Two in the Hand

             Ferry Point Park has moved its way high on my destination list of places to ride my bike to. As Spring sneaked its way through the endless wall of Winter we had up in the Northeast, the park has been the beneficiary of a wide range of different types of birds I don't recall seeing in these parts. There's common and semi-common Spring attractions such as robins and cardinals, but I've been seeing finches, orioles, and other birds I have no idea what category they fall under. I'm not sure if its a migration issue, a climate issue (as Spring rapidly turned into Summer), or the fact the birds found a new place to hang out. Either way, I like biking there before or after any heavy crowds might be around because that's when all these wonderous birds are on full display.

             One afternoon after returning from work, I felt a need to get on my bike and head over to my little "bird sanctuary" before the sun was about to set. There weren't many people around except a few kids playing with a remote-control truck. I made a full circle around the bike path of the park and was on my way back home when this blue jay darted out in front of me. It was flying at a very low altitude, barely a foot off the ground, which gave me the impression that something was off. The bird was flying ahead of me and I chased to see if there was anything wrong with it. The blue jay veered off the bike path and landed in a patch of high grass, now I knew something was wrong. A normal bird in that condition would've just flown up to a tree or high in the sky to escape, instead this one just stayed on the ground as I approached on foot. I was able to pick it up with relative ease, the blue jay didn't put up much of a struggle. It wasn't a baby anymore, but I could tell it wasn't large enough to be a full adult. Looking at its tail, I noticed part of it was ripped off, so either the blue jay injured itself or was attached by a larger bird or other animal. The busted tail was probably the main reason it couldn't fly correctly and I knew if I just left it there, very likely a cat or some other animal would kill it. I've captured several types of sick or injured birds over the years; starlings, pigeons, sparrows, but I never caught a blue jay and I always wished I had. Though I was initially concerned over its safety, I was equally excited over the fact I finally had a blue jay after wanting one for so many years.

             I began riding my bike; controlling the handle bars with one hand and cupping the blue jay in the other. The first few blocks the blue jay didn't put up a struggle, but then after the initial shock of a human hand faded away, the bird started to squirm. The odds I was going to be able to ride all the way home without losing the grip on the bird were increasingly shrinking. I needed to find a solution and fast. About a minute away there was a Home Depot store, but that would involve physically taking my bike and blue jay inside the giant outlet which security may not appreciate, so that idea flew away. Then I saw my answer laying on the curb. As I passed a UPS location, I saw that a number of used boxes had been discarded in their front garbage. I quickly grabbed a box that didn't look too filthy and placed the blue jay carefully inside. Now holding the box at my side, I was able to peddle without worry of losing the bird. The darkness must have made it panic because it kept jumping up and headbutting the top of the box. I also heard some flapping going on inside the box, so it was certainly fighting to get out of there. Without the ability to fly correctly, it would've been as good as dead if I changed my mind and released it back into the wild. With the energy it was displaying inside the box, I was thinking of naming it Fiesty. We were back in my apartment fifteen minute later and I had to lock Leo in another room so he wouldn't try to attack it.

            Once I opened the box, Fiesty hopped around on the floor and even flew around into the kitchen. I tried to give him some crumbled crackers, but he wasn't interested. Then I placed his beak under the running water from the facet to see if he'll take a drink. He took a little, but the rest of the time he kept his mouth sealed shut. After a few minutes Fiesty calmed down and even sat perched upon my finger like a domesticated bird. The only problem is it struggled to stand up straight, it kept leaning backwards and forwards as if it had no balance. This wasn't a good sign, clearly, but again, it was better off than being left outside as easy prey for a cat or falcon/hawk. There's no birds allowed in my building, plus Leo is around, so I decided to take the blue jay over to my parents where there's a cage of starlings it could live in. I brought the blue jay over and tossed it in the cage. The starlings fluttered around inside the cage at the sight of the intruder, while Fiesty remained on the floor. It took a good half-hour for all the birds to calm down, and when they did, the blue jay jumped up to the top perch inside the cage and it was looking as if it was making itself at home. So then all signs turned to positive that it was going to survive. The trick with "wild birds" is getting them young, because they easier adapt to the domesticated lifestyle. Older birds simply shut down internally and die within a few hours or a day. Fiesty wasn't exactly a spring chicken, but it wasn't a full-blown adult, so I gave it a 50/50 chance of surviving.

