Prospect: A Year in the Park

Singing in the trees

A fortnight has passed without a park visit, while I hunker down beneath the madness of our Great Roof Replacement Epic. Yesterday, my painter friend, sensing an orgy of color nearby, dragged me to the Nethermead for a blissful hour of escape.

Four little trees in the Parade Grounds, clustered near the baseball diamond, have turned the exact same color simultaneously.

 

I like park squirrels; they do nice normal squirrelly things, like eat viburnum berries and bury acorns. Our house squirrels play bocce between the walls and "bury" half-eaten Jamaican meat pies on our windowsills, which I do not like.

A birder with a foot-long telephoto lens alerted me to the Blurry Bird of the Day: a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet. Had he ever seen their little ruby crown actually raised, I asked? "Only when they're really mad," he replied.

My vote for best leaf-peeping goes to the lake's south shore drive.

 

A haze enveloped the Lullwater. Painter Friend and I turned for home, where I looked up Ruby-Crowned Kinglets and William Blake's Autumn:

The spirits of the air live in the smells

Of fruit; and Joy, with pinions light, roves round

The gardens, or sits singing in the trees.”

 Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat,

Then rose, girded himself, and o’er the bleak

Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

--William Blake, "To Autumn"

A walk to the mailbox

Since Prospect Park and I have been drifting apart a bit lately, I summoned the will to leave my car keys at home, and walked across the park to the Windsor Terrace post office to mail a package. I was rewarded with...

...the Bishop Ford High School football team, getting chewed out but good by Coach on the Parade Grounds. 

 A very young rider being reassured before cantering off around the lake.

 

Turtles basking on the lake, which has turned very green.

 

The Vanderbilt Playground, totally torn up for renovation. The scene of my forays with the toddler Child has been erased, although I feel little nostalgia: Child was never a great fan of playgrounds in those years, and I mostly recall a lot of forced cheer as I attempted to stuff her into swings or entice her onto the climbing gym.

And finally, unaware of the rich symbolism they evoked, a plump and vigilant hawk, poised hungrily above a rather gormless-looking dove.

                

I'll have to get over to the Post Office more often.

Fly by night

On Tuesday night just around sunset, a good-sized crowd of Prospect Park Alliance members turned out for one of our nifty little exclusives: "an evening with the bats" led by the Brooklyn Bird Club's Paul Keim. That's him at left, giving a warm-up demo of a dead cicada and its ghastly predator, the cicada-killer moth, who subjects the poor cicada to torments best reserved for a grade-B horror movie. The kids were electrified, and several asked the kind of penetratingly smart questions that make a docent's heart happy.

As we headed into the Long Meadow at moonrise, a red-tailed hawk and a snowy egret swooped directly overhead. Once we reached Dog Beach at the Upper Pool, a green night heron zoomed past. (The best way to see birds: Go out with an ace birder.) 

At the water's edge, we started to see bats skitter overhead in the twilight. Paul whipped out an echolocating device that slows down the frequency of the bats' cries to make them audible to human ears, in a stuttering crackle. Very Lt.-Uhuru-decodes-the-aliens. We saw two species, little brown bats (above, in a picture from here) and big brown bats; they probably live in attics or other batty spots throughout Park Slope and other environs, and come to the park at night to feast on mosquitos (which were plentiful). Paul debunked the usual myths about bats (no, they're not blind, won't get tangled in your hair, and won't suck your blood unless they're vampire bats, in which case they might delicately lap just a bit). For more cool bat stuff, go here.

For the kids, a highlight was a close encounter with a cicada emerging from its shell. They gathered around the strange metamorphosis unfolding on the trunk of an elm tree, a juvenile puparazzi recording the event with cell-phone cameras. Can't a fellow moult in peace? As we left the park, the cicadas had fallen silent, but the crickets and katydids had taken up their night songs all around us.

Bat photo: Mammalwatching.com

Swanlets!

Mama Swan was paddling around Duck Island with a brood of fuzzy grey cygnets today, while Dad Swan acted as her "wing man" against the aggressive pack of Canada geese moseying around nearby.

