The quintessential city Park at its most quintessential

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, natural science, naturalists, parks, animals

This book could not have been written twenty or thirty years ago. Oh, many of the same stories might be told, and most of the animal dramas have gone on for many years. But it would be worth your life to be there to observe them. I recall a family friend who attended a family wedding in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970s. A bunch of us were walking from the restaurant back to the hotel, and someone suggested a shortcut through a park. This friend, who now lived in Manhattan, declined, saying, "I'm from New York. There's no way I'm going through a park after dark!" And in New York, in the 1970s, she was right. Even by day, Central Park could be a death trap.

Things have changed. By 1995 it was quite a bit safer to visit Central Park, even at night. Marie Winn and others have been watching the wildlife in Central Park for a number of years, and by 1995 they began to hazard evening and night visits, particularly to see moths, bats and owls. She records some of these adventures in Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife. The "more" in the subtitle follows her prior book, Red-Tails in Love, which chronicled the first pair of red-tailed hawks to successfully nest and raise young atop a building near the Park.

When the author began birdwatching in Central Park, more than twenty years ago, she little thought it would lead to midnight moth-watching expeditions, pre-dawn "fly-out" vigils, voyeurism of slug sex, or being bitten by the "rescue fantasy" bug while watching owlets take their lumps as they fledged. Central is a big park. At 843 acres, or about 1.3 square miles, it is big enough to hide the City from you when you are almost anywhere in its midst.

It is also big enough to host quite a variety of wildlife. According to the Central Park Conservancy, more than 240 bird species have been seen here, and about half of these can be found nesting here. There are also several species of bat, quite a few other mammals (not just rats), and perhaps 10,000 species of moth.

It's the moths that brought about the Central Park Mothers (rhymes with Authors), a moth-watching group that, of necessity, had to carry out their activities after dark. There are very few day-flying moths. They began with a sheet and a battery-powered black light, but soon found that bait works best. The Moth Tree, an elm with a mild fungus disease, seeped sweet sap, which attracted moths by the hundreds. Their favorites were the large underwing moths, species with colorful hind wings, usually having big eye spots. These moths flash the eyespots when disturbed, which will startle a predator and give the moth a running head start to escape. Moth stories take up a third of the book.

But the author doesn't just tell animal stories. She has learned a lot of science and lore over the years, and imparts it with relish, using writing that is to be relished. For example, about ring-necked pheasants:

There may have been pheasants in Central Park in the earliest years: an 1878 article in Harper's Monthly mentions a pheasant 'scurrying through the shrubbery' of the Ramble. But an 1886 survey of Central Park bird life did not include pheasants among the 121 species it listed. Perhaps during that period of eight years they all ended up on dinner tables…the pheasant was absent from Central Park until April 30, 1972, when a number of birdwatchers ran into one in the Ramble.

The author has also, at various times, been a member of the Woodlands Advisory Board, a consortium of members of the Conservancy and of the community. After an ill-advised move to remove the hawk nest from atop the nearby building, there was quite an outcry. Since that time, the hawks have been allowed to rebuild their nest, and quite a number of other red-tailed hawks have adopted city skyscraper life. (In a story the author doesn't tell, Peregrine falcons are also to be found nesting atop skyscrapers)

The book's closing chapters chronicle the introduction of screech owls to the Park, ending with a few sightings that indicate their successful integration. The members of the Woodlands Advisory Board originally opposed the project, noting that the owls had been absent from the park since about 1950. A later project by the author indicated, indeed established, that a combination of owl habits and human drivers' habits made screech owls' long-term habitation of the park very unlikely.

Screech owls eat insects, and most of the tastiest ones fly 2-4 feet above ground (very roughly, a meter). The owls begin hunting by dropping from a tree to this level, flattening out their flight path, and swooping along just at the "ideal" altitude to get smacked by cars on one of Central Park's drives. The timing of their earlier disappearance coincides clearly with the era in which cars were first allowed to go faster than 25 mph on Park roads.

But the introduced screech owls, in spite of a high level of auto mortality, have so far reproduced and spread throughout the Park. Maybe they are learning to fly a little higher! In time, this may lead to a new subspecies of screech owl. What it most certainly lead to is a great motivation for subsequent generations to continue watching the birds and beasts of Central Park, by day or by night.