BIRD WEEK

It’s Gadgets vs. Eyeballs as Two Species of Bird-Watchers Clash

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Bird-watchers, like these in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, will compete on Saturday in the World Series of Birding in New Jersey.Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Pete Dunne and Benjamin Van Doren are devout birders who share a passion for identifying rare species, recording their sightings and competing in birding events known as Big Days.

But as they prepared for the biggest Big Day of all, Saturday’s World Series of Birding in New Jersey, their technological approaches could hardly be more disparate.

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Mr. Van Doren, 20, a sophomore at Cornell, has a $2,500 camera setup, and an iPhone stocked with digital field guides, apps that play recordings of bird songs and help him, with GPS, home in on where he might find certain species.

Mr. Dunne, 62, has been preparing a bit differently. He refuses to bring a camera and keeps his cellphone turned off. He eschews birding apps and digital libraries in favor of the handwritten journal that he has kept since he was 7. The proliferation of digital photography and other technology changes the whole dynamic of birding, he said, “getting away from the art of field identification.”

It was all leading to a regrettable mind-set, he added, of “Shoot first and identify later.”

Not long after professional baseball came around to instant replay, the booming world of competitive birding, once seen as a refuge from the clatter of the modern world, is now debating how much it should embrace technology. It is as close as birding, long proud of its honor system, has ever come to an identity crisis, particularly over the issue of whether photography should be required to prove a spotting. In debates among birders, the encroachment of smartphones and digital cameras has become inseparable from another touchy issue, the matter of questionable sightings, known as stringing.

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Pete Dunne founded the World Series of Birding, which limits the use of technology.Credit Ryan Collerd for The New York Times

The World Series is held every May throughout New Jersey, a major migration stop for birds heading north, and the event routinely attracts roughly 1,000 of the world’s top birders, who will race around the state from midnight to midnight, often in four-member teams, trying to identify as many species as they can by sight or sound. Their reward will be bragging rights and the Urner-Stone Cup, which resembles a miniature version of hockey’s Stanley Cup, though there are no cash prizes.

The competition, which also raises money for conservation, does not require photo evidence, and scoring remains on the honor system, though contestants who claim to have seen or heard rare birds can expect to be questioned by other teams about details. The rules do not allow the use of digital gadgets in the spotting or hearing of birds. Recorded calls cannot be played in the open, where they could inadvertently — or intentionally — induce birds to respond, for example. But birders are permitted to refresh themselves — in their cars, only — with recorded bird calls.

The pro-tech camp argues that it is silly to prohibit tools that educate birders, make birding more welcoming for novices, and build popular support for saving bird habitats.

“It is bringing a new breath of air into the competitions,” said Scott Whittle, a commercial photographer from Cape May, N.J., who has a $10,000 photo setup. He is also helping develop an app called Bird Genie that recognizes and identifies bird calls in the field.

He said he began birding six years ago and photographed his sightings “because I knew I wasn’t a good enough birder for people to trust me.”

The verification of sightings and combating stringing — arguable sightings by inexperienced, overeager or simply cheating birders — is one of birding’s most pressing issues and is the main argument for the use of photos.

Birding’s popularity, fueled in part by the recent films, “The Big Year,” and “A Birder’s Guide to Everything,” is approaching an extreme-sport level, with adrenaline-pumped teams putting in sleepless days.

The American Birding Association has begun discussions to revise portions of its code of ethics, said Jeffrey Gordon, the association’s president. The code serves as a guideline for birders, though competition organizers are free to make their own rules. Mr. Gordon said that what little there was in the code regarding technology — there is a mention, for example, of curbing the use of “tape recorders” — has likely gone unchanged since being established a decade ago, “before people were walking around with libraries of bird songs in their pocket.”

While the honor system remains paramount, Mr. Gordon said, photographs, provided they have not been altered, can offer “a higher standard of evidence,” especially for rare sightings, and for newer birders who have yet to establish reputations of being rock-solid in their identifications.

“I hear young birders joking around saying, ‘Photos or it didn’t happen,’ ” he said. “The expectation is that if you report something rare, you’re going to need a photograph. And I only see that increasing.”