             The next day the initial reports from my parents was that the blue jay was getting along fine, under the circumstances. They didn't see it eating or drinking, but it was still up on the perch and even pecking away at some of the bird toys hanging inside of the cage. A few hours later when I visited, it was a totally different scenario. I found Fiesty at the bottom of the cage with its head hunched over - it had that death look. I held him and tried to get him to drink or accept some food, but it would do neither. It seemed like it was struggling to breath and with each passing minute it got weaker and weaker. Finally, its body gave one last big twitch and it was gone. I literally felt it die. It could've been from an injury suffered the day before when I found it with a busted tail, or perhaps like the bird that was out in the wild too long, it wasn't going to accept a domesticated life like his starling roommates did. We weren't exactly sure what to do with the remains. If was it was buried in the backyard there could always be the chance the dog digs it up, and simply tossing it in the garbage isn't a great send-off, plus it might be in there a few days until the next garbage pick-up; attracting stray cats and raccoons in search of a meal. I said I'd take the bird with me and figure something out. It was placed in a small brown paper bag and I walked home while thinking of a good place to dispose the body. At a street corner in front a Chinese food take-out place was a public trash can, likely to be picked up by sanitation, sooner rather than later. I placed the brown bag special in the trash can and kept on my merry way.

             The very next morning I returned to Ferry Point Park and did my usual circling around the bike path while gazing at all the birds flying around, as well as the geese and ducks in the water. I was pretty bummed out about losing Fiesty and wondered what the odds would be of finding another blue jay. This time it was a Saturday, with alot of sun, and people were filling up the park. I had a Yankee game at 1pm and was on my way back home to get ready for it, but as I tried to exit the park I noticed these two aquatic birds were scurrying around the grass as if they were searching for something. There is water not too far away, but it didn't make sense that these birds were so close to the parking lot and away from the shoreline. Then in a small patch of burnt grass I saw what the birds were looking for, a baby hatchling. I was confronted with the same options I had only forty-eight hours earlier; do I leave the bird or take it? It didn't seem injured like the blue jay was, and its parents were only a few yards away, but I had to consider two facts. First, the park was getting filled up with families and kids, and there were plenty of children riding their scooters and bikes in close proximity. There was a very good chance the baby bird was going to be run over at some point. Second, the parents and baby bird were so far away from the water I strongly doubt they would've been able to steer it back to the shoreline, where likely the nest was located. I needed to spring into action and fast before the baby turned into scooter roadkill. I scooped up the bird with one hand and controlled the handle bars with the other and headed for home.

            As a baby the bird didn't struggle in my hand as much as Fiesty was while I rode the bike, but I still worried about accidentally losing my grip on it. Luckily on the side of a bike path I saw an empty Dunkin Donuts box, used to carry a case of six, and placed the little birdy inside. Whereas people must have thought I was riding with a case of donuts, I was instead riding with a tiny baby bird. It was about the same routine when I got back to the apartment; I locked Leo inside and tried to give it some water, which it accepted. It was making an urgent peeping noise, likely signaling for the mother, which I felt bad about, but at this young stage of its life usually the bird would be willing to accept a human as the mother figure. I was quite perplexed at what type of bird this was. I figured it was one of those birds you see at the beach with the very long legs and body-size of a dove. The feathers on its body hadn't fully grown in yet and its hair was a little fuzzy, so I wanted to name it Puffin. The Yankee game was rapidly approaching and I couldn't leave the bird in the apartment in case it kept chirping and someone informed the landlord, so I made another trip back to my parents with a tiny package. Puffin was certainly too small to go inside the cage with the starlings, plus it wasn't a "tree branch" type of bird, so we set it up in a tank with flat grounding. I couldn't stay long because I needed to get back to the apartment to change for the game. One of the cats was more than willing to keep an eye on the bird until I got back.

