NYC Baby Raccoon Woes

From the Walking the Pandemic Series

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.

A Quick Shot of Spring

Walking the NYC pandemic

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.

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  Romance blooms between the dancers.

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  Glorious.

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  Blossoms like fallen snow

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  Still tulips.

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  Fallen blossoms.

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  Bright, sweet.

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  Bandit in the Garden.

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  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.

Thanks, Jane!

Gone Fishin’: Great White Egret in Central Park

Walking the NYC pandemic

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.

NYC’s Quiet Rush Hour (video)

Walking the Pandemic in NYC

The city is eerily quiet these days. Fewer cars and buses on the streets, no sidewalk disputes, no children squealing in the playground.

Empty playground.

Without the usual ambient noise, other sounds seem louder. The pigeon family that hangs out on our window ledges seems to coo more loudly.

Pigeon parent (red eyes).

Pigeon baby (brown eyes).

Even the wing claps of rising flocks seem louder.

Rising flock.

The mockingbird on the roof seems to sing more wildly than ever.

Mockingbird not singing, for the moment.

And from our own perch above 109th Street, we hear ambulance sirens as we’ve never heard them before. There have been days when the sound of sirens threatened to merge into one continuous urban wail. Or so it seemed.

Happily, in recent days, the sirens have diminished in number. Maybe this is only at our neighborhood hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside (formerly Saint Luke’s). The news this morning reports that the daily death toll in New York has dropped below 500 for the second day in a row. Hospitals remain overwhelmed, and hospital workers are drawing on extraordinary personal reserves each day. I hope fewer sirens equates to fewer hospital admissions and is a sign that NYC is entering the long slow movement away from our COVID peak.

Mount Sinai Morningside – Emergency.

It’s going to be a long quiet haul. Last Friday around 5:15 PM, I stood on the roof of our building and thought the street sounded just the tiniest bit busier than usual. A bus belching down Broadway, one horn honking, a sparrow cheeping relentlessly. And then I realized, So this is what passes for Friday rush hour in the middle of a pandemic.

Have a look.

Pink is the Color

Walking the pandemic in NYC

Spring is just another word for pink these days.

Wow.

Delicate.

Intense.

Pink with sculpture

Pink with bench watchers.

Not-fully-blossomed pink with Cathedral. See next photo for what’s coming…

We can look forward to this full-on pink with Cathedral. (Photo from early May last year.)

Pink again.

And again.

Stay safe, New York and world. One of these days, we’ll walk again without fear.

This photo is from last spring, but these undistanced, unmasked days of yore will eventually return.

Hudson River pinks.

Hang in there, stay safe and see you back here soon!

Peacock Boys at the Cathedral

Walking the pandemic

Peacocks have freely wandered the grounds at Saint John’s Cathedral in Morningside Heights since the 1980s.

The three peacocks currently in residence, Jim, Harry and Phil, are older gentlemen now, but age is no obstacle to the call of spring. There are no peahens on the premises, yet the three peacocks still rise to the season, displaying their gorgeous tails, squawking and strutting. I went seeking them on this beautiful chilly morning.

Someone peeks around the corner …

I see you.

And lets out a joyful sound. More like an ear-splitting honk to human ears, but presumably a romantic “come-hither” to available peafowl.

Glass-shattering squawk.

The other blue peacock was hidden behind a truck and I had almost given up on finding the third, when a flash of white drew my eye to a far corner of the extensive grounds.

It was Phil, the white peacock, flapping to the fence rail.

He landed awkwardly, then posed for a moment.

And launched himself down onto the other side.

He grazed a bit in the grass.

I left him there and walked away. Again, a flash of white caught my eye. In his quiet corner, just off Amsterdam Avenue, the peacock displayed his beauty for no one.

Thanks to Saint John’s Cathedral for keeping their grounds open to the public and providing the neighborhood with respite from its cares.

Baby Raccoons on the Move (video)

Walking the NYC Pandemic

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.

Enjoy.

Hey, where’s Mom? Anyone seen Mom?

White-Throated Sparrow Digs Up Central Park

Rustle rustle rustle.

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.”

Listen up.

Central Park Chipmunk

 

Chipmunk in Central Park. Photo: Melissa Cooper

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

Guess Who’s Coming to Lunch, Kestrel Edition

Photo: Janet Rassweiler

My neighbor Janet had an astonishingly beautiful, if rather ferocious visitor for lunch yesterday.

