By Keith Michael
“Let’s Go!”
I’m thinking, “Spit! Spot!” in the voice of Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, but I don’t say it out loud. Oh, if only a “Spoonful of Sugar” could make “the medicine go down” for Miss Millie with her corgi-advancing-years-arthritis kicking in. Arthritis’s actually kicked Millie in for years now, though the medications do help—and cream cheese is her chaser of choice for the pills.
We head out the door, down the hall, through the foyer, ba-dum-ba-dum down the two stairs, and out onto the street. Millie looks up at me for the treat reward for her accomplishment. “Good girl.” I have an inkling that this morning is going to be the Big Stand. There’s a bird watching tradition known as a Big Sit when one chooses a spot and literally sits there for a given length of time (sometimes 24 hours) and counts the number of species of birds seen and heard—hoping to see and hear more birds than a competitive friend sitting somewhere else. Well, here we are on Perry Street at 8:00 am on a Sunday morning in the frosty morning light, and Millie and I are standing on the sidewalk. Standing.
Right away, the fall triumvirate of Tufted Titmouse, Black-capped Chickadee, and White-breasted Nuthatch make themselves known by their distinctive vocal QR codes. This year, Tufted Titmice seem to be everywhere. And, yes, the plural of one Titmouse, is several Titmice. Right now, there are three or four gallivanting through the treetops. Occasionally I catch a silhouette of their endearing peaked head-crest against the morning light, their mousey gray barely discernible, but mostly I hear their whining, complaining call. Across the street, the namesake chick-a-dee-dee call of a Black-capped Chickadee can be heard from the Willow Oaks. And further toward Greenwich Street I hear the beep beep of a White-breasted Nuthatch, and I can only imagine its acrobatic shenanigans through the street trees.
Millie is standing, still, noticing that there’s a workman leaning against the wall across the street eating his breakfast. (Why is he working on Sunday?) Above, there’s a plastic bag fluttering from a tree branch. (Aren’t plastic bags so passé?) Approaching from the corner is an age-appropriately-eager Golden Retriever puppy. (Should we escape off the sidewalk? Oh, they noticed us too, and are crossing out of our path.) A kayak is being loaded onto the roof of a car. (Really? He’s going out on the water somewhere in this nippy weather?)
It’s Sunday so all the construction is quiet. For a moment, there’s not a car moving, and one can hear the leaves that haven’t forsaken their branches weeks ago gently scratching against each other in the breeze.
Millie takes two, then three, then four steps further west. A marathon. A pile of leaves is beckoning for investigation.I don’t know if the Titmice, collectively called a “banditry” by the way, are following our diminutive western migration, but their calls and activity seem more insistent. Ah. A phalanx of Common Crows passes noisily overhead heading uptown—off to warn the neighborhood of a hawk no doubt. In another moment, the morning circling of pigeons commences and immediately I can see that this is not their routine lazy carousel. It’s as though their flight pattern is on fast-forward, and there, gaining on them is the reason: a long-tailed Cooper’s Hawk has infiltrated their ranks. A solitary pigeon who makes a wrong turn is about to have a very bad day.
Millie is more concerned about the backup beep of a van taking advantage of an empty parking place along “her” spot by the curb. I think that she had already eyed the cobblestone targeted for the morning, and now she will need to readjust her plans.
A small cadre of Robins just flew into the Callery Pear tree in front of our building. In the recent past, Perry and Greenwich Streets were lined with these trees that put on such a spring spectacle with their clusters of white flowers, then carpets of petals after a spring shower. But storms the past several winters have not been kind, and one by one they’ve been brought down. Ours is still holding on and the fall bounty of fruit is what has attracted the Robins. The pea-sized pears are usually not palatable until a strong frost and thaw softens them, but the Robins are picking through them looking for a few less akin to rocks. The rejects are pinging off the parked cars.
Millie pulls me toward the middle of the street. It’s a good thing it’s Sunday morning and there are few cars that might interrupt her. But the sudden move startles a pair of Mourning Doves that were scrounging through the leaves still drifted against the curb on the other side. The wind through their wings as they rise makes a rhythmic whistling sound that is otherworldly.
Above our heads the tap-tap-tap and plummeting whistle of a Downy Woodpecker resounds from the Zelkova tree. With no leaves to impede our view, its black and white checkerboard plumage pops in the morning light.
Millie looks up at me as if to say, “Let’s Go! I really need to rest up for my masked ball appearance at next month’s Bird of the Year Awards 2020.” Perhaps I’m reading too much into the slant of her eyebrows.
Visit keithmichaelnyc.com for links to ALL of my WestView articles, books, photographs, and the latest schedule of New York City WILD! urban adventures in nature outings throughout the five boroughs (currently on hold). Follow me on Instagram @newyorkcitywild for daily photos from around NYC.
