In the archives

Foot- and end- notes are like the underbrush: it’s crowded down there, and you have to wade through a mess of grass or leaves to find something juicy.  I was on the trail of a book recently, sent there I do not remember why, and found a copy at the NYPL. This was William Beebe’s Unseen Life of New York: As a naturalist sees it; (Little Brown, & Co. 1953).  Brooklyn-born Beebe (1877-1962) was curator of Ornithology at the New York Zoological Society (now the Wildlife Conservation Society) for more than half a century; he was also an indefatigable documentarian of his many expeditions, including down into the deeps (he helped develop the bathysphere).  This book, however, was just a wee bit too cute for me – the goofy line illustrations by D.C. Carlisle not at all helping – in the gosh-popularizing vein, but I did find some interesting numbers that might be used as a baseline for discussion.  For, found within a hundred miles of the Statue of Liberty, he lists these species counts: 15,000 insects, including 2000 moths and butterflies; 260 fish; 52 amphibians and reptiles; 370 odd birds.  I wonder what these numbers are today?  Insect numbers, I suspect, have grown, because we keep finding new ones (although we hardly notice the ones we loose). And he reminds us of the giant Pleistocene mammals that once roamed the earth here: walrus, bison, sloth, mastodon, peccary, tapir, saber-tooth. This reminds me of the extinctions in more modern times. I’m most familiar with the birds: since the Europeans arrived, North America has lost the Passenger pigeon, Carolina parakeet, Ivory-billed woodpecker, Great auk, Labrador duck, Heath hen, Bachman’s warbler, Eskimo curlew, and Dusky seaside sparrow. There was a heath hen skin at the Mannahatta/Manhattan exhibit at the MCNY last year; the old relic was sad to look upon.

The eastern subspecies of the Peregrine falcon, Falco peregrinus anatum was extinguished much more recently — since Beebe’s book, in fact. The Peregrines that now nest on our bridges and buildings — there are about twenty pairs in NYC; some 73 pairs in the whole state — are mutts, a genetic mix of other subspecies from the human effort to save the birds. The ospreys almost succumbed to the same murder weapon as the falcons, DDT, but have fought their way back with some help as well (we human’s are effortless destroyers, yet we can work towards recovery). I saw a pair mating at JBWR on Sunday, and yesterday one was perched on a low branch above one of the ponds in Green-Wood. I had a magnificent view of its fierce face. Breeding close to the water, ospreys are usually seen as fly-overs in the middle of the city; this one was probably making its way further north, to some nice nesting platform along the shore.