacocks are showing, and male mallards are acting downright crazy.
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Trees are still mostly bare, which means you can more easily spot wildlife.
And feral life. The feral cat colony in Morningside Park seems out of control this spring. The cats are everywhere around the pond, stalking ducks and other birds.
But that’s a topic for another post.
For now, let’s put away the ice rescue ladder, and celebrate the arrival of another spring.
Below are links to a few of Out Walking the Dog’s odes to springs past:
I’m not sure what to make of the collection of twigs amassed by the Cathedral Red-tailed hawks atop Saint Peter’s canopy.
I posed the question on Twitter, and love the response I received from Robert of Morningside Hawks: “If they were predictable, they wouldn’t be wild. And sometimes they do weird stuff because they know you’re watching.”
For now, at least, the hawks seem to be focused on refurbishing the old nest on Saint Andrew’s mossy shoulders.
When I arrived at the nest this morning, it appeared empty. But as I crossed Morningside Drive to enter the park, I looked back toward the Cathedral in time to see a hawk swooping in from the north to disappear from view behind the saint’s head. Although I could no longer see the bird, I could see twigs moving as the hawk rearranged nesting materials.
Then the hawk hopped onto the old man’s head and looked out over the park and nearby streets.
What a view.
Somehow, the poor saint looked especially sorrowful this morning, and the hawk, well, hawkish.
After a few minutes, the big bird spread its wings and soared off to the southeast.
As the dog and I step off the sidewalk into a narrow path dug between snow mounds at the corner of Broadway and 108th Street, the sound of distant honking stops me in my tracks. Not the usual traffic sounds of Broadway, but the calls of wild geese. I shade my eyes and look up in time to see a large flock of Canada geese – an uneven, dark V, followed closely by a long single line – disappearing to the southwest over the solid old apartment buildings of Riverside Drive. “Oh,” I say out loud, struck by beauty.
At the top of the stone staircase that leads into Riverside Park, the dog pauses to show off his red shoes.
The red shoes: Dance, little dog, dance.
We descend the staircase, and enter the white winter world of a snowy city park. Everything is strangely quiet.
Central Park after a snowfall.
Only a couple of dogs are playing in the 105th Street dog run.
Down by the river, a solitary runner runs.
But where are the rest of the animals?
We retrace our steps to the path above, where a squirrel scoots across the top of the snow and leaps onto a tree trunk.
The little creature leaves behind a scribble-scrabble of footprints in the snow, the record of many such forays out of the safety of the trees. Three crows call from the top of the plane trees, then fly, one at a time, out of the park toward Riverside Drive. Two house sparrows chirp.
And that’s it. No hawks, no juncos, no woodpeckers, no robins, no flocks of sparrows, no chickadees, no titmice. Where is everyone?
And then we hear a high-pitched call: “Tsip, tsip, tsip.”
Winter’s bare branches make it easy to find the caller: a female cardinal, perched in a tangle of branches beneath the retaining wall. Although I usually see cardinals in pairs, today the brilliantly colored male is nowhere to be seen. The lovely bird kept just outside the range of my iPhone, so here is a photo from last winter of two females picking up spilled seed beneath a bird feeder on eastern Long Island.
The Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) stays with us year-round, and even in the depths of winter, the male keeps his brilliant plumage. (Thank you, Rob Pavlin, for the beautiful photo below.)
Cardinal in Central Park. Photo: Rob Pavlin
Cardinals are particularly stunning against a snowy background, but they’re gorgeous birds in any season.
Cardinal in autumn in Central Park’s Conservatory Gardens. Photo: Melissa Cooper
Just look at that red.
Cardinal in Central Park, early winter 2012. Photo: Rob Pavlin.
You don’t often see animals in winter sporting such flashy colors.
Out walking the dog 