Rediscovering Where I'm From

New York is an enjoyable city to walk in if you have comfortable shoes, keep an eye out for wheeled and human traffic and don't mind the babble around you of many different languages from people talking into their phones.

I was born in New York, specifically the borough of Brooklyn. To us, Manhattan was "the city." It is where you went to work. It is where you went to leave home and become independent. It is where you went to see a Broadway show or visit a museum or other attraction. Lately, it has become a place to occasionally find unusual birds.

House sparrow pair, Central Park (Margo D. Beller)

After many years working from home in New Jersey, I now work in Manhattan. Last time I was on the west side of midtown. Now I am on the east side, which has a completely different vibe.

I am rediscovering this city. As when I was a child taking the subway in from Brooklyn with my mother, I find myself looking up at the top of the very tall buildings to see the decorated parts you can't otherwise see from ground level.

One such day I was heading east toward the area of the United Nations. Before crossing the street I looked north along Lexington Ave. and up at a colorful skyscraper that was not a glass box or a so-called pencil building. A dark figure sat atop the tower. At first I thought it was a redtailed hawk, maybe the famous Pale Male or one of his many progeny. But later it occurred to me it could've just as easily been a peregrine falcon, a raptor I've seen atop many a skyscraper or bridge, using these man-made structures as its more usual cliff top.

Unfortunately, I had no binoculars with me to know for sure what I was seeing. However, any raptor would have an easy time picking off pigeons, squirrels or rats in some of the city's park areas, including that oasis of green in the midst of concrete, Central Park.

Past Central Park pond visitor - male wood duck (at top)
with mallards (Margo D. Beller)

One day I walked north on Fifth Ave. in midtown, relieved the holiday tourists finally went home. I had no particular place to go, just a desire to stretch my legs and get some air after being in the office in the morning. At noon, church bells rang from St. Patrick's and, up the block, St. Thomas. They were generally ignored but I stepped to the side and listened as the lunch-hour workers and visitors rushed past me, the high-end retailers and those trying to get a handout.

What does this have to do with birds, you might wonder.

I had not planned on visiting Central Park but it was such a nice day and I was so eager to rediscover this city of my birth that I continued up Fifth Ave. until the retailers gave way to expensive hotels and apartments and there was the park. The mood changed and the pace slowed. I looked in the trees and saw pigeons and starlings, two of the three most common birds seen in Manhattan along with house sparrows. I knew I was near the Pond at the park's southern end, so I walked over to see if anything unusual was around.

Pigeons, Central Park (Margo D. Beller)

In winters past one of my favorite ducks, the colorful wood duck, has been there, hanging with the usual mallards and Canada geese. One notable year, a Mandarin duck was at the Pond and became such a sensation people created a Twitter feed and a website about it. Mandarins are colorful and New Yorkers have always gone ga-ga over colorful celebrities in their midst.

However, during my visit there were no colorful creatures. There was a great blue heron watching for lunch from a branch low over the water at the edge of the Hallett Sanctuary, an area of the park kept locked except for small, restricted tours. In the water were a couple of American coots, black and white birds that might look like ducks but are actually related to more chicken-like birds such as rails, according to the Cornell Ornithology Lab. Although they will hang out in ponds with ducks, their feet are not webbed. Instead, according to Cornell, "each one of the coot’s long toes has broad lobes of skin that help it kick through the water. The broad lobes fold back each time the bird lifts its foot, so it doesn’t impede walking on dry land, though it supports the bird’s weight on mucky ground."

Central Park carriages, where a cardinal flew across. (Margo D. Beller)

It stunned me to find the coots, but I should not have been surprised. Central Park is known for the unusual birds that pass through on their way north or south, depending on the time of year. It would've been easy for me to just keep walking and looking for more interesting birds while ignoring the many people visiting the park and its attractions including the nearby zoo, or walk farther up Fifth Avenue and see if Pale Male is still around. 

Unfortunately, my lunch time away from work is limited so on that day I restricted myself, noting the mourning dove with the pigeons, the white-throated sparrows with the house sparrows and the calling male cardinal that flew over the line of horse-drawn carriages waiting for fares. 

The park isn't going anywhere and, for now, neither am I. I'll be back.