             The Yankees won that afternoon and I raced back to my parents to see how everything was getting along with the baby bird. While I was at the game they called a bird expert and this specialist seemed to know everything about this bird without even seeing it. He confirmed it was an aquatic bird and mentioned it is common for them to run away from the nest areas along the shoreline and end up on baseball fields and so forth. He also recommended we take the bird back to the likely nest area as soon as possible in hopes the parents would accept it back. In the meantime he said he could give it crickets to eat and there were some already in the tank when I got back. The time was late afternoon, and with people and kids still likely jammed in the park, the idea of taking the bird back and leaving it on the sand with everyone around was a certain death sentence. Also, the odds the parent birds were going to hear its cries, find it, and take it back into the nest had to be very minimal. The only chance of that occurring was if we brought it there very early in the morning when nobody but nature was awake. As I held the bird in my hand while the cats watched on, I noticed the bird was trying to crawl up my sleeve, as if trying to get into a nest. I was trying to hand-feed it some crickets, but like the blue jay, it wasn't displaying an appetite. Then I got to thinking that maybe if I create a nest inside the tank, it will feel at home, and hence eat the crickets that come inside. The bird expert said that these types of birds feast on small bugs that crawl on the sand.

              Using a hand towel, I created a small cave-live structure and placed the tiny bird inside. My hypothesis was a great one because within a minute the bird devoured any cricket that foolishly made its way into the towel-nest. Then Puffin became aggressive and left the nest in search of more crickets to consume. It even ate a dead cricket that had drown and was floating in the water dish. When all was said and done it must have polished off about fifteen crickets in the matter of three minutes. This was certainly a great sign that the bird was going to survive! We still weren't sure yet where or how we would be able to release it back into the wild, but for the time being it was good news that the bird was eating on its own. The next day passes and the bird looked the same as the day before, but this time it wasn't eating anymore. It was spending most of its time asleep in the towel-nest. That night, for whatever reason, it went to sleep one final time and never woke up again. It was quite baffling since it was devouring crickets like they were going out of style only forty-eight hours before. As a baby, it didn't know the wild life long enough to shut down internally after being taken inside a house. It was very baffling for it to have died that way, the blue jay I could understand, but not with a baby bird who ate and showed strong indications of surviving. Both bird cases, I still think they were the right choices of taking them versus leaving with the variables surrounding them at the time, but you can always make the right choice and it still doesn't work out right - that's nature.

             I wasn't left in charge of the body disposal the second time around.......

The Trees Got it Too

             Last week when I was coming home from work one evening, I received the sudden craving for either cheesecake or ice cream on a cone. Once I was off the subway the only cheesecake option I had was from the diner, with a likely generic cheesecake slice not appeasing, I walked over to a Carvel instead in search of a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. One or two scoops would've been fine with me, but the girl behind the counter must have been bored from a lack of customers during the cold season because she stacked up my cone with at least four to five big scoops. It felt like the cone and the ice cream combined weighted at least ten pounds. I tried hard to keep my mind away from thinking how many fat and calories I was staring down, but what was for sure, I knew I needed to take a bike ride the next day to burn it off.

             My Tour de France when I want to take a long bike ride is to ride through Pelham Bay Park en route to City Island. I usually enter the bike path on Pelham Parkway which heads in that direction, but on this particular day I saw a large plastic grey barrier nearly blocking off the path. Someone had slightly moved it off the path, so I though nothing of it and kept riding along the same way as always. Next, I came upon an orange large plastic barrier which hasn't been moved. Clearly something was going on and for some reason a higher power didn't want bikers on the path. I couldn't think what the issue could've been, so I rode around the orange barrier and continued onto the path which leads under an overpass for the I-95 highway. Every time I pass under there I usually see a homeless person sleeping, or least their belongings left behind while they're out and about. There weren't any homeless people this time and seconds later I discovered the reason for the barriers - the bike path was under construction. The path simply ended and I saw construction trucks not far off working on other parts of the path. Lately that section of the path has been very bumpy and the concrete was all cracked up. Although I was delighted to see that the path was being fixed, I had to turn around and take an alternate path. The second path I took had an obstacle as well, a downed tree, likely a result from the strong winds from the recent Hurricane Sandy, was blocking the way. I rode around it and finally was on the main path on the way to City Island.

