"Where else can you get a half a million things,
All at a quarter to three", sang Huey Lewis and the News, about New York.
Our summer of 2005 was spent at New York, and besides the wonderful times with our family there, I have very happy memories of Central Park. It was my first chance encounter with birding as well.
In Madras, one has to live near the beach, and in New York you have to be around Central Park!
We arrived, just at the end of the winter, and as we drove in and through the park, the winter brown was contrasted with this lovely burst of yellow.
In a fortnight, though, it was different, the lawns were green, and the trees too, and New Yorkers just hung out taking in the sun. So did we.
I remember in the bad old days, we Indians would be terrified of Central Park, and were constantly told how innocent Indians would definitely get mugged there. During my previous visit I was given strict instructions by my mother not to wander alone in the park!
Then came the flowers, and the tulips, in colours to take our breath away. I went crazy and kept clicking away, I remember. Digicams zindabad!
My son, ten years at that time and I would hang around the conservatory pond, where you could rent a remote-controlled sailboat, by the hour, and watch it zip across the water as it caught the breeze. Each visit there would be something going on - a wedding party, the horse patrol, and of course the Hans Christian Anderson statue.
What I remember with amusement though is
Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk, which had taken up a nest in one of the buildings across from the park, much to the excitement of local birders. Back then, I had not been introduced to the strange and quixotic world of birders and birding, and was tickled pink to see a Pale Male viewing telescope, set up at the pond! There was a lot of buzz around Pale Male that summer of '05, since the building residents wanted to get rid of the nest, but naturalists and birders united in protest and successfully stalled the operation.
There is also a small boating lake where we came across these turtles, sunning themselves. The whole area is filled with birdcalls generally.
Going through the papers one weekend, my sister-in-law mentioned that there was a morning walk to see the birds of Central Park that Sunday. Out of curiosity, and the thought of another walk around CP, we both went off the next morning, bright and early. I think between us we had two fungus-filled binoculars. And of course, since we were going birding, it had to be a drizzly, overcast morning. (This has been the story of my birding - overcast skies and rain, be it Pulicat, Penchalakona or Central Park!) There was a group of older, white women (we were the 2 oddities there I remember), and our leader was a man (David I think) who had run up a list of some 800+ odd birds seen in his life, and was looking to cross a 1,000 that year. Anyway, off we went through the parks lesser used paths, and every now and then he would stop and point out some lovely bird and there would be oohs and aahs all around, while my sis-in-law and me would squint desperately through our binoculars and not see it most of the time. I think I managed to spot one robin and a wagtail! After a bit of this, the birder could not bear it anymore. He suddenly thrust his binoculars into our hands, and said take a look through this.
It was then that my eyes were opened - quite literally almost - to the beauty of these little birds, and the joys of birding! I resolved to get a good pair of binocs, which my husband eventually indulged me with, before he was also drawn into this pastime, and then we needed 2 pairs. Oh well.
So, to cut a long story short, my new-found interest in the birds can be traced back to that day in Central Park, and to my sis-in-law, I say thank you! There is a
Birds of Central Park site, and also a book called Club George: The Diary of a Central Park Birdwatcher.
Then there was the day we hired bikes and went riding up the Greater Loop, only to get lost, with my son having better navigation skills than me. On top of that, those bikes did not have a conventional brake, you know the kind we have on the handle bar, Instead you have to pedal in reverse to stop the bikes! I shall not go into the details of my undignified cycling, but it definitely kept my son amused.
And how can we forget the Central Park Zoo? More on that, soon, as well as our encounters with Gus, Ida, Breezy and gang.
We did make it!