City Birding

Most city people are not birders. They run from one place to another, ear buds providing a soundtrack to their world. If they notice them, "birds" are sparrows and pigeons. That the sparrows might be song sparrows or white-throated sparrows and the pigeons mourning doves is lost on them. They are just birds you barely notice.

High Line (R.E. Berg-Andersson)

I grew up in New York, and until I moved to New Jersey and was given a feeder as a housewarming present I didn't notice the birds either.

I've learned that if you unplug, you will find birds. The key is to be alert and be in an area where there aren't a lot of people. That can be hard in many urban areas.

Until a few years ago I was commuting by train to jobs in Jersey City and midtown Manhattan. The train took me through New Jersey's Meadowlands -- once a dumping ground but now a marvel of shorebirds, ducks and the occasional hawk -- and Hoboken, on the west side of the Hudson River where in its harbor the cormorants would mass before heading south and the ruddy ducks would spend the winter.

Jersey City hadn't filled in all its open space when I worked there. The vacant, weedy lots drew parula, goldfinch and winter wren. The waterfront drew mergansers and ducks. Around the time my company moved a light rail line was completed and the vacant lots were being converted into large apartment buildings. A good hunk of one of my favorite birding spots was turned into a dog park. The birds were harder to find.

Gansevoort end (R.E. Berg-Andersson)

I guess this is the challenge of urban birding. The more people you have, the fewer birds you will find unless you are in an area of many trees. Central Park is where MH and I usually go when we want to see birds, especially in migration. That huge, green space in the middle of the concrete jungle is big enough to accommodate tired, hungry birds as well as people.

I've been working for over two years from my home in the New Jersey suburbs so going to New York City is more of a special occasion now. On this particular trip we decided to visit the High Line, the linear park that runs from Gansevoort Street to the south to 30th Street (between 10th and 11th avenues) to the north (for now; the line is being extended to the north and west).

The High Line is the former freight line built in 1933 to connect the old Penn Yards at 30th with the St. John's terminal on Clarkson St. and literally raise train traffic off the streets. New York was a city of elevated trains -- there were elevated lines on Third and Second avenues (it has taken generations but a Second Ave. subway is being built) and there is are still elevated "subway" lines in Brooklyn and Queens -- so this west side line just added to the noise.

Trains ran until 1980 and for the next 19 years the line stood silent, a home for wildflowers and birds. In 1999 a group was formed to protect and renovate the line into a lineal park rather than tear it down.

MH and I found the lower part of the line (it does not run to Clarkson St. but farther north at Ganesvoort, around which is the old meatpacking area, now very trendy, chic and expensive and a historic district) more interesting, in part because it incorporates the old Nabisco factory, now the "Chelsea market," an urban food court similar to Boston's Faneuil Hall. Farther north the line narrows while Manhattan island widens and you lose sight of the Hudson River.

We started at the northern end, and after a few blocks we detoured to the river, which was far more interesting and where we found a flock of herring gulls aloft, reminding me of growing up along the southern coast of Brooklyn where the resident gulls were herrings.

It is nice that city officials have realized the importance of connecting people with waterfronts. They provide space and light. This was the "beach" area for the city dwellers we passed sunning themselves as we looked at the piers with open restaurants and the old piers where the railroad companies -- Pennsylvania, Erie, Lehigh Valley -- would bring their goods from New Jersey by barge across the Hudson.

(R.E. Berg-Andersson)

Back on the High Line, we felt as tho' we were in a human highway, there were so many people in the sunshine. But around us, buildings are going up. Luxury buildings where once were warehouses and factories. I wonder -- if enough of these buildings go up will they blot out the sun from the ornamental grasses, coneflowers, sedums and other flowers (which I have in my yard)?

This "park," this tourist walkway, this elevated sidewalk, seems a poor excuse for "nature" when I compare it to my backyard. Would there be more birds than the barn swallow I saw around if there had been fewer people?

The barn swallow and the herring gulls were the best birds I saw. But sometimes you can see something common from an unusual perspective.

At Chelsea Market we were resting in the shade when I pointed out to MH a female house sparrow that had flown to the open part of  a pole holding street signs. Young were calling and she was feeding them. When done she flew off. Soon her mate came up and he fed the young. I have seen this many times in my travels, but not from above. 

