Category: Nature

Birding Central Park

We spent a few days in New York City last weekend and early this week, and I spent Monday exploring and birding Central Park. I’d read that the park is a major stopover point for birds migrating along the Atlantic Flyway and since this is migration season, I figured it would make for a good day.

A guidebook in the hotel suggested that The Ramble would be a good place for birding since it’s the wildest corner of Central Park, featuring landscapes similar to what might have existed in Manhattan before Europeans came. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the area certainly was wilder than the rest of the park and to my surprise the birds most common in the rest of the city—pigeons, starlings, and house sparrows—were virtually absent in The Ramble.

The weather was beautiful, a cool and crisp autumn day, of the kind I especially love and haven’t seen since leaving Rhode Island 22 years ago. I’ve been back up to the northeast several times since then, but never in the fall. Unfortunately, the leaves were only just starting to change, but some of the trees had come into their fall reds, oranges and yellows and after all these years in Texas, that was a real treat.

We were staying in Midtown so I came up Park and entered the park at 59^th, bought a map and headed toward The Ramble to lose myself. I’ve been in Central Park before, but this was the first time I’ve been able to spend time slowly exploring it, and discovering for myself what a treasure it is.

Once I got to The Ramble, I immediately noticed that the pigeons were gone. You can hurry through those looping and winding trails and probably not see much more than the ubiquitous gray squirrels, but when you stop for a few minutes, quiet and patient, the ground comes alive with white-throated sparrows digging in the leaf litter or jumping onto weed stalks to shake some seed loose as they ride the stalks to the ground. At first, I saw only the occasional weed dipping and then popping back up, but on closer inspection, I realized that it was the sparrows doing this.

It wasn’t long before I forgot the city all around me; I suppose that’s part of the point of Central Park, creating an illusion of wilderness and a connection with nature that I think would seem pretty dear to me if I lived in a place like New York. Occasionally I would notice the tops of the big apartment buildings of the Upper West Side and feel almost surprised by the sight… oh, yeah, that’s there. I’m in the middle of this giant city.

I saw several birds that were new to me: hermit thrush, white-throated sparrow, winter wren, golden-crowned kinglet, black-capped chickadee, and (I think) rusty blackbird. I also saw a couple of species I have only seen once or twice before: dark-eyed junco and white-breasted nuthatch. I spent a lot of time focusing on and trying to watch these new birds that are rarely, if ever, seen in Texas.

At one point, I heard what I think was a red-shouldered hawk. The gray squirrels bolted for the trees and the birds froze when the hawk flew over. The hawk’s voice was similar to what I’m used to hearing from the red-shoulders down here, but there was a slight difference in accent. I only got a quick glimpse through the trees as he soared overhead, but size and shape were about right for a red-shoulder.

Coming out of The Ramble, I came to a meadow filled with dark-eyed juncos. I watched them for a while, trying not to appear too interested in the scene in the middle of the meadow where a guy on his knees was clearly proposing to a woman. It was a beautiful scene with the light slanting through the trees and golden leaves drifting down all around them. I wanted to try for some shots of the juncos, but the couple would have been in the background, and I didn’t want to appear to intrude on their moment, so silently wishing them all happiness, I moved on.

After The Ramble, I headed back toward the east side again to go to the Guggenheim Museum, one of the New York things I’d never done in all the times I’ve been up there and so I left the park at 90th and went to the museum. It was interesting, but my heart wasn’t in it. I walked quickly through the exhibits, stopping to study a few of the pieces here and there, but after a morning among changing trees, migrating birds, and foraging squirrels, the art in the museum seemed somehow empty to me and so I left the museum and headed back to the park. Perhaps I’ll give it a closer look if I ever find myself up there on an inside kind of day.

I walked around the reservoir back toward the west side. I considered, briefly, walking all the way to the northern end of the park, but I was starting to get tired and the hike back to Midtown already seemed like it would be long enough so I saved that part of the park as something to look forward to for next time.

After a tasty dog at a Shake Shack on the Upper West Side, I headed back for The Ramble, quickly losing myself in its meandering trails. This is where I found the golden-crowned kinglet and a blackbird that I think is a rusty. I got this picture and some good looks, long enough to tell he wasn’t a red-wing or a grackle. I’ve heard rusties are getting scarce, and I hoped that that wasn’t why he was alone.

