Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Colonial Waterbirds of North Brother Island

They called it North Brother Island, even if it could have been called Typhoid Island after Typhoid Mary was quarantined at the sanitarium there. Now abandoned and strewn with ruins, the Island's a bird sanctuary. I learned this from this week's edition of "The City Concealed," which, sadly and appropriately, contained no live bird footage. Apparently the Egrets, Herons and Ibises that made use of the place a few years ago no longer nest there. More of the mystery here.

It would have been much sadder to watch this if I hadn't somewhat recently seen a Night Heron flying low in Prospect Park just in front of the Lullwater Bridge.

3 comments:

Matthew said...

Your Alpine Brooklyn is a good place to see herons flying back and forth from the Park to Swinburn and Hoffman islands, as well as the swamps and kills of SI and NJ. Also, this year we had green herons nesting in the Lullwater, with some nesting activity possibly in the Peninsula as well.

Robin Morrison said...

Here in Spokane, we're surrounded by lakes and rivers that support great blue herons here and there.

Flying, they mind me of a 1977 blue Cadillac with wings. Slow and stately and somehow incongruous with the slender, crook-necked, spear-nosed, stalk-legged creature one sees wading in the shallows.

nowing

opposite of thening. see: sooning

amarilla said...

Swinburn and Hoffman, I'll have to look those up.

Nowing, that's tricky. Thening comes much more naturally.