The association created a new category of competition: Photo Big Days. Last month, Mr. Whittle and Tom Stephenson, a Brooklyn-based birder who leads tours in Prospect Park, organized a Photo Big Day in Texas, and competed as well, photographing 209 birds in 24 hours, which the birding association has recognized as a record for North America.

Even purists like Mr. Dunne, a New Jersey Audubon Society official who founded the World Series, said any tool that made birding more accessible was welcome. But introducing them to competitions goes against the trust implicit in birding, the purists said, and turns what should be a contest of devotion and skill into a free-for-all where tech wizardry and expensive cameras become the de facto entry requirements.

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A participant in the World Series of Birding in 2009.Credit Kathy Willens/Associated Press

“We’re at a pivotal time,” Mr. Dunne said, acknowledging that birding technology was “going to change birding dramatically and probably permanently.”

Drew Weber, who writes a blog about birding and technology at NemesisBird.com and helps develop birding apps, said he has heard some resentment among old guard birders toward tech-savvy ones who have gained vast birding knowledge with comparably little time spent in the field.

“A lot of traditional birders, honing their skills for decades, had to put all this time in, and they might see technology as a shortcut,” he said.

Teams in the World Series recruit members who can identify bird calls and can scout where targeted species are likely to be seen. To prepare for the event, Mr. Van Doren’s Cornell team has spent a week driving around New Jersey using apps to log where specific birds had been spotted. They are not allowed to use apps to acquire new information during the event, but they can use them to refer to previously gathered information.

Mr. Van Doren acknowledged that technology should have its limits. The day will come, he predicted, when binoculars themselves will be able to identify birds. “That would be lame from a birding perspective,” he said, “because it would take the skill out of it.”

Update on the Baby Red-Tailed Hawks at N.Y.U.

Video of the baby hawks on May 7, 2014 by D. Bruce Yolton/urbanhawks.blogs.com

In a nest overlooking Washington Square Park, two juvenile red-tailed hawks are beginning to poke their heads above the messy tangle of brown branches.

At three weeks old, the hawks have white downy feathers that are beginning to turn gray.

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This is the third brood for Rosie and Bobby, the hawk couple who were once stars of the live-streaming raptor drama broadcast from inside the office of John Sexton, New York University’s president. (Bobby’s first mate for the first season of the Hawk Cam, Violet, died in December 2011.)

The pair of eyases, or baby hawks, are currently learning how to defecate outside the nest, a phenomenon known as “slicing.” They are constantly feeding on rodent and pigeon carcasses that their parents haul up to the 12th floor of Bobst Library. As many as 15 times a day, the mother hawk will tear off chunks of animal flesh for the nestlings to eat.

Earlier this year, the university applied a nonreflective film on the window to minimize disturbance from human traffic inside the office, which also prevented the Hawk Cam from producing an acceptable image, a university spokesman said.

This year’s hawk family can be viewed only from the park below. Read more…

The Case of the Missing Birds at the National Arts Club

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O. Aldon James Jr., shown in 2009, at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park.Credit Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

Not long ago, the National Arts Club was home to dozens of birds, including lovebirds, finches, a Quaker parrot and a raven. They had been acquired by the club’s eccentric president, O. Aldon James Jr., who also collected other animals in the more than century-old club on Gramercy Park, including a chinchilla and a snail discovered by a cook in some corn silk.

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Today, a sign hangs in the entrance of the club: “No Pets Allowed in the Clubhouse.” On the landing where wire bird cages once stood stands a row of well-dusted busts and a sculpture of two fighting lions.

After a bitter dispute with club officials and an investigation by the state attorney general over misused funds, Mr. James is gone, and so are the birds.

Where did all the birds go?

“They disappeared. I don’t know where they went,” Mr. James said this week. He said when he was compelled to leave the club in 2011, he left behind as many as 100 birds.

“It’s an Agatha Christie mystery,” Mr. James said. “In a short time, there were no more birds.” Read more…

Why Do You Watch Birds?

