Salon.com > Birders The Central Park Effect http://www.salon.com Sat, 25 May 2013 01:08:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Birding: The latest angsty Manhattan craze! http://www.salon.com/2013/01/15/birding_the_latest_angsty_manhattan_craze/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/15/birding_the_latest_angsty_manhattan_craze/#comments Tue, 15 Jan 2013 22:48:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13172315 My Central Park bird species was Nycticorax nycticorax, or the Black-crowned Night Heron. It’s not an unusual or endangered bird or anything, and can be found in most parts of the world. It's just that I wasn't expecting to encounter one in the middle of Manhattan. A slightly squat, gray-and-white predatory water bird about 2 feet tall, it hunts by night (as the name suggests) and spends its days hunkered down in trees by the water’s edge, which is where my wife and I met one in the spring of 2005, by the pond in the southwestern corner of the park. We weren’t birding or anything. We were the underslept parents of 1-year-old twins, relishing a brief springtime escape in a city park whose wildlife population seemed dominated by rats, pigeons, pond turtles and other invasive scavenger species. The heron was not interested in our amazement. He opened one eye, shifted slightly on his branch, and went back to sleep.

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