For the birds, part II

In a previous post, I mentioned the Red-Tailed Hawks living in and around Washington Square Park.

Yesterday morning, I was out on my bike doing a couple of errands. Returning home by way of Washington Square South, I saw a man with a camera attached to a telescopic lens that must have been at least three feet long and about 10 inches in diameter. Had to be one of the highest-powered lenses I've ever seen. I stopped behind him to see what he was aiming his equipment at. It was one of the hawks, sitting in a nearby tree and quite easily visible to the naked eye. He had a large rodent of some kind, I think a squirrel, which he was in the process of dining on. I stayed to watch, and more onlookers came and joined us, talking and asking one another questions, and taking pictures with their phone cameras. I watched for about fifteen minutes while he finished his meal. It was quite a sight, as he flashed his tail at us, and spread his wings out while positioning himself for better leverage on his prey.

Alas, I didn't have my camera with me. Also the serious photographer was intent on his work and was not answering questions, so I couldn't learn how to find his photos online or in print. But I did find a few blogs and websites dedicated to these hawks (Pip, the female, and Bobby, the male) and others around the city. I have borrowed this shot from the Urban Hawks blog. You can see the prey under his claws in this shot—this is just a mouse, and much smaller than the meal I watched him consume.

Here is another view of Bobby, showing off the feature that gives the species its name.

(photo borrowed from Roger Paw's blog)

This is a really nice shot, with NYU's main building, a.k.a. Hemmerdinger Hall, in the background. That's the big 1895 building that stretches along Washington Square East from Washington Place to Waverly Place. This building replaced NYU's original "Old Main" building, where Walt Whitman had taught poetry. That one was built by prison labor from Sing-Sing, sparking the first labor riot in NYC, the Stonecutters' Riot of 1834. There we have an instance of some un-Civil Disobedience.

Extra-mural project (part 1)

This poem is the main part of my extramural project. I've posted this on Blackboard as well, along with a meta-text or commentary.

And there is a slide show that I presented in class.

You can also access these three elements of the project below:

Read this poem on scribd
read the commentary on scribd
view the slide show on picasa

paint palette world

world seen from a bicycle
riding roads south of Chiang Mai
by the flooding Mae Ping
every place has a spirit house
each home and store and plot of land
tucked near the road
the gleaming new, the tumbledown:
white-washed, stone, or peeling-paint-ed;
golden-hued, flower-strewn,
full of little statue-people
demi-gods & warriors;
elephants & chariots
incense, candy: offerings
in a corner energy hovers, shimmering, but
on the roads bright life holds sway:
deep black Greater Coucal
with rich russet back
Red-whiskered Bulbul with tangerine coverts
Mynahs, Mynahs everywhere
they are the starlings of Thailand
mostly Common but so many
species we might see
Crested, Jungle, Hill, White-vented,
Javan, Collared, Golden-crested;
black splashed bright with
orange and white.
Doves... before I left home
riding up the west side highway along the Hudson
alone atop a double-decker bus
melting in the sun
drying in the breeze
going dead-head from Battery to Times Square
a flash across the road
a belly: cream, tinged tawny rose
tilted in flight to show
the warm, soft, mouse-fur grey-brown back
moist purple-chocolate spots
rounded form but slender slight; delicate, elegant,
diagnose a Mourning Dove.
Here are many doves. One similar to our Mourning
but all exaggerated: smaller and more streamlined,
more spots becoming mottle-stripes:
the Oriental Turtle-Dove
seen on roads & bushes & overhead wires & oddly

in cages, cooing at cousins
who walk oblivious down the road
a Cinnamon Bittern rises from the paddy;
settles slowly in the trees
butterflies abound
pale cold-butter-yellow ones small as a thumbnail
stay close to the ground—less turbulence
among the low-growing flowers perhaps
tiger-colored swallowtails

weave a drunken course through trees
deep purple velvet pair—a hand's-breadth each—
dance a complex minuet in the road
another of conventional size,

black & palest-lavender-white
hangs inverted, twirling slowly,
perfectly splayed as if pinned
in a Victorian curio, from a spider's well-placed
invisible web.
dragonflies, some the size of

hummingbirds (or perhaps not quite)

in varying tones of earth and light
from deep rich scarlet
of just-spilled blood to warm rust brown to
surprising incandescent chartreuse
follow down the road, confounding the sense

of distance and of size:
perspective
Certain, quite certain, I saw the stripy belly of a Cuckoo

half-hidden among the leaves
so many species of Cuckoo so common so many
places I've been & sought them
and heard them, but never a sure
sighting to tick off on the life-list. Passed
a sign: skystone storm forest home
a legend, myth, fairy-tale place right here
who lives there?
a Drongo, I think I saw, with three long tail-
feather shafts; a squarish pendant on
the shorter, center one. Certain of what I saw,
but it's not in the book. So much for certainty.
Never ever rely upon your certainty.
Bright new temples and old ones made new
every entrance flanked by twinned
Nagas, the chaos-serpent-guardians;
some garish to my eye (accustomed to

the gloomy romance of old
gothic stone) fresh white paint
mirrored tiles: clear, blue, green, red
gilded dragons overhead
on eaves and balustrades
tinkling bells hang from corners of broad
roofs but there are delicate carved-wood doors &
one's extensive muraled walls
tells stories: the devouring giant,
emerald green; the saving giant bird,
rose-gold, driving down the sky with gods
on its back and
who, by vanquishing, saves.
the temples accommodate, encompass,
what comes before and around them
the spirit houses are not Buddhist but the temples
have them and
sometimes the spirit houses
have spirit houses

Maddy's Take on the World

Nature Meets Man Made

This is the portfolio of art that I mentioned in an email to y'all.