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Lili Taylor on the observation deck of the Empire State building.Credit Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

Most people go to the top of the Empire State Building to look down. But I go to look up.

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Each spring and fall, when the winds are from the right direction, I steal away to the building’s 360-degree terrace to watch one of the best shows in the world: the migration of birds.

On a recent evening, I breezed through security and ascended 86 floors by elevator. There were 20 m.p.h. southerly winds trying to prevent me from opening the door, but I pushed back and headed to the south side of the terrace. The dark sky was lit by massive white beams of light. A loose formation of 11 northern flickers emerged in the spotlight. Several seconds later, four warblers, white silhouettes in the light, came into view. Then a group of five robins – chased by a peregrine falcon — crossed the beam before disappearing into the dark north sky.

Even with the howling wind, I could hear a constant symphony of high-pitched flight calls of another layer of birds I couldn’t even see.

My head swiveled from north to south like a typewriter carriage as I tried to discern one blurry shape from another. But in this fast-moving, black-and-white movie, it was nearly impossible to do.

Millions of birds are now making the epic journey north to their breeding grounds. Some are coming from as far away as the southern tip of Chile and will travel up into northern Canada. Most of the migrants flying overhead are passerines, the small songbirds that make up almost half of all the world’s 10,000 bird species, but larger birds like ducks and herons and shorebirds are also making the trek.

Their resilience, endurance and tenacity is stunning. What can these creatures, perfected by millions of years of evolution, teach me? They have all just left a warm, safe and comfortable clime for what? A harrowing journey filled with starvation, exhaustion and possible death all to find a mate and breed? And if they are so fortunate to safely reach land, come fall they must make the epic journey back south. They don’t ask why or what for; they just do.

I looked down at the sparkling necklaces of lights on the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. Further out, the Verrazano Bridge twinkles at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

At 1,050 feet, I am closer to the birds than to my own species. But the distance also gives me perspective. We too also keep going, despite the difficulties, risks and unanswerable whys.

As I gave one last look out, a man approached and asked what I was looking at.

“The birds,” I said.

“Birds?” he looked at me dumbfounded.

“Yes. It’s spring migration.”

“Those are birds? I had no idea. This is amazing. “

Together, we tilted our heads back and reveled in the sight.


Lili Taylor is an actress living in Brooklyn. If you also share a passion for avian life, tell us: Why do you watch birds?

Complaints About Pigeons, Mapped

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Since 2010, more than 2,700 “unsanitary pigeon condition” complaints have been made to New York City’s 311 hot line.

Most are related to the birds’ prodigious output of excrement, about 25 pounds per pigeon each year. The most complaints were recorded in the Park Slope and Upper West Side ZIP codes; many are reported near parks.

While cleaning up pigeon droppings may not be a priority for the city, the health department does send out an inspector to investigate complaints and will warn building owners if the conditions pose a potential hazard.

“We don’t show up with power hoses,” a spokesman for the department said. “It’s the responsibility of the property owner to clean up.”

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A Crane Is Born

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A white-naped crane chick strutted its small stuff at the Central Park Zoo.Credit Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society

There is a new bird at the Central Park Zoo – new to the zoo, and new to the world.

It’s a white-naped crane, hatched on April 11 and now on exhibit with its parents.

This is the second chick produced by this pair. The first hatched at the Bronx Zoo in 2011.

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The white-naped crane is a migratory species found in East Asia. It breeds in Mongolia and southeastern Russia and winters, among other places, near the Yangtze River in China and the Korean demilitarized zone.

Fewer than 6,500 survive in the wild; the cranes are classified as vulnerable and are at risk because of loss of wetland habitat to farming.

White-naped cranes can grow to the height of a decent-sized child – four feet tall – and are recognizable for their pink legs, gray-and-white striped neck, and red face patch.

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Someday the chick will look like these grown-ups.Credit Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation Society

50 Years Later, Questions Over Who Designed a World’s Fair Dome

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Imagine an elegant, inverted, 175-foot-wide sieve covering a half-acre of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. Within it, long-necked cattle egrets glide overhead. A scarlet macaw scolds loudly from a branch, while northern bobwhite quails rustle the underbrush. Flashes of sapphire blue — the bills of Argentine ruddy ducks — glint against the dark waters of a small pond.

