Yon and Thither

By Keith Michael

A COMMON TERN looking for his next meal in Hudson River Park. Photos by Keith Michael.

Due to some inexplicable warp in the space-time continuum, I keep spelling summer: “g-a-l-a-v-a-n-t-i-n-g.” I don’t know how it happens. It may be an aphasic condition. I wake up. Scroll through messages. Drink my daily dose of two cups of coffee. Blink. And there I am.

I might find myself at Fort Tilden, Queens sitting in the sand right outside the Piping Plover nesting barriers, hoping for a view of the diligent parents and their remaining chick. That “remaining” alludes to the rending drama of their having lost two other chicks to the vicissitudes of the weather or predation. No Amber Alert buzzed on my phone.

Or Plumb Beach, Brooklyn calls, “Hello? Come out to see the Horseshoe Crabs crawling up on the beach at high tide to mate/hook-up/whatever and lay their eggs.” Though only a miniscule few of those gazillion, pinhead-sized eggs will hatch and fewer of the pinhead-sized larval crabs will survive the 12 years it takes to mature until they too can return and continue the cycle of, oh, the last 350 million years or so.

Maybe I’ll be walking the Bronx River Greenway from West Farms, with the scenic waterfall at the southern vista of the Bronx Zoo, all the way through Soundview Park to the mouth of the Bronx River in Long Island Sound. Along the amble there are brilliant green Monk Parakeet fledglings screaming for breakfast, swirling masses of Menhaden (the abundant fishy middle of the food chain) a sadly dissolving Cass Gilbert train station, skittering Italian Wall Lizards disturbed from their sunbathing, and Herons and Egrets and Cormorants, oh my.

CICADAS out to “make a noise” in Illinois.

Year after year, the Manhattanhenge-frenzy snags me. I elbow myself in among the other countless paparazzi on the 42nd Street Tudor City Bridge. Waiting, sometimes for hours, for those few brief seconds when the sun sets at the western end of Manhattan’s unforgiving 1811 street grid plan. Little did those Commissioners realize, over 200 years ago, what excitement their real estate grab would incite.

Snap. I’m in Champaign, Illinois for the Cicada-pocalypse! Not since 1803 have the mega 13- and 17-year periodic cicada broods emerged at the same time. Billions of these thumb-sized insects crawl out of the ground for their brief fling in the light to make a cataclysmic racket and, crazy me, I want to be there to see and hear them. I thought it would be easier, but after miles of searching, I was immersed in that deafening onslaught of nature, akin to the urban spine-chilling screech of waiting on the Union Square #6 platform. But the cicadas are 100% natural and, yes, I was there.

AN ATLANTIC PUFFIN in Maine, ready for his closeup.

Blink. I’m on a 16-person skiff off the coast of Maine bouncing on the waves toward a US/Canadian island to see Puffins! These charismatic, orange-billed avian clowns live most of their lives on the open ocean but come to northern islands in the summer to nest in burrows to raise their chicks—another extreme life strategy. But, here I am. Puffins strutting, clamoring, posing, fretting, courting, napping, sometimes too close to take their social-media-ready portraits.

Slap. I’m back in the West Village, lollygagging in Hudson River Park on the Christopher Street Pier 45 when a sleek Common Tern alights on the railing. This agile white bird with a rakish black cap and red bill probably weights about as much as your morning muffin. But already today, this diminutive creature has flown five or ten times the distance of your morning run, plunge-diving for tiny fish to take back one at a time to a gaping toddler on Governors Island. In the fall, both this efficient parent and its grown toddler will zig and zag 10,000 miles to southern Argentina for the winter. All while we’re contemplating whether to walk to the store or order in.

A LITTLE BLUE HERON showing off his summer finery in Ocean City, NJ.

Tomorrow? Eagles on Staten Island? Nesting Herons, Egrets, and Ibises in Ocean City, NJ? Early migrating shorebirds at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens? Checking one more time for nesting Marsh Wrens in the new flourishing salt marsh on the north side of the HRP Gansevoort Peninsula? Wherever time, the weather, and my wherewithal shall guide me—that’s where I’ll be.

I might just have time to catch the B train to Sheepshead Bay to board the American Princess for Humpback Whalewatching.

Keith Michael is a West Villager, birder, urban naturalist, photographer, writer, and ballet choreographer, and leads nature walks throughout the NYC area. Visit http://www.keithmichaelnyc.com or follow @newyorkcitywild on Instagram.