![]() “It’s not like there’s some plague wiping them out,” he tells me, “but I’m a typical neurotic Roz Chast New Yorker, always asking ‘what are they taking away now?’” By ‘they,’ I infer, he means the uncaring society that promotes fossil fuels, grows plastic bag islands, and heats the Earth into a primordial stew with no regard for the disappearance of species-human and animal alike. Steve Baldwin, parrot aficionado and a volunteer leader of monthly bird safaris since 2005, will be my guide, and he’s perturbed when I arrive: He hasn’t spotted the parakeets lately. My Aunt Caroline is buried in the cemetery, and I’ll visit the grave, but I’m there also to see monk parakeets. ![]() Peterson’s book is on my mind when I reach Green-Wood one chilly December morning in 2018. At home, I’d follow raccoons and squirrels, so although I did not become a birder, I did fall for wildlife in all its iterations. I built houses of twigs and moss for chipmunks. Along with birds, there were bears, salamanders, and trout to discover. In Pennsylvania, where I sometimes went in the summer, I fell for black-capped chickadees, tufted titmouse, scarlet tanagers, American goldfinch, and the knocking sounds of busy downy woodpeckers. And, as an only child, I admit to hankering for an African grey parrot to chat with. ![]() Peterson’s book helped me think in specifics (black or white tipped wings?) and actions (above the water, ready for the plunge). I took notes on what I spotted: sparrows (drab), pigeons (aggressive), red-breasted robins (sweet), and blue jays (thieves, but beautiful). When I was a child growing up in the Bronx, a treasured copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s 1947 edition of A Field Guide to the Birds: Eastern Land and Waterbirds accompanied me into parks and woods. So it is that at Green-Wood Cemetery, 478 acres of glacier-carved hills, lakes, and grandiose tombstones tucked in between Park Slope and Sunset Park, the final resting place of Boss Tweed, Leonard Bernstein, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, a brood of monk parakeets have built themselves a hermitage among the dead. Whatever their origin, the monk parakeets and their descendants settled in outer-borough New York, more than 500 of them fashioning as many as two hundred nests. The flock in the box at JFK got free.Ī rather juicier origin story tells of divorce revenge: When a court awarded a New York couple’s pet store to the husband, the ex-wife took her key, opened the store and released the parakeets, whose value had been calculated in their beauty, intelligence and ability to mimic the human voice. When that program failed, the parakeets-more than sixty thousand of them-were rounded up and sent to America to sell in pet stores as exotic fauna. The Argentinian government had implored farmers there to kill what it saw as agricultural pests, and to send in the dead birds’ feet as proof of their demise. In the 1960s, so one story goes, a crate from Argentina unloaded from a cargo plane at Kennedy Airport was opened by a mob underling-and out flew a flock of green monk parakeets. Great britian hates out gray squirrels introduced there, as they compete with the native red squirrels and a bounty has been placed on gray squirrels on the mother isle that outlaws fox hunting.įailure to check a trap often, whether set legally or illegally, is unethical and cruel.This is Sidewalk Naturalist, a new monthly column by Lenora Todaro which offers a portrait of New York City through its wildlife citizens, whose lives tell us something about the way we live in the fragile ecosystem that is the city today. Squirrels are the most sought after game animal in the southeast US. Squirrels are most often responsible for fires and other home damage. ![]() If you get scratched or bitten by a squirrel you will need to get rabies shots. Usually a disgruntled neighbor, wife or girlfriend sides with the squirrel for a taste of revenge. The stories of NJ homeowners terminating squirrels are recorded by the legion with no good conclusion as all end up as perps. Squirrels ahve great homing instincts by the way. In any case there are hundreds of violators who trap and release squirrels across NJ. You will neeed a lawyer, the DEP, SPCA, PETA and the EPA to figure out what is legal and then make a determination if it makes sense.only in NJ. See the fish and game regs that were re-written from a simple paragraph.
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