Here is where Bird Week and Building Blocks meet: at the Queens Zoo Aviary, a geodesic dome constructed 50 years ago as the 2,100-seat World’s Fair Pavilion, transformed for the 1965 fair into the Churchill Center and then moved a half-mile west to serve as a birdhouse for the zoo, which opened in 1968.

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There may not be as many twists to its story as there are facets on its semi-spherical aluminum frame, but there are plenty enough.

The latest is the question of who gets credit for the dome, one of the most resilient, handsome and purposeful of the generally odd lot of World’s Fair pavilions. For years, it has been attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller, the designer and inventor most closely associated with geodesic domes. These lightweight structures, composed of tubular struts arranged in triangles and polygons, can be assembled quickly to span great volumes at relatively little expense.

It is Fuller’s name that appears on a sign at the entrance to the aviary.

But a little-known architect, Thomas C. Howard, 82, of Raleigh, N.C., seems to have had a lot more to do with it. He was the president of Synergetics Inc. in Raleigh, which held the contract for the dome; Eggers & Higgins of New York designed the rest of the building.

These firms proved to be life savers. William Whipple Jr., chief engineer of the fair, said the budget for the pavilion, which served as the fair’s assembly hall, had originally been set at $1 million. But when the first design was put out for bids in 1963, none came in for less than $1.75 million.

“With opening day only a year away,” Mr. Whipple wrote in the June 1964 issue of Civil Engineering magazine, “all bids were rejected and an entirely new concept was sought that would fulfill the same requirements but cost not more than half as much. After a rapid examination of various unorthodox alternatives, it was decided to use as the roof a geodesic dome.” The revised design cost $950,000. The pavilion was finished just in time.

On Jan. 24, 1965, between the fair’s two seasons, Sir Winston Churchill died. Revered in the United States as the British prime minister who stood up to Nazi Germany in the most hopeless hours of World War II, Churchill seemed to be a natural subject for a new attraction.

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The dome when it was part of the Churchill Pavilion at the 1965 World's Fair.Credit Bill Cotter

Within the dome, Philip George designed an exhibit centered on a reproduction of the study at Chartwell, Churchill’s country home. Paintings by Churchill and his special passport as an honorary American citizen were among the displays.

The tribute was not without a marketing strategy. The 1964 season had not been nearly as popular or lucrative as officials had hoped. So they scrambled to find ways to entice visitors who had avoided the fair before and to lure back those who had already seen it.

Even before the fair reopened in 1965, the dome was being envisioned as a prospective birdhouse. The transformation, including the addition of an elevated walkway at treetop level, was designed by Clarke & Rapuano and Andrews & Clark.

The aviary, an open enclosure under wire mesh, was plagued by problems, including malevolent visitors who grabbed birds or threw stones at them. After being closed for many years, it reopened in 1992, renovated by Mark K. Morrison Landscape Architecture.

Katrina Howard Fairley is now lobbying to ensure that her father, Mr. Howard, is recognized as the original designer in the long list of architects involved with the building. Those responsible for maintaining Mr. Fuller’s legacy said her assertions may have merit.

The executive director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute in Brooklyn, Elizabeth Thompson, said Mr. Fuller lectured globally about geodesic domes, on which he held patents, and sent business to companies like Synergetics, composed of his followers.

Jaime L. Snyder, Mr. Fuller’s grandson and co-executor of the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller in Santa Barbara, Calif., said, “The Synergetics Inc. story is important history which needs to be told.”

Speaking of his famous grandfather, Mr. Snyder said: “I know he thought very highly of Mr. Howard’s skills — once commenting to me that he was one of the persons who best understood his geodesic design principles. We simply have never been privy to any documentation about the World’s Fair Pavilion, nor other Synergetics Inc. designs that would shed any light on this matter.”

Where the pavilion once stood — opposite the Festival of Gas — there is now the Buzz Vollmer Playground, named for Arnold H. Vollmer, an engineer and landscape architect. The playground was designed by Johansson & Walcavage.