Common Grackle or perhaps a Rusty Blackbird?

Eventually, it was time to go and so I left The Ramble and walked through The Mall and out of the park at Fifth and 59th back into the bustle of Midtown where I saw the damndest thing: a line of people waiting to get into Abercrombie & Fitch, which really surprised me since I can’t imagine waiting in line to get into a store that has a website especially when something as magnificent and lovely as Central Park is only a couple of blocks away and the day was so autumn perfect.

—

Here’s my list with stars by the ones that were lifers for me:

Winter wren *
White-throated sparrow *
Red-shouldered hawk
American crow
European Starling
Rock dove (pigeon)
House sparrow
Downy woodpecker
Black-capped chickadee *
Tufted titmouse
Mallard
Ruby-crowned kinglet
Hermit thrush *
Blue jay
American robin
White-breasted nuthatch
Golden-crowned kinglet *
Red-bellied woodpecker
Canada goose
Northern cardinal
Mourning dove
Common grackle or perhaps a Rusty (?) blackbird *

Here’s a link to a .pdf checklist of the Birds of Central Park.

Goldfinches

October 14, 2010 • James Brush • 4 Comments

The lesser goldfinches haven’t been coming around the feeders the past few days. Unlike their American cousins, they’re permanent residents here and gold year round, but this time of year they abandon the feeders. I suppose it’s because the weeds are all going to seed and that wild food must taste pretty good to them. Better than what’s in my feeder anyway.

The goldfinch feeders are up on the porch so it seems especially quiet without them. That’s funny since they’re not noisy birds, but I get so used to them most of the year that when I come out on the porch now it seems odd—like a town that’s too quiet in a horror movie—when they don’t all flutter off at the site of the dogs and me coming through the back door. I miss that confusion of black and yellow that blows outward like a visible gust of wind toward the neighbor’s trees.

They’ll be back in a few weeks, though, but there will be fewer than there were last summer when they came with all their young in tow, and they’ll soon be joined by overwintering American goldfinches, though their gold will have fallen out allowing them to migrate incognito, disguised as plain drab birds, their gold just a memory, a vague dream of summer.

Mowing the Lawn

September 13, 2010 • James Brush • 2 Comments

I’m one of the few people in my neighborhood who mows his own lawn. Most people seem to use lawn services or teenagers but a few of us do it ourselves.

No one else uses an unpowered mower, though, and sometimes people look at me like I must be nuts, but it doesn’t take me much longer or really any more effort to mow with such a contraption, but it does require a certain amount of presence since I can’t just roll over whatever’s in front of me. I have to pay attention to rocks and sticks and piles of dog doo.

It’s that paying attention that keeps me doing it myself. I’ve come to know our little suburban yard quite well over the years. I wonder sometimes what kind of a connection, if any, those who don’t mow their yards actually have with the flora and fauna all around. Granted my yard is not a wild place, though there is wildlife—and not just the birds that come to the feeders.

The live oaks and cedar elms are the highways of the non-winged and so they make for good observing. I see ants trailing in the bark’s grooves and places where squirrels or possibly late night rats have gnawed the wood. Sometimes there are faces in the knots of the trees depending on how the light cuts and moves across the yard. Usually there are birds in the branches: chickadees, doves, titmice.

I really appreciate those trees on our blazing summer mowing days for the shade they provide as well as how they ensure fluidity: I have to adjust my path as I approach the them, thus creating places where I miss a spot or two, where my lines are gently forced to curves. These adjustments that lead to minor imperfections really appeal to me. I love those rebellious clumps of grass for refusing to be mowed.

Getting away from the trees (but not too far—it’s a small yard) it’s not uncommon to catch sight of black-chinned hummingbirds hovering among the tiny red flowers in the tangled and overgrown flame acanthus, a plant unsure if it should be a bush or a tree, but fully invested in its effort to take over the flowerbed and tumble out over the grass.

There’s little connection with nature for most of us in our day-to-day lives, and lord knows, I know my yard isn’t some wild space, but the wild creeps in on six legs or eight or four or none (yes, sometimes snakes; fortunately none with rattles) and I love those times out cutting the grass when swallowtail butterflies flutter around the edges of the yard or when I stop to encourage a frog to be on his way or when a dragonfly seems to follow me along my spiraling path.

