Another week, another Japanese micro-season. Unlike the slavish quarters of labor hours so upheld by corporate humanoids, micro-seasons are straight from source, the great unity, the god-babe herself: Mama Natura. Current Japanese micro-season (out of 72!): 葭始生, or first reeds sprout. As for McGolrick Park, New York City and perhaps even larger swathes of the eastern US, we notice—
MICRO-SEASONINGS
Butterflies appear • Greeeeen • First push of Kinglets • First Yellow-rumped Warblers • First Black-and-white Warblers • First Blue-headed Vireos • Flocks of Laughing Gulls • London planes sprout • First push of men in shorts • Hibernating tattoos reappear
Did we miss anything? We’ll declare this micro-season’s “official” name at year’s end.
We noticed butterfly species Red Admirals and American Painted Ladies
This micro-season’s kinglet species are the US’s only two: Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned. These tiny birds are found all over the country. They seemed to arrive in McGolrick Park on the same sunny morning <3
By “push” we just mean findable en masse after being absent since fall
APRIL 20, 2024 — SATURDAY
Conditions: Overcast · Attendance: 72 hotties at peak · Vibrations: High (!) Elevated
Saturday birds: Black-and-white Warbler · Ruby-crowned Kinglet · Laughing Gull (flyover) · Double-crested Cormorant (flyover) · Yellow-bellied Sapsucker · Red-bellied Woodpecker · Downy Woodpecker (mating)· Northern Flicker · Blue Jay · American Crow · White-throated Sparrow · Common Grackle · Northern Cardinal … And the virtually always present in urban parks: Rock Pigeon, European Starling, American Robin, House Sparrow, Mourning Dove — learn these last 5 birds and you’ll be set to notice less-commoners.
Shoutout: Maya and Stephen for dueting the final Warbler Gauntlet. (Prizes to come.) 22 memorized birds, 70 impressed onlookers, one foolish host doing a bad jig to “Gimme More”—Coachella who, amirite?
MICRO-LESSON: BUTTERFLIES
The sudden appearance of butterflies has us itching for intros. (They’re like sooo pretty … Tell them we like them.)
Your correspondent reviewed iNaturalist to identify the four butterbabies most reported in, and perhaps common to, our 9-acre papillon petri dish. Went googling for pithy facts too. Here are the results:
Red Admirals arrive to NYC in spring. Though Russians have called them The Butterfly of Doom, Nabakov liked them. They often perch on humans.
Monarchs won’t be around until summer, when “third wave migrants” continue a journey their dead grandparents started*. Shoutout gardeners Lauren C. and Alex K. (emeritus) for tending our park’s monarch powering milkweed.
Mourning Cloaks, in self-defense, can join together in a “perch” and fly menacingly towards their attackers—most often birds or other butterflies.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtails live about 15 days. After encountering that unbelievable fact, we googled on to discover that most butterbabies only live a few weeks!
Wow, Earth Mother. You really (😐) are (🥲) something (🤘😭).
*Monarch migration is incredible, and incredibly well summarized here
Explore Greenpoint butterfly sightings here
There are approximately 750 species of butterflies in the United States. For comparison, there are some 17,500 species known in the world. All U.S. butterflies types are reviewable here
ON NOTICE
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Among the thrushes and warblers and tanagers and vireos flying towards New York City right about now are Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. So keep your animal senses turned up for them in McGolrick over the next few weeks. Bit of lore: at the first MBC meet, on 4/29/23, attendees heard then saw a “cut-throat,” as they’ve been called.
Rose-breasted Grosbeaks sound like drunk Robins
‘Member last micro-season’s types talk? Check out the US’s 5 Grosbeak species—especially their looks and ranges
Ditto for tanagers and vireos
UPDATES, ANNOUNCEMENTS, REQS
🚨WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO🚨
Calling all early-worms and later-birds! For the run of May, in addition to our usual Saturday, 9am walks, we’ll host McGolrick Bird Club sessions
Saturdays at 3:30pm (‘til whenever)
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. These ~hourlong sessions will start at 6:30am. As Mary O. says: start the day in happiness, in kindness
Also! A few free, near-flung Sunday Walks coming up:
Update — Baddies Bianca Bello, Alysa “Not weird enough” Lechner and Parker correctly noticed last week’s buildings IRL. Prizes comin’ your ways
Lastly — From April 26 - 29, for the City Nature Challenge, turn your twitter fingers into critter fingers, your tweeter fingers into Demeter fingers, and log as many McGolrick Park floral and faunal specimens as you can. Biggest MBC contributor gets a prize