At least, that’s what the sign says.

Q. and A. About Birds in New York City

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Gabriel Willow leading a bird-watching tour in Central Park last week. Mr. Willow said April through June was a busy time for bird tours because of spring migration.Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Updated, May 8 | Thank you to everyone who participated in our Q. and A. with Gabriel Willow. We are no longer accepting questions for this feature, but his responses about birds are available in the comments section.

“Where are the birds?”

“What is that song?”

“Is that a male?”

For Gabriel Willow, the freelance environmental educator and urban ecology tour guide who was leading a recent tour in Central Park for the New York City Audubon Society, those questions are quite common.

This week, Mr. Willow, who has been leading tours for 15 years, will be answering your questions about birds in New York City. Maybe you want to know what species frequent Bryant Park? Or when spring migration is at its peak? Or maybe you want to know which species will most likely pass through the city this week?

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Mr. Willow, 35, describes himself less as a birder and more of a storyteller and interpreter of human ecology, which explores the relationship between people and their environments.

“When people hear about what I do, and about this idea of urban ecology or an urban nature tour or bird tour, there’s often jokes, ‘Oh, you watch pigeons,’” Mr. Willow said. “But I think when they see something like a black-crowned night-heron, or a harbor seal, or a great horned owl, or a coyote you get this sense of real wildness, and I think that’s really exciting.”

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Mr. Willow is a freelance environmental educator and urban ecology tour guide in the city.Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

“It transports people out of the day to day, and you can have those experiences in any city park or the harbor,” he said.

With his walking and boat tours, Mr. Willow tries to expand New Yorkers’ knowledge of wildlife. For some, that means seeing beyond rats, cockroaches and house sparrows. But at the same time, he wants city dwellers to appreciate the adaptability of any species, including pigeons, to living in an urban environment.

In Prospect Park, Dog Owners and Bird Watchers Fight for Space

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Dog Owners Square Off Against Birders

In Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, dog owners and bird-watchers have rioted over how the park is used.

By Emily Rueb on Publish Date May 5, 2014.

About a dozen bird watchers had just crossed the ravine in Prospect Park one recent morning when a northern waterthrush, the first of the season, alighted on a faraway branch. Thirteen pairs of elbows and binoculars rose along with a ripple of delighted murmurs.

“Dog!” blurted Tom Stephenson, a warbler expert who was leading the tour, as an unleashed golden retriever, still soggy from a dip, was zigzagging his way through the line of birdwatchers’ legs. “Take a picture!”

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Prospect Park’s 585 acres have always been a marvel of urban ecology, a delicate balance not just of flora and fauna, but also of  children, joggers, mountain bikers, weekend racers, Frisbee players, sunbathers, and, of course, dog owners and bird watchers.

But this time of year, between the throngs trying to glimpse the prothonotary warblers, the yellow-bellied flycatchers and other migrants making their way up the coast, and the Brooklynites trying to give their corgis and springer spaniels a few moments of freedom and fresh air, it has been difficult to find a middle ground.

The conflict, at its root, is about basic animal nature: Dogs distress birds and can trample the delicate underbrush where birds feed and nest. Bird watchers say they have been answered with exclamations of “Nazi!,” “creep!,” R-rated curses and, occasionally, “I’m going to kill you,” when asking dog owners to respect the laws, which permit untethered animals in three meadows only after 9 p.m. and before 9 a.m.

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An unleashed dog in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Some dog owners say bird-watchers have aggressively confronted them and their pets there.Credit Yana Paskova for The New York Times

One birder, Adam Welz, 41, said a dog owner once got in his face, following him across the park while hurling expletive-filled insults and threats to his life.

A video shot in February captured a typical scene. A sandy-colored dog bounds into a lake, sending a gaggle of waterfowl honking and flapping.

“I got him on camera!” said a woman’s voice behind the camera.

“Doing nothing!” screamed the dog’s owner.

“Chasing the wildlife!” the woman screamed back.

