Backyard and Beyond

Golden-crowned Kinglets were raining down on the city this week. This one got to within two feet of my shoes hopping and flitting and carrying on, while half a dozen others worked over the ground and branches of some ornamental cherries. Their calls are like whispers.Regulus satrapa, the little king ruler: a bit redundant? Not hardly at all. One of our smallest birds. (I couldn’t capture such busy-ness with my old camera. GoFundMe in action!) This one is showing some of the actual orange crown. Most of these little kings are passing through for points further south. In the Appalachia north, into Maine, they’ll stick around all year, but they generally don’t hang out in NYC for the winter.But they do pass through. Sadly, a new glass monster on the corner of 110 St (Central Park North) and Frederick Douglass Blvd is threshing these tiny migratory marvels out of the sky. They smash into the reflective glass. Down at Columbus Circle, another building on a corner of Central Park is taking a toll of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers, also flowing through now. It’s 2018, and unconscionable that architects and developers around parks aren’t taking the lethality of some types of glass into account. New Yorkers can report window-strike birds here and find out more about NYC Audubon’s Project Safe Flight.