Mowing is a slow moving series of moments and actions, repetitive and known, and yet in that there is the awareness that there is wonder and mystery in this yard on this street where everything can seem so far removed from nature, that is until you slow down and really see. We live right on top of so much and so willingly blind ourselves to it. It’s an easy trap to fall into and sometimes a tricky one to escape.

Perhaps this is why, when I finish mowing I typically feel surprisingly refreshed.

Muir Woods National Monument

July 22, 2010 • James Brush • 4 Comments

These photos were taken last week at Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, California, a short drive north of San Francisco. Muir Woods is part of the Golden Gate National Recreational Area. You can click on the images to enlarge and view at a higher resolution.

Muir Woods is an old growth redwood forest. It feels like a church or a library or a little bit of both. At least until the tour buses arrive.

The coastal redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) is the tallest and among the oldest of living things.

The tallest trees at Muir come to around 250 feet, and the oldest ones are around 1200 years old.

The tallest and oldest trees at Muir Woods are relatively short and young for coastal redwoods which used to cover two million acres of coastal California and Oregon.

Most of that is gone now.

Snakes and Deer

June 2, 2010 • James Brush • 4 Comments

Last summer I regularly saw a pair of blotched water snakes in the shallows of the stream near the bridge. Every day they were there, sitting in the current waiting for small fish and tadpoles to come by. When it got cold, they disappeared. After reading about Dave’s ceiling snakes, I wondered if they would come back this summer so I took a walk down to the bridge to see and sure enough, there they were just like last year.

I sat on the bridge and watched them for awhile, surprised that they should have come back to the same spot. I’m assuming, of course, that these are the same individuals as last year. Maybe they’re not and it’s just a really great spot for blotched water snakes to hunt. Either way, they didn’t seem to mind me sitting so close and even allowed me to take a few pictures.

While I was sitting there, I got the feeling that I was being observed. I turned around to have a look downstream and there was this guy:

White-tailed Deer on the Stream — White-tailed deer

He watched me for awhile, decided I was boring and moved on. I moved on too, walking down to the pond to see if any of the summer herons and egrets had arrived. Not yet. But there were plenty of grackles, and I heard the red-shouldered hawk calling up the trail beyond the pond.

It’s summer here now. All day, the heat and humidity crushed down and bounced shimmering off the asphalt, soaking through my shirt and slowing everything down to the summer lethargy it’s so easy to forget as soon its gone. Then it pissed rain. Thunderstorms and lightning. Tomorrow it will be scorching again and there will be no sign that water fell the night before. Such is Texas.

I and the Bird #126

May 27, 2010 • James Brush • 20 Comments

Today we’ll travel with I and the Bird
to discover the most amazing birds.

We’ll marvel at Rio Blanco shots
of Colombian sylphs and hummingbirds.

We’ll see colors galore in Singapore
on a camera-ignoring sunbird.

We’ll have to get stuck in the mud to see
Avocets, Willets and burrowing birds.

Supporting birding teams, we’ll stop to know
the beautiful woods surrounding birds.

Flammulated Owls live beyond rough trails,
but we learn the wild when surveying birds.

Stop for a moment to consider the
vultures, our maligned highway-cleaning birds.

The vibrant beauty of nature’s revealed
by children carefully coloring birds.

Near a hole on a familiar shore, see
Bank Swallows, brown-and-white scolding birds.

In Zion park, we’ll learn the stories of
certain condors, those distant soaring birds.

We’ll brave the coldest snowy days for owls
and hope all life birds will be living birds.

Viewer warning: “Sex and the City Bird”
documents the habits of mating birds.

In a blooming sage garden, time stops for
close looks at Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.

Recall nature’s red in tooth and claw when
we see crows are squirrel-tongue-eating birds.

Burrowing Owls and roadrunners remind
us of the simple joy of finding birds.

Spend a good day searching for Golden-winged,
Cerulean and other warbling birds.

A witty Straw-necked Ibis has some words.
(Who knew we’d find poetry writing birds?)

We can observe a Red-tailed Hawk’s high nest
and learn all about digiscoping birds.

Strange orange colors on Mallards’ tails pose
questions when we’re closely studying birds.

On the Gulf, pelicans will break our hearts
when we confront loose oil killing birds.

Shearwaters, jaegers and petrels will lead
us to boats for looks at seafaring birds.

