On Friday, 12 May, Gabriel Willow, a well known nature guide in the city, took us into the park to see birds. It started auspiciously about  6PM. with a Red-tailed Hawk circling high above Cabrini Boulevard. The usual plebians - Sparrows, Starlings and Pigeons were ubiquitous, the former however behaving more like warblers as they foraged in the treetops for more protein rich foods for their young.
Avoiding these birds however, we focused on the less common, such as the Catbird and Baltimore Orioles,  a pair of which were seen as we ambled down the boulevard. A Mockingbird was spotted on the ground, along with a Robin's nest, with the hen brooding, just over eye level stuck into a brickwall.
Overhead, and appropriately near the tall chimney at 193rd St or so - a pair of Chimney Swifts hawked for high flying insects, while two Herring Gulls, a 1st and 3rd year - also flew quite high. Briefly a Canada Goose caused us to crane our necks as it made its brief appearance. Non-stop it flew to some point south.
This May has been unseasonably cold, after a warm winter, and the migration patterns are disrupted, along with plant cycles. This of course limited our pick of birds on the tour, by this time of year migrants ought to be coming back in full force. For instance, we did not even make the usual sightings of Cardinals, though they are spotted in the area. Bluejays did appear on occasion, flitting through the branches, and an Mourning Dove flew out of the trees to pose for a good ten minutes on a ledge.
Despite the paucity of avian species, it was a good walk, with a number of tree species noted. Gabriel pointed to the scarification in the London Planes just outside the Stan Michel Garden - caused by Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers who peck the young bark to get their sugary meal from the inside.
This stretch of woods has a great variety of trees, from including hardwoods - oaks and maples were predominant, with the Norway Maple - an introduced species of little use to the birds seen often; a gigantic Chestnut Oak and of course Pin Oaks, the latter the most common oak in the US; Honey Locusts with their long, dark pods, a Bitternut Hickory, and most impressive of all, at the south end of the Stan Michel Garden, either a Dawn Redwood or a Bald Cypress, my knowledge of trees is not that complete but it can easily be narrowed down to one or the other. It towers above just about everything including the century-old London Planes.
And of course another tree worth mentioning is the Poison Ivy, actually a Sumac, which can adapt its growth habit from treelike to vinelike. It abounds in these parts so watch out! And then there are the skunks, which mostly come out at night for garbage.
So thanks to Gabriel, he did a great job, and thanks to the Fort Tryon Park Trust and Con Edison which sponsored the event.
Gabriel can be seen all around the city, he is an expert on the wildlife of the parks from the tiny and tony Bryan Park to the massive Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve and of course Central Park, in which he can claim to have seen Pale Male doing unchivalrous deeds with other birds' nestlings!