Here's a sample of the work:

Treesouls

Here is a photo I shot last week, of one of a series of sculptures by Alison Saar currently on display in Madison Square Park through December 31. This is one of the Treesouls (1994) that accompany the series Faellan and Fallow, commissioned for the Park.

Treesouls is based on, or inspired by, the myth of Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, abducted by Hades. Her abduction gives rise to the seasons. The piece is constructed, in part, of bronzed tree branches.

The layers of natural-ness / human-altered-ness are fun to think about. I hope to make the time to view these pieces over the course of the next few weeks, and hope to see and photograph them in the changing seasons, to see what impact that will have on the work's resonance. You can read more about it on the Madison Square Conservancy's website, and in Whitewall: Contemporary Art and Lifestyle Magazine.

The Maine Woods

Here are a few pictures from my visit to Moosehead Lake in the summer of 1985 or 86.

This is me, hiking up Mount Kineo.

I don't know whether this was the same Old Town that Thoreau mentions; this one is about 115 miles SSE of Moosehead Lake.

This is a view along the shore of the lake.

And this is a view of Mount Kineo, approaching in a canoe.

Nature in the City: it's for the birds

After class last Wednesday, I had lunch in Greeley Square. That's the little triangle between 32nd & 33rd Streets, and 6th Avenue and Broadway; there is a statue of Horace Greeley at the southern end (he was a contemporary of Emerson and Thoreau, and a very interesting guy; look him up if you're not familiar). The square underwent a thorough and successful overhaul a few years ago, turning it from a desolate, dirty, and dangerous concrete no-man's land into a clean, welcoming caesura in the bustle of midtown, with plantings and seating, and a little café stall.

(stock photo)

I was surprised at the bird life I found there. In addition to the expected cast of characters—Pigeons,House Sparrows, and

Starlings—there were a few other species not normally seen in the city except in larger wooded areas such as Central, Prospect, or Van Cortlandt Parks, or other more rural regions.

(stock photo)

There were a good number of White-Throated Sparrows, with their distinctive high-pitched thin voice and yellow dot behind the eye.

(stock photo)

More surprising, there were a lot of Gray Catbirds. This guy was sitting on the chair right next to me.

The White-Throats and the Catbirds were much bolder than those I have seen before, coming up to my feet to beg for crumbs along with the other more urbanized species. The Catbird is usually a solitary bird, and a bit wary of humans—not uncommon or hard to see, but hard to get close to—so finding over a dozen of them practically flocking together and perching nonchalantly on the chair next to me was quite unusual.

Then, just as I was getting over my surprise at the unusual number and behaviour of these, I saw a Rufous-Sided Towhee.

Bold patches of color and bright red eyes make him unmistakable. I haven't seen one in years. I'm not certain I've ever seen one in Manhattan, even in Central Park. Not that they are rare in the Northeast, but they are decidedly not urban creatures. Yet here he was, scratching around the bushes, even venturing onto the sidewalk and among the feet of the people sitting around the little café tables.

(stock photo)

A few more pictures of the birdies...

A catbird eating an apple core...

My urban Towhee...

And this is a favorite shot from that day. The catbird on top of the sign—"Please do not sit or place objects on the wall"—and below are a female House Sparrow, a male White-Throated Sparrow, and behind him, the Rufous-Sided Towhee. I call this one "The Rebels".

Thoreau talked about birds, and about deer and moose. He speculated that moose might become extinct in the future, and they are indeed becoming scarce. He might have been surprised had he known the extent of the ability of deer to adapt to the human encroachment on their lands, and how their numbers continue to grow. He might also have been surprised to see how some birds have become much better-adapted to the human-altered, urban landscape, and to see their new ways of competing and coexisting.

Another note regarding wild birds thriving in the urban environment: If you walk around Washington Square Park much, be sure to look up into the trees once in a while. A family of Red-Tailed Hawks nests on one of the NYU buildings, and parents and youngsters can be seen hunting or just hanging out in the park, sitting in the trees, or swooping across the street high overhead to perch on a window sill. They are not as well known or as heavily watched as the Red-Tails on Fifth Avenue, but they are around and I see them fairly frequently.

The Winged Cat

I was intrigued by the reference in Walden to the "winged cat".

I have always had cats, and been interested in watching birds as well. Combining the two in one creature seems fabulous, in the literal sense.

The cat Thoreau wrote about probably spent most of its time outdoors, and was not regularly groomed. Long-haired cats, if not brushed out regularly, can get large mats in their fur. My reading was that the winged cat was probably just a long-haired cat with matted fur in a fanciful shape. I had a Maine Coon cat who hated to be brushed, and he developed these "wings" by the end of almost every winter. Sometimes they would just fall off as the hair that held them in place grew out, and sometimes they would need to be cut off.

I would be curious to hear anyone else's theories or experience regarding the winged cat.

Here are a couple of stock photos. You can easily find more online.