We’ll see a Little Gull and lovely terns
on the southwest Queens coast while listing birds

In Madras, we’ll meet pittas and plovers
and sandpipers among the wading birds

“Always be birding,” that’s what we’ll say.
Even in parking lots, we’re finding birds.

That’s it for this trip, I’m signing off. Send
links for the next one to The Drinking Bird.

Morning at Hornsby Bend

May 7, 2010 • James Brush • 8 Comments

I slammed on my brakes when I saw the painted bunting. I’ve never seen such a bird, but I knew what it was immediately, so unmistakeable are these little guys. After he flew into the brush along the road to the Pond 2 blind at Hornsby Bend, I could have easily convinced myself I hadn’t see him.

I stopped the car and scanned the brush with my binoculars and found him perched on a swaying branch. I remembered I had my camera and started shooting, wishing I had run my car through the wash since I didn’t want to open the window and spook him. I took a lot of blurry shots and two or three in which you can’t even discern a bird, but I think you can see Big Foot. Somehow, the one above came out.

I could have gone home then, full of one little bird wearing his beauty so casually, or stayed in that spot watching him until dark, but eventually he flew off and I continued down to the blind to see what was on the ponds.

Most of the winter waterfowl have left Hornsby, though I did see a pair of blue-winged teals a couple of northern shovelers still hanging around. The long-legged waders of summer hadn’t arrived so I decided to wander down the river trail.

The birds were a little more secretive than usual on the river trail, but where the birds were hiding, the butterflies were out like I’ve never seen. We had a cool, wet winter and early spring and thus our wildflowers have been spectacular beyond what I’m used to and I suspect that’s led to this explosion of butterflies. Walking along the trails, watching the ground to avoid surprising rattlesnakes, my peripheral vision filled with the flickering colors of butterflies giving me the impression I was being followed, which I was, in so far as butterflies follow people.

Summer is coming quickly and the temperature started creeping into the mid-nineties so I decided to head back up to the ponds and on to the rest of my day.

Across one of the ponds, I could see a lot of black-necked stilts in the mudflats, and closer in there were grackles, killdeer and this lesser yellowlegs; at least I’m pretty sure it’s a lesser and not a greater yellowlegs mainly because he was a little smaller than the killdeer who came around and stood next to him long enough for me to get a few lousy shots. The killdeer and the lesser yellowlegs are listed as the same size in my guidebooks so I’m guessing this is a lesser.

And then, it was time to go. On the way out, I saw bank, cliff and cave swallows, scissor-tailed flycatchers, and even a pair of eastern kingbirds, which with the painted bunting was my second life bird for the day.

I think I’ve seen at least one (usually more) life bird every time I’ve ever been to Hornsby Bend. It always amazes me how once I’ve seen a new bird I start seeing it more frequently. Perhaps, to see a new bird is to learn how to see it and so my eyes and mind are open to it in the future. Over time I see smaller, better, slower and more.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Update: This post is included in I and the Bird #125 at Twin Cities Naturalist. Check it out.

Galveston, Last Summer

April 26, 2010 • James Brush • 5 Comments

Early Sunday morning,
we sat on the seawall

watching a laughing gull
eat a fish. There wasn’t

much happening, just the
gulf falling and rising

with the sea’s slow breathing
between hurricanes,

porpoises jumping over
waves, pelicans floating

above the shore and that
gull working on his fish

while glancing upward at
a sky filled with thieves.

Protected: An Avicentric Model

April 20, 2010 • James Brush • Enter your password to view comments.

The Cattle Egret

April 15, 2010 • James Brush • 8 Comments

There’s a swagger in the way the cattle egret walks across the fields of this fenced frontier, wingtips looped into his belt buckle. He won’t talk much at first, but if you get him going he’ll spin stories like country songs—beer drinkin’, cloaca kickin’ and trains beyond the horizon. He’ll tell of blue northers ripping down the plains and the time he lit a fire under a mule that hadn’t moved in two days. He waits while you imagine what a burning mule would smell like and then tells how the mule just moved over a couple feet from the fire and stayed put another two days before movin’ on. Usually, though, he just stares out past the longhorns, dreaming lonely dreams from another time. Maybe he even writes a song or two about the rough and tumble old birds of the past. In the evening, after a long day picking bugs off the backs of settled cows, he sends demos to Nashville and Austin hoping he’ll make it big someday.

glowing orange
the cattle egrets fly off
into the sunset