Tensions have simmered for decades. Mary McInerney, who was part of the New York Council of Dog Owners Group, or N.Y.C.D.O.G, (pronounced “nice dog”), which fought to protect off-leash rights several years ago, said a bird watcher once warned her “I know where you walk. and I’ll be there waiting for you.”

“The birders aren’t just nice little old ladies and guys with binoculars,” Ms. McInerney said.

Paul Gracie — who comes to the park year-round to exercise his brown and white fox hound, Sammy, unlike, he pointed out, the birders who come only in the spring and the fall — said that when a birder told him to leash his pet because it was interrupting the migratory pattern of the birds, “I was like ‘How are birds that stupid?’”

The dogs aren’t paying attention, said Mr. Gracie, 32, adding, “If they’re just minding their own business, what’s the problem?”

What many people don’t realize, said Rob Bate, president of the Brooklyn Bird Club, is that when a canine tears through the forest understory, the delicate vegetative layer covering wooded areas, they are destroying a crucial feeding and nesting habitat for birds. At this time of year, hundreds of bird species, many whose populations are in decline, are traveling thousands of miles up the Atlantic Flyway from as far south as Chile. The city’s green spaces become essential rest stops, known as migrant traps, amid a landscape of concrete and asphalt.

“If they don’t get a chance to feed and bulk up, they may not make it to their breeding ground,” Mr. Bate said.

His club has been lobbying the city’s parks department and the Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit conservancy that maintains the grounds with the city, for more enforcement and for signs to mark where dogs can wander off-leash. Many of the existing placards have been torn down, Mr. Bate, 63, said. At least one has been defaced with a swastika.

The Alliance said it hoped to have new signs designed and installed in the next several weeks.

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Rob Bate, left, president of the Brooklyn Bird Club, and Adam Welz, a fellow birder, scan the trees. Mr. Bate said dogs can destroy habitats as they run through the forest understory.Credit Yana Paskova for The New York Times

The Parks Enforcement Patrol has responded with two plainclothes operations this year, said Meghan Lalor, a spokeswoman for the parks department. So far this year, the department has issued 141 dog-related summonses in Prospect Park, including for unleashed dogs, compared with 171 in all of 2013 and 59 the year before.

Ms. Lalor would not say whether the officers posed as bird watchers. “Due to the nature of the operation, and out of concern for the safety of P.E.P. officers, we can’t share more details,” she said.

A spokesman for the Police Department said they were “working with the community committee regarding the situation,” referring to a monthly meeting of groups including the Brooklyn Bird Club and Fido of Prospect Park, a group that represents the off-leash community.

Parks officers can do only so much, given that they watch over thousands of acres of woodland and public pools and beaches across the city, said Adrian Benepe, the former parks commissioner.

“Rules have been adapted and developed to take care of the greatest good,” he said, “But, by nature, they have to be somewhat self-enforcing.”

Indeed, no one with a uniform was in sight on a recent bright morning, when a great egret seemed to be posing for a photographer and two bird watchers. Its statuesque silhouette was shimmering in the surface of the Lullwater when its neck shot up. Above, a spray of robins, mourning doves, cardinals and a blue jay darted out of the trees and a cluster of warblers that had been chirping went quiet.

On the muddy pathway below, just beyond the sanctioned off-leash area, was a black-and-white Siberian husky sniffing its way along the water’s edge. The egret looked around before opening its white wings to propel itself to the other side.

A gray-haired gentleman in a Audubon-branded anorak shot the dog a stony stare as it trotted blithely out of sight. Its owner trailed several paces behind, leash dangling in hand.

Mr. Welz, who is a journalist trained in ornithology, was also taken out of the moment.

“Dog owners have been generously accommodated,” he said, “and they just abuse that. They disregard everybody else who uses the park. The arrogance is astonishing.”

Michelle Boyd, 31, who was recently in the peninsula meadow with her beagle-terrier mix, Chloe, said the birders she’s encountered can be “kind of mean.”

“If I see a bird watcher out and there’s a fork in the road,” she said, “I try to avoid them in an effort to avoid confrontation, but also to respect their space.”

