"What hath God wrought?" - Mr. Morse

Plus other dispatches from the almost now

Sep 15, 2024

We telegraph to you from an undislosed location. HINT: It’s somewhere in the ancestral range of puma concolor.

So, more micro-seasons next week. Until then, enjoy this week’s ba-nay-nay bird report, plus a tribute fit for a (mountain) king.

Love & Lions,

- Bird Club Studio

BIRD REPORT

Swainson’s Thrushes and their buffy eye-rings are in McGolrick | Learn how to identify our four common migrating thrushes | 📸: kirk_gardner via iNaturalist

Who’d McGolrick Bird Club notice in situ this week?

American Crow · American Redstart · American Robin · Baltimore Oriole · Bay-breasted Warbler · Black-and-white Warbler · Black-throated Blue Warbler · Black-throated Green Warbler · Blackpoll Warbler · Blue-headed Vireo · Blue Jay · Blue-winged Warbler · Cape May Warbler · Common Grackle · Common Raven · Common Yellowthroat · Downy Woodpecker · Eastern Wood-Pewee · European Starling · Gray Catbird · Hooded Warbler · House Sparrow · Laughing Gull · Magnolia Warbler · Mourning Dove · Northern Flicker · Northern Parula · Ovenbird · Red-eyed Vireo · Rock Pigeon · Rose-breasted Grosbeak · Ruby-throated Hummingbird · Scarlet Tanager · Swainson's Thrush · Veery · Warbling Vireo · Yellow Warbler · Yellow-billed Cuckoo

Q: Hey! Y’all said you’re out of office! How are you writing this? A: eBird data, baby! Use eBird.org to, besides learn about birds, review recent and all-time sightings at virtually any park on earth, via “hotspot” features

List got you feeling like you’re missing the migration gods’ earliest emissaries? For the run of September, join us in McGolrick Park on Tuesday and Friday mornings, when birds are most active, starting around 6:30am. Just show up

Note that many of the above birds were seen wearing their “Female” plumage—what migrating birds of both sexes sport in fall

MICRO-LESSON: CUCKOOS

Go back and reread the bird report’s final entry. Yellow-billed Cuckoo?!

Novice noticers are surprised to discover that not just one, but deus cuckoo species are findable in New York City!

Yellow and Black-billed cucks (let’s reclaim a word hurled by gents no doubt insecure in their own masculinities) venture up from South America every spring, when things warm up ‘round these parts. They summer east of the Rockies and in Texas. They’re not small birds. (About the size of Blue Jays.) They’re pretty freakin’ sweet.

Cuckoos we’re noticing these days, in McGolrick Park and New York City, are heading back to South American wintering grounds.

Yellow-billed Cuckoo by joshl via iNaturalist

Yellow-billed Cuckoo · Though a touch of black adorns its beak-top, the yellow-billed is otherwise true to name. The bird is light on the bottom, warm tan-gray above. Kisses of rufous pink highlight its wings, and can be glimpsed in-flight. Its lo-o-ong tail’s under-feathers are boldly patterned.

Black-billed Cuckoo by Denny via Adobe Stock

Black-billed Cuckoo · Black-billeds are shy and harder to spy than yellows. This bird is white on bottom, warm charcoal on top. Its long tail’s under-feathers look dipped at the tips.

Wanna see one? Try an early morning walk. Or else just try early deep noticing in the biggest park near you

Go cuckoo for all the cuckoos of the western hemisphere

EPITAPH: A MOUNTAIN LION

You’re a thousand times more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a mountain lion. On August 31st, a family of homo sapiens picnicked in lion territory—Woodland Hills, California—and upheld the unluckier end of that statistic.

Mountain lions as we know them began roaming the earth around 5–8 million years ago. They were already in the Americas when humans arrived from Asia, 40,000 years ago. They survived the Late Pleistocene Extinction—our megafauna-murdering ancestors’ original sin.

Yet at any given time, there are only 10-15 mountain lions in the sierras that shred Los Angeles. That’s because millions of humans increasingly fragment and “develop” their ancient territory.

Snarky quotation marks because modern humans, in their weird manner of inhabiting, do ecosystem altering shit, like create ~55 million tons of plastic pollution every year. That’s enough trash to fill an area as big as NYC’s Central Park with waste as high as the Empire State Building.

However disturbing that image seems, consider that it at least implies organization. In reality, humans chaotically loose their carbonic waste on the deepest oceans and the highest mountains and, micro-plastics considered, our softest tissues.

Despite all that, if you can believe it, rangers deemed Woodland Hills’s mountain lion a threat to public safety. They killed him with a rifle.

We honor you, lion-brother. Stalk in peace.