 Releasing predators in Central Park play a huge role in the fantasies and rhetoric of hunters. Could one have planted a dead black bear cub scare New Yorkers? Seems like somebody with access to dead wildlife was trying to make a point. Keep reading Did a Hunter Leave a Dead Bear in Central Park to Teach New Yorkers a Lesson?  Lepidopterist, or mothers, use a concoction of beer, bananas and molasses to bait certain sap-eating moths. Otherwise, try a bright light on a cloudy, moonless night. Keep reading Moths drawn to lights, rotten beer, often against their best interests  For 13 years Hawk Creek wildlife sanctuary near Buffalo has been hauling a vanload of eagles, hawks, falcons, owls and assorted big bird oddities across the state to give New York City residents a little taste of the wild. Keep reading Raptor Fest 2010: Escape to New York City  The Hallett preserve has been off-limits to the public since 1934 as a bird sanctuary. But the Central Park Conservancy offers a handful of half hour tours every year or so and I got to go on one today. Keep reading Central Park Opens Secret Sanctuary for 30 Minutes The Wild Bird Fund, which is New York City’s defacto wildlife rehabilitation center, collected signatures this weekend to become the city’s official place to go with injured, sick or orphaned wild birds and animals. They explained to people at a wildlife fest that New York is the only big U.S. city without a real wildlife care center. So a bunch of volunteer wildlife rehabbers have picked up the slack. Rita McMahon and Karen Heidgerd run the Wild Bird Fund though Animal General, a vet practice that donated care for 1,146 birds and 13 mammals last year. Continue reading Will NYC Get an Official Wildlife Care Center?   Photo from 1010 Wins Cops captured a coyote in lower Manhattan Thursday and are holding the young female at least overnight. She may be released into Van Cortlandt Park as early as Friday night, people who were in on the discussions say. Right now she’s sleeping off tranquilizers at Animal Care and Control. Dumping the coyote in the Bronx may sound like Manhattan just dumping its unpleasantries in an outer borough, but there’s solid reasoning to it. Most New Yorkers don’t realize that Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay Park already have coyote populations. No one is sure if this is the same coyote that’s been hanging around Central Park the last couple months. My guess is that it is. One thing that surprised most people is that the coyote turned out to be a female. People had figured the Central Park coyote as a young male who got pushed out of his territory by dominant males in mating season. But it does seem that the Central Park Coyote was out and about yesterday. Bruce Yolton said the Central Park coyote–who has a habit of leaving the Hallett Nature Preserve just after dusk–was seen wandering around the preserve woods at lunch yesterday. On Wednesday 1010 says the canine was spotted down near the Holland Tunnel, but evaded cops. Of all the ways a coyote could get into Manhattan, I don’t think the Holland Tunnel was high on anyone’s list. Cops finally caught her Thursday in a parking Keep reading Manhattan’s Captured Coyote May Be Released in the Bronx  Dr. Robert “Birding Bob” DeCandido leads birding tours around New York City. Usually he takes people to see owls in Central Park, which he helped reintroduce. He lets us run his newsletter here. This week he saw a northern Saw-whet owl in Central Park and the carcass of a woodcock. Northern Saw-Whet Owl, by Richard Leche The carcasses are in bloom! Yellow and purple and some white – or so it was on Sunday when we were in for other surprises as well. On our walks, we were able to provide discussions of the age of migrating Saw-whet Owls (including photos by Debs), American Woodcocks and more in Central Park in the last several days – by our group. We think with birds…and to find them, we have to think like birds too. Our historical notes include a NYC area summary of the spring season – 1920. Today, our observations show that many bird species are arriving earlier than in the past. Why? We will leave it to others to explain. In the meantime, we document the changes, and provide the historical record for comparison. We also provide the first records of breeding Tree Swallows in our area. Now they are common breeders at Jamaica Bay and elsewhere on Long Island – but not 90 years ago! Not had enough of us yet? Beginning the first week of April, our Sunday and Tuesday walks will begin meeting at the Dock on Turtle Pond.