Apps and Resources for Birders in New York City

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Credit Photographs by Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times and Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
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This time of year, New York City’s green spaces become what are known as “migrant traps” for birds flying to their breeding grounds.

Even the tiniest pocket park will have an unusually high concentration of species setting down to rest and feed.

Here are a few resources to help bring you closer to the avian tourists and residents in the city.

Birding Groups and Tours

NYC Audubon | The local branch of the national organization hosts lectures and tours for birders of all levels in the five boroughs. Starting in June, they also host EcoCruises on New York City Water Taxis.

New York State Young Birders Club | This group organizes field trips and other events for birders between the ages of 10 and 19.

The Brooklyn Bird Club | Founded in 1909, this organization hosts walks for members and nonmembers on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends during migration seasons. They also organize tours in Green-Wood Cemetery, Ridgewood Reservoir and other parks around the city.

Queens County Bird Club | This “full-service organization of naturalists” conducts regular field trips, walks, lectures and presentations.

The Linnaean Society of New York | The club hosts field trips and free lectures, open to the public, at the American Museum of Natural History on the second Tuesday of every month from September through May, except in March.

American Littoral Society | Explore the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge with the “guardian of the bay,” Don Riepe.

Central Park Conservancy | Pick up a free birding kit – complete with binoculars, a guidebook, maps and sketching materials – at Belvedere Castle from 10:00 am – 3:00 pm daily. The equipment must be returned by 4:00 pm. Call 212.772.0288 for more information.


Apps

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Merlin Bird ID | Launched in January of this year, this free app is targeted for novices and anyone who wants to know “what’s that bird?” It asks basic questions like the the size (robin or goose?), color (buff? white?), location (eating at a feeder? soaring or flying?) and the date of the sighting, then creates a list of several possibilities with photos, a brief description and audio of its call. “It’s like like having a birding coach in your pocket,” said Jessie Barry at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology who said the app was designed to work like an experienced birders brain. So far, it includes 350 species and covers most North American birds. Ms. Barry said the Android version is anticipated in June and, later this year, a photo identification tool that will help identify the bird.

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BirdsEye North America | Not to be confused with the frozen foods company, BirdsEye is a bird-finding app for those birders experienced enough to identify 50-100 species. Using GPS data and sightings reported to Cornell’s eBird database, it provides maps and real-time bar charts displaying the visiting species, and can help guide you to birding hotspots and notable sightings nearby. For $19.99, it contains a catalog of more than 1000 species, most of which have photos and audio. Available for iPhone and Android devices, it offers to be a handy way to keep track of your sightings.

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iBird Pro Guide to Birds | This iOS app contains zoomable illustrations and photos for roughly 1,000 species found in North America, providing audio samples of bird calls fpr the majority. If you’re not sure what bird you’re looking at, the app could help with a four-step identification process that narrows down the field by habitat, wingspan, shape and color. This app is geared towards advanced birders and professional naturalists, but there are also a range of products geared towards less seasoned seekers.

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Larkwire | Using games, this app trains your ear to differentiate and identify bird sounds . It plays a song and asks you to click on the bird that you’re hearing: Is that a black-headed Grosbeak? An American Robin? Both (iOS) mobile and web apps are available for land and water birds of North America. The free demo includes 21 species.

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The Sibley eGuide to Birds App | This app displays approximately 6,600 images of 810 species, shown in flight and at rest, as well as about 800 range maps and 2,3000 songs and calls.


Resources on the Web

eBird.org | Launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, this site collects observations in real-time. Birders can share checklists and explore bar charts and graphs of around 175 million bird observations worldwide.

BirdCast | Also from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, BirdCast is a collaborative project that tells you when and where birds are migrating in real-time.

prospectsightings.blogspot.com | The former president of the Brooklyn Bird Club, Peter Dorosh, reports on recent sightings in Prospect Park and North Brooklyn nature news.

www.cityislandbirds.com | Updates from the woods and wetlands of Pelham Bay Park.

citybirder.blogspot.com | This site includes a live Twitter feed of bird sightings and maps of Brooklyn birding spots.

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