Club George: The Diary of a Central Park Birdwatcher - Hardcover

Chapter One

 
Welcome to the Club
 
The second of June was a cozily warm, gloriously sunny, summer New York City Sunday. It was the kind of day when the brilliant sunlight makes the scrawniest trees and sootiest buildings glisten. Even the gloomiest people seem to glow. Somehow the intense light brings out the beauty in the natural and unnatural worlds when logic says it should throw a spotlight on their faults.
 
I was in one of the best possible places to enjoy such a day in the Big Apple. In Central Park I stood on a wooden dock that juts out into a small hourglass shaped pond. It is surrounded by lush plantings of shrubs, grasses, flowers and trees. A fifty-five acre meadow that accommodates eight softball fields with ample space to spare for a multitude of picnickers opens on its northern shore. A stone castle set on top of a sheer cliff is the second highest point in the park. It overlooks a tiny island that dominates the southwest corner. By any standards it's one of the most picturesque spots in the park and had been one of my favorites long before the events described in my tale transpired.
 
On this particular day I was having a chat with Michael, a new acquaintance. He is an accountant by profession and a naturalist and arts enthusiast by inclination. Michael enjoys sharing his knowledge. He was in the midst of explaining to me that the most common turtles inhabiting the pond, the Mississippi Red-eared Sliders, are not native residents but instead are abandoned pets, when a male Red-winged Blackbird landed on the top of the wooden fence, a bird-blind, to our right. This bird perched, on a two-by-six plank, a foot and one-half above our heads and two feet in front of us. As Michael went on to tell me what he knew of the large Snapping Turtles that hunt and breed here, the Red-winged Blackbird began to loudly call "chek" repeatedly and then to sing "konk-la-ree" in an even louder voice. Still vocalizing, the bird raised his wings away from his body. This posture accentuated the display of his scarlet wing patches edged with pale yellow. The patches themselves appeared to literally stand up as if being raised by a charge of static electricity. The theatrical bird was distracting us from our conversation, but we persisted. So did the Red-winged Blackbird. He began to run back and forth still keeping his wings up and away from his torso flaunting his flaming red epaulets and singing passionately. Michael and I kept talking to each other but our eyes became fixed on the bird. After a while I realized that we had begun shouting so we could hear each other over the raucous Red-winged Blackbird.
 
The bird's singing became so insistent that I began asking Michael to repeat every word he said. I was a bit annoyed, a bit amused and more than a bit surprised by the bird's behavior. When I felt I could no longer act nonchalantly about the situation I said to Michael, using an appropriate New Yorkese expression, "What is it with this bird, anyway?" To which Michael matter-of-factly replied, "Oh, that's George" as if that was all the explanation required for my understanding of the creature's behavior. "What do you mean, oh that's George?" I said. "Are you telling me you know this wild bird and that you call him George?" Michael did not offer detailed verbal clarification. Instead he gave a practical demonstration. "Watch this," he said, as he tore off a piece of a roll he had in his hand. He held the bread up to the top of the fence and said, "Come on, George." The Red-winged Blackbird immediately fell silent, let his wings fall to his sides and rapidly walked along the top of the fence toward Michael's hand. The bird gingerly took the bread from Michael's fingers and flew off to the nearby island where he landed on a rock and ate his food.
 
This was how George introduced himself to me.
 
I do not remember what I said next, but I do remember laughing and feeling more than a little astonished. "George is famous," Michael explained. "He will be back soon." In ten minutes George was back stridently singing his "konk-la-ree" Red-winged Blackbird tune and flaunting those scarlet epaulets. I asked Michael if he thought George might take food from my hand. He saw no reason why he would not. I got a bit of Michael's roll and held it up for the bird. In an instant George rushed toward me and took the bread in his beak and sped off to the island again. This put a smile on my face that I could not wipe off for the next hour. I did not know it at the time, but it marked the beginning of a relationship and a heightening of my awareness of the natural world. Gradually, I would come to understand that I had been given an invitation to join a special club and by giving George an offering I had unconsciously accepted the invitation. I had become a charter member of Club George without knowing it.
 
What is it about this encounter that affected me so? Unquestionably, I was astounded that a wild animal had interacted and communicated with me. His dramatic audiovisual display had commandeered my attention. Once he had it, he delivered not so much a message, as a demand. George did not offer a timid, "Polly wants a cracker," but a forceful, "Hey buddy, feed me" instead.
 
The location of this encounter intensified the impact it had on me. The fact that it happened in a city park in the middle of one of the most densely populated and developed areas in the world made it all the more startling. Though still implausible, it seemed to me that this would have been more likely to happen in a sparsely inhabited area where one would have expectations to come into contact with wild animals. But then Central Park does have relatively more wildlife than its immediate surroundings. It is a virtual lifeboat for creatures of the natural world that are surrounded by a man-made sea of concrete and steel. It is home for numerous species of birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians and spiders that have few places as hospitable to inhabit. It is also the temporary home to dozens more bird species during their spring and fall migration. Though it was not its creators' principal intention, Central Park is a strategically placed haven for birds to rest, feed and even raise offspring as they move along the Atlantic migratory route stretching from Canada to South America.
 
Because its geography attracts migrating birds Central Park is known as a "migrant trap" to birders around the world. The Central Park Conservancy boasts that the park is "one of the top fifteen bird-watching sites in the entire United States."1 Marie Winn, science writer for the Wall Street Journal, author, translator and bird-watcher, quotes bird expert Roger F. Pasquier as having named the park "one of America's fourteen great bird-watching locales."2 Marie is pretty fond of it herself. David Allen Sibley, author and artist of several avian works, ranks the park along with Cape May, New Jersey, and the Monterey Peninsula in California as one of the three top bird-watching spots in North America.3 Other experts might argue that there are geographical sites that offer many more species, rare species or larger numbers of a specific species. Some say ranking locations is inherently futile because the results can vary depending on which of those different criteria I mentioned are used. Perhaps the issue is best put into perspective by the American Bird Conservancy, which has this to say on the subject.
 
Urban green areas--such as city parks and cemeteries--are often the only spots for migrant birds to alight for miles around. Surrounded by roads and buildings, they offer at least temporary respite during the long journey north or south, and birds head for them by the thousands. Resident species tend to be few, but at two seasons of the year a sharp observer can find scores of...