=====================================Good! Here are the bird walks Keep reading Birding Bob; Northern Saw-whet Owl Stops in Central Park; Woodcocks in the East Village  The Hallett Nature Sanctuary on Central Park South been in the news this month as the daytime napping place of at least one coyote/coywolf. This four-acre island of nature is normally almost invisible to park goers, even though it’s in the most popular corner of Central Park. When the park was created this whole area was a big, smelly swamp known to carry malaria. The New York Times describes how the wealthy residents of 5th Avenue finally fixed the problem of stagnant water in their cellars. Frederick Law Olmstead drained the swamp and created the Pond, with a promintory left natural. The pond was popular for “swan velocipede boats.” An 1887 Times story says the boats “got no rest from morning to night,” as a quarter million people visited the park on the first day of spring, watched a black swan protect her nest on a rock in the Pond and observed only two prairie dogs emerge, “the most certain sign of warm weather.” In the winter the crowds headed to the pond for ice skating. Trolleys used to wear a signal red ball if it was currently frozen enough to skate. The current Wollman Rink is built over a filled in section of the pond. The preserve area has been off limits to regular New Yorkers since 1934, when it was named the Bird Sanctuary. In 1952 the Times reported: “59TH ST. PARK LAKE TO BE RID OF FILTH; Complaints of Offensive Debris Bring Admission of ‘Laxity.” Keep reading Secrets of the Hallett in Central Park  The New York City Council is holding hearings March 12 on whether to ban horse-drawn carriages and possibly replace them with classic cars powered by green energy. The city has been waffling over banning the horses since at least 1989. The Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages says the animals shouldn’t have to live in tight stalls and work in dense midtown, where they have been electrocuted and hit by cars, only to face unkown fate when they retire. I don’t have any illusions that the council is going to finally ban horses today, but the new twist is the bill “replacing horse drawn carriages with alternative fuel powered classic cars.” This measure, supported by PETA, seems to have for everyone: classic cars for the old, alternative fuel for the young. If you’re going to have a fanciful, anachronistic vehicle sucker tourists into rides around Central Park, why use futuristic, unspecified fuel? Ever dour, the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages says the horseless carriage plan does leave one key stakeholder out: the horses. They worry that if the bill passed, it would make no provisions that the 200 or so current carriage pullers wouldn’t end up at slaughter houses in Mexico or Canada, where many unwanted U.S. horses are increasingly dispatched. Right now the horse owners have to tell the city which horses they have, but but not what happened to the ones no longer there. The coalition says their bill is the only one (of three potential laws) that Keep reading Will NYC Replace Horse-Drawn Carriages With Cars Powered By Manure?  Update: 1010 Wins has amazing video of the coyote giving cops the slip around 23rd Street around 3 a.m. last night. That means he headed south instead of his usual north. Cops chased him–while someone shouted Let him go! Let him go! Then he was spotted heading back up to 57th Street, probably the Hallett Nature Preserve, where he’s been sleeping in Central Park. The coyote (really a coywolf) continues to prowl around Central Park, despite what he hear are efforts to trap and euthanize him. I went up to Central Park last night to catch a glimpse. I got nothing. But Bruce Yolton tracked him out of the Hallett Nature Preserve, where he sleeps during the day, and through a circuitous path of the lower park, avoiding people. I called the Department of Environmental Conservation, but so far haven’t heard back about their plans. The state DEC is trying to capture the coyote and euthanize him to test for rabies, which is infecting raccoons in the northern part of the park, one wildlife rehabilitator told us. Killing an animal is the only sure way to find out quickly whether it has rabies. Or you could just wait and see if he gets sick. This rehabber is qualified to take the coyote in for a quarantine period (10 days) so he wouldn’t have to be killed, but so far the DEC hasn’t given the okay. If someone just so happens to catch the coyote and bring it to Keep reading Is the Noose Closing on the Central Park Coyote? |
SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG
|
|
Copyright © 2024 AnimalTourism News - All Rights Reserved |
|
Recent Comments