When my mother was sick towards the end, she said she enjoyed hearing the birds "sing" in the open space that was created when the old air conditioner was removed from the bedroom wall and a smaller one put in. The birds she heard were house sparrows, which will make a nest in human-created cavities.

House sparrows don't sing - they aren't even really sparrows but weaver birds that stowed away on ships from Europe centuries ago -- but their cheeping cheered her.

What a pity the common house sparrow may be the best bird the people who will move to the luxury residences going up around this "park" will see, presuming they even notice.

Urban Birding

I spent a lot of years working in New York City. Most of my time was spent either in an office or rushing to or from it, particularly to catch transportation home.

But the nice thing about birding is you can always find something anywhere, even in the middle of the concrete jungle.

It is definitely a change of pace for MH and me when we decide to go to The City from our little New Jersey town. For one thing, people move faster. For another, there are more of them shoving into you.

White-throated sparrow

Even big places like Central Park can sometimes feel too crowded, particularly during a nice day when there are tour groups coming through or visitors enjoying a big swath of green in the midst of the city or gathering around the "Imagine" mosaic near the W. 72 Street entrance, remembering John Lennon. Dogwalkers are there, of course, sunbathers in season and, yes, birders. Alot of birders, alone and in flocks of various sizes.
But while Central Park is more famous, just about any place where there is some shrubbery can produce something interesting beyond a pigeon, even  a more common visitor such as the white-throated sparrow and its cousin the junco.

When I worked in New York I would usually go to Bryant Park at W. 40th-44th streets, especially after reading a report of an unusual visitor. Considering how often the lawn is torn up for an ice rink (winter) or concert stage (summer) and the thick crowds that pass through or sit and eat there every day, it is amazing I've found as much as I have in the shrubbery and the huge London plane trees that border the lawn.

Here are other ways urban birding is different.

When I go to the city I have to be careful what I carry, and I don't just mean money or important papers. I refuse to drive on midtown streets so that means carrying no extra boots or walking stick or Sibley guide to help me identify anything. I don't even take my big binoculars unless I have my backpack. I have small ones I can pocket.

Concrete sidewalks and blacktopped streets are harder on the feet, knees and lower back than grass or cindered trails. There’s the noise of traffic, including the incessant sirens, and people talking to each other or on their phones in a Babel of languages.

While you can go slow, look around, listen for a call and hope to be lucky, there are additional rules: Watch out for the traffic and keep one eye on your surroundings so you don’t get your pocket picked.

A male wood duck (top) with mallards at Central Park's pond.

If you can get past that, it’s always a treat to find something unusual in an urban area at the wrong time of year.

One Saturday last year as we were walking through Herald Square – a concrete triangle in midtown Manhattan filled with tables and chairs and some greenery along the edges -- MH and I found four catbirds. This was winter. Catbirds don't usually hang around this area in winter. When I would walk through here every day on the way to my old job I might see one or two. Yet, here were four, and they were quite bold, running or flying around after the crumbs dropped by the visitors, fighting bill and wing with the house sparrows, pigeons and white-throated sparrows.

Those crumbs were keeping the catbirds and the rest of the birds alive.

Union Square is another busy New York park, with a farmers market, benches, people, dogs and, as it turned out, birds. Sparrows and white-throats, of course, but last year I went there with MH after a day of wandering to look for a reported yellow-breasted chat, the largest of the warblers and a bird that should’ve been far south of where I stood.

As it got darker, I heard sparrows chirping from a holly and started looking for the larger and yellower chat. Instead, if found a yellow-bellied sapsucker roosting on a low branch. Then, despite the traffic, I heard the “laugh” of a flicker. Then, as sparrows flew up to the holly, so did the chat.

Prothonotary warbler, found in the front
garden of the New York Public Library
on Fifth Ave., not far from Bryant Park.

This happened last winter, a milder one than this year's has turned out to be. This year I haven't felt much of a desire to go into New York and bird the usual places or, when we were going to New York to meet people for supper, the weather was so dicey we just came in, dined and left.

This Saturday we will be going to a daytime party in Brooklyn. If the weather holds, we will go into lower Manhattan, perhaps by walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, and wander around. I doubt we'll get to Central Park but I know we'll be in City Hall park.

I don't doubt that somewhere, where I least expect it, I'll find something wonderful in this urban wasteland.