             There was no homeless person under the overpass that morning, but I saw the next best thing ten minutes later. I saw Donald, a local begger/junkie/homeless person, for the first time in years on the bike path, struggling to hold his pants up. Donald's signature walk, and he's been doing this for years, is to walk with one hand holding up his pants. He's somewhat on the obese side and has to wear a large pants size, but he refuses to ever use a belt. One might state that since he's homeless he can't afford a belt, but in all his years on the street, he could've found plenty of belts, or he could've used a make-shift chord to tie around his waist to keep his pants from falling. Another one of Donald's traits is he asks for a whole dollar. While the typical run-of-the-mill begger asks for a quarter or dime, Donald's total vocabulary consists off, "Give me a dollar". He points his head downwards and uses his long blonde hair to cover this face while he gives out this command in a deep base voice. He was very visible around the neighborhood eight to ten years ago, but then he disappeared for a long while without a trace. In recent weeks I've seen glimpses of him in passing, but wasn't sure if I eyes were deceiving me. I was able to ride my bike near him and study his movements to make sure it was indeed Donald. Falling pants, long blonde hair and all, I was happy to see Donald back in action.

             The next big stop on the path was the draw bridge which crosses over the Hutchinson River. Nothing looked different with the views of Co-op City and of the river, but I had to do a double-take when my eyes were drawn to the side of the water. A car was literally in the water, caught by a pile of rocks which prevented it from floating away further. Parts of the outside of the car looked burned, so perhaps the car was stolen and dumped there, but I couldn't figure out how the thief would be able to drive the car upon that spot. During weekends its common to see cars parked on the land nearby as people like to use that spot to go fishing, but there's still no way to drive the car into the water like that. The only conclusion I came to was it must have also been a result from Hurricane Sandy. The hurricane which left over two hundred people dead overall and destroyed thousands of homes in the Tri-State area, must have swooped that car from somewhere and led it down this river. The rocks must have finally ended its journey, and there is lies, until a tow-truck is able to get it out of there somehow. The Bronx received the least of the hurricane's fury compared to other boroughs and Jersey, but as I traveled further on the trail I would soon see more of the local damage that occurred.

             At this point the bike path goes uphill and it becomes more grueling to peddle. I tried to take it slow to conserve my energy, and without making a sound, another biker buzzed past me going into hyper-space. I had no urge to speed up and tire myself out too quickly, I kept it slow and looked in amazement at all the destruction that surrounded me. The trees took at heavy beating at the hand of Hurricane Sandy, many laid dead on the ground. The winds must have been so powerful that big-thick trees that were probably decades old, were simply ripped up out of the ground from the roots the same way a person would yank a weed from their garden. Branches torn off and hanging by shreds of wood, other trees were chopped in half at the base. As I kept going on this path, it was one destroyed tree after another. It reminded me of those movies about the Civil War where they're always that scene after battle with dead bodies littered all over the place. That's what this place became, a tree graveyard. The worst case, and most serious display of the storm's deadly force, was a tree which it's roots grew under the blacktop of the bike path. Not only was the tree pulled out of the ground like many others, but not even the blacktop was able to keep the tree standing as that too was ripped out of the ground.

             I was almost at the small bridge which serves as the entrance to City Island, there was just one small pond I needed to visit first. I saw a large white swan and a few ducks swimming around, so I figured it was worth a closer look. There was a red ladder by the side of the pond and a sign indicating that it is to only be used in the case of the pond freezing and some genius deciding to walk on it, only to fall through into the sub-zero water. I never saw it there before, but it seemed to be a great idea because you never know who might get adventurous if that water freezes over. Going by a dozen or so more killed trees, I was finally over the bridge and into City Island. As soon as you enter with the bike path, on the right hand side there's a rest area with benches which is my usual endpoint when I bike there. Pigeons were around looking for crumbs, seagulls were posted on the guardrail working on their tans, and a couple of ducks were enjoying the water. That was more than enough reason for me to put my bike down and rest up for a few minutes before carrying on. I did hear on the local news that as a result of Hurricane Sandy, a restaurant on City Island called Tony's Pier had burned down. I know most of the restaurants on City Island, but I wasn't familiar this place. Instead of turning back to head home, I wanted to ride on the island further to see exactly where Tony's was located. It wasn't until I reached the very end of City Island that I found Tony's Pier, or what was left of it. As the reports stated, most of what was left was burnt rubble. There were piles of charred wood and a construction crew on hand to clean the area up. Though things looked bleak, a big sign on the parking lot declared that the restaurant will be back up and running by the summer of 2013.

              On the other hand the car might be stuck in the river for another decade....