Last spring, on an unusually cold April day, my friend Walter and I are at Alley Pond Park to see migrating birds. At a pond we see a few male red-winged blackbirds with their bright red epaulets, some Canada geese and robins. Homies. It becomes apparent that if we are going to see migrating spring birds that we are going to have to go off the beaten path. Going through a bush filled area we pass some trees that are bare and corkscrew-shaped with deep grooves in the bark. If they could talk, what tales would they tell about the snows of winter?
At another pond, which has some light green algae, we stop and wait. Three black-capped chickadees, with jet-black heads and white cheeks, pause on some branches. They fly, seemingly floating away. Now off, off the beaten path a warbler flits onto a log. It has a rich, russet cap, bright yellow throat and yellow eye bar. That cap seems to dance in the clear morning light as the bird goes to the ground. It is a palm warbler, one of spring’s early arrivals and makes our morning.
Walking further, our path seemingly is disappearing and again we stop. Another warbler soon comes and I get this striking bird fixed in my binoculars. It is gray and white, has a black eye mask and four, bright yellow spots: one on the crown of its head, the second on its rump and the others are on either side of its breast. A field guide identifies it as a yellow-rumped warbler, another early arrival. Walter jokingly refers to this area as Warbler Junction. Looking around, trying to remember just how we arrived here, I’m sure I couldn’t find it again. I’m also sure of something else: this morning it paid to get off the beaten path. Just then two woodpeckers fly very close to each other and toward the ground. Is this a mating interest or a territorial dispute? We walk a while, hearing the sounds of other unseen woodpeckers whacking trees.
On the last Saturday in April my wife and I walk around the West Pond of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and basically strike out. We’ve never seen the huge West Pond so empty. Perhaps it’s just too early in the migration season. While my wife tackles The New York Times Crossword puzzle I go to the East Pond, which is situated on the other side of Cross Bay Boulevard and less traveled than the West Pond. There, I find a charming scene of cattails and a wooden walkway with railings that lead to a dark green, wooden blind by Big John’s Pond. Rustic. Continuing on to the enormous East Pond I see a large mute swan off by itself, and a few cormorants sunning themselves on a post. There’s a lone Foster’s tern that is soon flying into the breeze. Its slim sharply bent wings and slimmer tail disappear into the blue sky.
There’s a ton of ducks in the pond. Putting binoculars on one that’s closer, I note its dark rust body, black head and puffed white cheeks. Could it be? As the bird comes closer there’s the light blue bill that looks like painted wood. Yes! This is a breeding male ruddy duck. There aren’t that many in the group. Overwhelmingly the others are dark, and white with what appear to be tannish breasts. Those are the females and they are subtly beautiful. Now this is more like it. These migrating ducks travel mainly at night and as I don’t often see them here, I just sit and watch.
A plane lifts up over the trees and on the other side of the pond from nearby Kennedy Airport. The A-train briefly rattles along. I’m struck by the incongruity and remind myself that this refuge is in an urban area. I sit there a moment feeling the cool breeze, hearing the sound of unseen birds and enjoying the serenity. It feels and sounds like spring at Jamaica Bay.
A few weeks later we are back at Jamaica Bay, this time for a horseshoe crab walk by the American Littoral Society. Getting there early, we walk around to see what the end of the migration has brought. This time my wife wants to go off the beaten path and we soon see three medium colored brown birds with narrow tails come through a clearing, momentarily land on trees and fly off. Coming back out on the main path I get a much better look at one of them. Its narrow tail has a yellow band and there’s the tufted crest. The bird’s a cedar waxwing and I’d like to get a look at its black “Cleopatra” eye mask, but this one flies.
We go off the path onto the beach where we would not ordinarily go and soon are looking at several horseshoe crabs swimming in the water. Many are moss or weed covered, some with barnacles and others with colorful shells attached to their brown shell. They resemble armored creatures from another time. Indeed they have been on the planet some 450,000,000 years. There is a group of a dozen, all males, except for one female who is the object of their attention. This is the time of year that they spawn their eggs, during the high tides after a full or new moon. Those eggs help fuel the flight of red knots, a sandpiper that winters as far south as Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America to its Canadian Arctic breeding grounds. I look around at the water and at the sky thinking how interconnected we all are. Sometimes, you have to get off the beaten path to see it.