Photo: Janet Rassweiler

She was working in her kitchen at midday, when she heard a strange repetitive banging sound coming from the living room. She moved to the doorway, and saw a bird on her air conditioner. This is nothing unusual in itself. Pigeons and mourning doves often perch there.

But this little bird was no dove.

Photo: Janet Rassweiler

It was a tiny male hawk, or rather a falcon, no bigger than a blue jay, called the American Kestrel.

Kestrels are the smallest raptor in North America with a range from Mexico to Canada. Their populations are in decline in many parts of the continent due to habitat loss and pesticides that kill off the insects they feed upon. Yet the little raptors seem to be thriving in New York City.  Like other hawks and falcons that have adapted to urban life, they find that man-made structures serve their needs quite well. While their big cousins, the peregrine falcons, nest high on skyscrapers and bridges, the little kestrel prefers to raise its young in the broken cornices of old brownstones and mid-rise apartment buildings. Their prey includes insects, small mammals and birds, like the sparrow Janet’s visitor brought for lunch.

Photo: Janet Rassweiler

The banging Janet heard was the sparrow’s head flopping up and down on the metal air conditioner as the kestrel pulled with its beak while holding the body down with its feet. (To move more quickly through the slideshow below, hover over the image, then click on the arrows that appear.)

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When the bird had had enough, it flew off with the body in its talons, leaving behind only the beak and part of the head.

Photo: Janet Rassweiler

 I couldn’t tell if the brain had been eaten or not, although I rather guess it had, since brains are apparently chock full of nutrients. Perhaps the kestrel ate a quick blast of brain food before carrying off the rest of the sparrow to feed a nesting mate.

The abandoned head reminded me of another dramatic wildlife story that unfolded on my block. One day a few years ago, I noticed a fledgling sparrow hopping about inside the large planter of a nearby building. The little bird was clearly not yet able to fly, and was probably being fed by a parent hiding in a street tree. I made the decision not to intervene, since the planter seemed as safe a spot as any on a city street for a still earth-bound baby bird. Early the next morning, the decapitated dead body of the baby sparrow lay on the sidewalk. The head was nowhere to be found. (I wrote about the fledgling’s predicament, and my own, in Baby Birds and Animals: To Help or Not to Help.)

Had Janet not witnessed the kestrel eating the sparrow, she would be left puzzling over the mysterious appearance of a bird head on her air conditioner.

What a city we live in, my friends. What a city.

What a world.

All photos in this post courtesy of Janet Rassweiler.

NYC Wildlife After Hours

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.

Urban Wild and Feral Life in Spring

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:

Two-Eyed Prophecy of Spring

It’s Spring; Everybody Sing!

Spring Fling in Morningside Park: Be Still, My Heart

Spring in Three Cities

NYC Signs of Spring: Red-tails Nest and Mr Softee Sings

Peacocks By Design

New York City’s three Cathedral peacocks have already begun their annual spring courtship displays in which they unfurl their insanely long, dazzling tail feathers, hold them up in a giant fan, and rotate slowly to enchant the ladies. Here is a video I took a few years ago of one of St John the Divine’s peacocks in fine form.

The boys will be displaying like this all spring and summer, but who do they hope to woo? The nearest peahen is several miles away at the Central Park Zoo or the Bronx Zoo (from which one of the pealadies briefly escaped in 2011).

Still the peacock boys display to anyone and no one.  Yesterday, the white peacock was showing his tail in front of the shed that serves as their roost, while one of the blue peacocks stood alone at the end of the steep driveway, just a few feet from Morningside Drive, with his tail in full sail.

Tails furled or unfurled, peacocks seem to have an innate design sense.

Here the white peacock displays a striking horizontal elegance.

Down the driveway, his friend advocates for the power and beauty of the vertical.

For more on the Cathedral peacocks, stay tuned. Or visit our archives.

Red-tail at Work

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.

Hidden Things Revealed

Last week, snow blanketed the gardens of Saint John the Divine …

Today much is revealed.

All over the city, for better and for worse, things buried are coming to light.

Take a look at the bike buried beneath snow in front of my building.

Turns out it’s more than a bike. It’s at least a bike and a half. Who knew?

These are benign examples. In truth, once things start emerging from their hiding places, there’s no telling what may come to light.

Be careful out there.