Somewhere Else

By Keith Michael

Ping. Manhattan Rare Bird Alert: 10:32 am. “Golden-winged Warbler—West 12th Street, between Washington and Greenwich Streets, mid-block.”

Fantastic. What a remarkable bird for the West Village, a new West Village Bird for me, and only a few blocks from my front door! Oh, and it’s a very, very pretty bird. But. I’m on the A Train, pulling into Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn on my way to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens hoping to see an American Avocet. Uh, what to do? Get off and go back or stay? Train stopping. Doors opening.

A Golden-winged Warbler is such a peripatetic bird, rare, declining, and difficult to track down despite its safety-yellow cap and the namesake yellow flashes on its wings. I’ve taken pilgrimages to Sterling Forest in Tuxedo Park, New York to see them. These birds require serious searching even for their nesting territory. Taking a rest stop on a city street while migrating, this fellow is probably high up in the trees, nearly impossible to get a view of him out of the shade or without dodging traffic. Doors closing.

Ping. 10:42 am. “On the bird now from the street. Same spot. Low in the branches. Beautiful male.”

Ugh. Next stop Nostrand Avenue. At JBWR, there’s been an American Avocet scavenging on the edge of the West Pond for a few days. This is one of the classiest shorebirds to pass through New York City. Far from being a small, skittering, confusingly brown bird, the Avocet is a tall, black-and-white super-model with a peachy head and neck, and a dramatically up-swooped bill. It walks with long, runway strides, swishing its bill back and forth through the water to catch whatever delicacies lie submerged in the muck. The doors have opened and closed.

By not making a decision, I guess I’ve decided to stay on track for chasing the Avocet rather than the Warbler. Rationally, the Golden-winged will likely have deserted West 12th Street by the time I got back there, and since the Avocet has already stuck around for several days, it’s more likely to still be gracing the shoreline in Queens. Contrariwise, the Avocet may have already left as well and I’ll possibly miss both birds. Sigh.

When I first started birding nearly 20 years ago, I deliberately tried to slow down the tempo from my work-a-day persona by concentrating on where I was instead of where I thought I ought to be. Yes, I picked birding destinations based on what birds I thought I’d likely see there, but after that, I liked that it was up to the birds’ schedules to show up or not. That oxymoronic convergence of planning and happenstance is what got me hooked on birding. Birds’ elusiveness adds to their beauty.

After the rest of the A Train ride to Rockaway Boulevard, the Q53 bus down Cross Bay Boulevard to the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, and confirming with a ranger at the Nature Center that the Avocet was still being seen, I head out along the West Pond Trail. Of course, I scan the south salt marsh for Egrets, Herons, Terns, and Ospreys. Check. Before the first bend in the trail, I switch to scanning the distant edge of the West Pond. Almost immediately, just as reported: there it is. The lanky, elegant Avocet is weaving among the loafing geese, ducks, a few snoozing sandpipers, and, most surprisingly, a raccoon! Frankly, it’s very far away. Seen but unsatisfying views.

Scrolling through myriad rare bird alerts does direct one to seeing a parade of newsworthy birds. However, succumbing to all those postings through the diligence of hundreds of NYC birders does take away from the excitement of finding a bird on your own. Now, running into a birding friend on a trail, nearly the first question asked is, “Are you here for the…?” or “Did you see the…?” They already “know.” The pursuit is so often muddled by pining for somewhere else rather than discovering the unknowns of where you are.

With no new news on the Golden-winged Warbler, even though it’s hot I keep heading around the West Pond after a binoculared person tells me that they’d just seen Hummingbirds at the Trumpet Vine flowers at the northeast corner of the trail. Hummingbirds are always entertaining, and high-end concentration is needed to photograph them. There’s a cluster of photographers already there, huddling in the shade. We wait. And wait. There’s a brief skirmish overhead. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are feisty, territorial demons, and they’ll expend surprising amounts of energy defending prime real estate. At last, one comes close by to explore the bright orange flowers. Click. Click. Click. Five seconds. Gone. It’s been an hour and a half. The other photographers pack up to leave. I’ll stick it out a little longer. Nope. Those five seconds were all I’m going to get today. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow.

Still no updates about the Golden-winged Warbler. I head back toward home.

Ping. 5:50 pm. “Bird is here.”

You’ve got to be kidding! I’m already enroute to meet someone for dinner. Well, maybe that Golden-winged Warbler will like the West Village so much that he’ll stay overnight and still be here in the morning. Or, he’ll be off to somewhere else until spring.