Nyc

I hope they don't deal with the bald eagle like they did the coyote. That was a real debacle.
 
When I lived in the City, I spent a lot of time in two of the best-known wild places: Central Park in Manhattan and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.

Van Cortlandt is extensive and abuts Yonkers, so animals can get there from upstate. I've seen fox and wild turkey on the trails. Central Park is in the middle of the big city, but even there you can find raccoons. There was a hawk family raising chicks every year on a Fifth Avenue building across from the park.

(Edit: OK, I just read mete's story, and they opened with Pale Male, still in business. :) The reference to eagles in Inwood is neat. That's the far northern tip of Manhattan, just north of Washington Heights where I grew up.)

As far as birds go, both Central Park and Van Cortlandt are spectacular. NYC is on the flyway, so during migration seasons, the air is full of birds in passage. Both parks have areas difficult to access, with small lakes, reeds, and bushes, so migrating birds stop over, joining the many native species in these safe havens.
 
Lots of critter in Central Park.
I've seen many racoons, rabbits and even saw one of the hawks go after some lady's little dog on the leash :eek:
Oh and there are some HUGE snapping turtles in the rowboat lake too!
 
Over the years, I noticed a big tree just inside the park at 79th & Fifth, where the young hawks would bring their prey (pigeons!) to pluck them before they ate them. You could see a carpet of feathers at the tree's roots.
 
I couldn't read the link? However, I've seen many unexpected forms of wildlife in NYC.

Bats, Hawks, Racoons, Possum, Brown(Decay) snakes, Garter snakes, Frogs, Turtles, Rabbits and most recently what I think was a Bob cat!!!!!

Yes indeed. At the 86 st train station in Brooklyn I was looking for the Racoon I've seen there before. The rail workers will feed it in a bowl sometimes.

Anyway, Looking down the tracks toward 95 st(last stop on R train) I all the sudden see this HUMONGOUS Cat. Like the size of a medium sized dog. No joke.

It has it's ass facing me and it's head is looking back at me. It's ears are long and much pointier than a house cat and it's paws are huge.

I was in complete disbelief and then I noticed it's tail.....STUBBY and mildly fluffy!!! (not long and lean like a house cat)

With light striping and long long wiskers!

I thought I was imagining it but it was real. Then the train was moving from the other direction and it took off into the dark.

I look everytime I'm out that wasy now with camera phone in hand.

Amazing...
 
Esav Benyamin said:
And that's not even counting what's on the city streets.



Don't feed the animals! :D
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Turkeys in NYC are Carnivorous...always trying to eat the Foxes around NYU. Then again, in some places teh Foxes naturally eat the Turkeys....eh NYC is full of animals...;)
 
RDT head over to the Golf Course by the VA hospital that's where most of the Raccoon's,Possums and Turkeys are hideing out and if you look on the telepone poles you'll see the Parrot Condo's:)
 
I forgot about the flock of parrots that live (somewhere) behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I've also seen alot of pheasants in the cemetaries bordering Forest Park in Queens as well.

A couple of years ago there was a tiger in Glendale, Queens...but he escaped from the circus :D
 
Ebbtide said:
I forgot about the flock of parrots that live (somewhere) behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Many years ago I saw a flock of parrots by Turtle Pond, next to the Delacorte. Lots of open space for them all through that area, practically in sight of the MMA.
 
That's the spot.
And a coupla bunnies lived right at the foot of Belvedere Castle.
Amazing place...Central Park.
 
Had Raccoons & Possums in my neighborhood in Queens.
Funny sight parking the car in the lot under my building to see a Possum hanging on the chain link fence right by my driver's side window- staring at me while I was waiting for the garage door to open...
 
The biggest critters to be seen while driving by are the ones lying still on the grass in Owls Head park facing the BQE. :eek: :eek: :eek: ;)

N.
 
Owl's Head Park [aka Bliss Park, the old Bliss estate] -I lived a couple of blocks from there. I saw my first Great Horned Owl in that area as a kid ,face to face 8' away ! In those days the books said they weren't found in urban areas ! But look at a map of Brooklyn and Queens , there are lots of parks and cemetaries were a large supply of mice and other things are there for the GHO....There is a weird religious group that for many years has put things into the Prospect Park Lake so you can find anything there .
 
mete said:
Owl's Head Park [aka Bliss Park, the old Bliss estate] -I lived a couple of blocks from there. I saw my first Great Horned Owl in that area as a kid ,face to face 8' away ! In those days the books said they weren't found in urban areas ! But look at a map of Brooklyn and Queens , there are lots of parks and cemetaries were a large supply of mice and other things are there for the GHO....There is a weird religious group that for many years has put things into the Prospect Park Lake so you can find anything there .
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Mete, 100% right on. As a teen my friends would go to Owl's head (bliss Park) from Sunset Park(only roaches, rats and crackheads) and do what teenagers do. There were all sorts of birds in that park. I've heard of Owl's there but never seen one. But I've seen Quail there years back and for a few years there were escaped Parrots living in the Huge tree's just along the Belt Parkway section of the park. These two huge Red Parrots all the way on top and I guess creating a nest. They survived atleast a few winters but after about 2 or 3 years they disappeared. Or maybe I just stopped looking.
 
The parrots made the news, again ...

They are the wild parrots of Brooklyn, these emerald-feathered yakkers with the wisenheimer sense of humor. Thought to be long-ago escapees from a container at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their ranks replenished by unauthorized releases from pet shops, the parakeets -- originally from Argentina -- have become accomplished city dwellers. There is a parrot colony along the Hudson River cliffs in New Jersey and another bunch that prefers Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Of late, two arrivistes have taken up residency on an apartment ledge on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

But mostly these are Brooklyn parrots, content in their adopted borough of 2.5 million people.

"They are successful Brooklynites, in that they are adaptable, eat a wide variety of foods and like to talk," says Eleanor Miele, a professor at Brooklyn College who lives in the Park Slope neighborhood and has found herself entranced by the parrots.

New York has many wild critters, and a few are not human. A coyote wandered into Central Park before running afoul of sunbathers, and the hawks Pale Male and Lola established aeries on a gilded stretch of Fifth Avenue. Raccoons know their way around Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and muskrats poke at the mud flats of the Harlem River.

But the parrots -- which are about a foot long and are known as monk parakeets because their gray chests and tufts resemble a monk's skullcap and frock -- are among the city's more cacophonous and unexpected residents. Their cry sounds like metal scraping metal. (San Francisco has parrots-in-residence on Telegraph Hill. And Chicago has a broad-shouldered, loud-squawking crew that has been called "Hells Angels with wings.")
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The entire article can be found at this link Parrots Have Colonized the Wilds of Brooklyn in the Washington Post. (Whaddabout da New York Times? Bums.)
 
I was talking to a friend in the Poconos about birds when the woman, with great reluctance , mentioned having seen a green bird and asked if she had been mistaken ! I said that was a monk parrot and explained where they were from and that they had adapted to their new environment !! She was VERY relieved !
 
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