 

Dad Swan sailed right up to me, hissed, and tried to bite me, just for having had the nerve to take pictures of the kids. Like you'd think I was some weirdo planning to post the shots on the Web or something.

All together now: Awwww.

Unabridged

A balmy May morning, and the Lullwater Bridge bears the tromping feet of a huge group of kids in full-throated Feral Field Trip mode, en route to the Long Meadow. From afar, their roar sounded like that of a French Revolution mob around the guillotine; as they passed over the bridge, they gazed down at the water in astonishment, often mingled with bemusement or mild distaste. I had many urban groups like this (I dubbed them the "don't get out much" kids) during my years as a docent at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; many feared squirrels and were repulsed by grass. But they were always electrified by the natural environment, and, being young, were readily won over by it.

Hey, at least they were out in the park; that's more than I can boast for the past week. This morning, the lake was a shimmering reproach to all I'd missed.

 

For this guy, asleep on the bank, the Lullwater had lived up to its name. The splashing of the nearby waterfall was indeed restful.

Far more alert was this black-crowned night heron, always on the watch for fish to spear. I was on the lookout too...for my daffodils, the ones I planted (illicitly, it turned out) from the Great Greenmarket Daffodil Giveaway last fall.

Yes, it is absurdly late for daffies; they were up in March and mostly done in April. But the last time I checked my Secret Lakeside Spot, when most of them were in bloom around the city, not so much as a shoot was evident. Maybe they gave away bad daffodils? Anyway, I gave up hope. But hope returned when the few freebies that I planted in my own backyard sprang up and bloomed...yesterday. (Here they are decorating our very, very Catholic May altar.)

My anticipation grew as I passed through the barrel vault of the Cleft Ridge Span, which I'd used to site them last fall. Would I see a late-season burst of gold on the opposite shore of the lake? No...but I found their spent remains. They came up, very very late, and bloomed without me. Damn!

(It occurred to me, however, in very, very Catholic mode, that this sort of thing at least does not happen to us...we do not ever blossom unseen, even if it seems that way.)

I saw a green heron in addition to the black-topped guy, and swallows swooped in and out under the bridge. My eye followed one to the cornice of the Audubon Center, where she (he?) had made a lovely mud nest. Wow, what a publicity nightmare if they need to evict this little family, eh? 

 

As the kids converged on the bridge, the swallow startled and the sleeper awoke.

Dogfights

It's Guest Artist Monday! Since I didn't make it over to the park on Mother's Day, I was especially delighted by these glimpses of what I missed from gifted  photographer William Woerner. He showcases his stuff on his blog Lens; here are a few great shots of Sunday's dog action.





Dogs were on my mind after Brownstoner sparked some flame wars over this article in the New York Post, featuring a cranky video vigilante named Orrin Tilevitz whose mission in life seems to be getting irresponsible dog owners busted for their pooches' park misbehavior. I chatted with the young reporter, Sarah Ryley, on the Long Meadow last week (and honored her request to "embargo" the story); given the thin gruel that is Post house style, I thought she did a decent job.


In the movies, Orrin would be a quivering fall guy (played by Richard Dreyfuss) for an out-of-bounds Disney dog (perhaps like this rascal, "Zeus," at left). But in reality, this guy walks around with pepper spray and seems to dedicate every waking hour to chronicling miscreant dog/owner duos. Apparently, he's been attacked in the past; my own relaxed attitude toward the off-leash crowd in the Long Meadow (both during and outside of permitted hours) is shaped by my own, more positive experience. The dogs and owners I've met (typified by the folks at the advocacy group FIDO) create a safe, vibrant community out of this greensward. The worst behavior I've seen is dog-on-dog bullying (no worse than what I used to witness when I worked in an office). Tilevitz fumes that dogs ruin birdwatching, but I'm such a lousy birdwatcher that it's not an issue for me.

Dogwatching is more fun, anyway; no warbler has ever offered me a big sloppy kiss or let me give it a belly rub.

All dog photos: William Woerner; Tilevitz photo, JC Rice for New York Post

Perks of membership

On a cool spring Saturday afternoon, the Prospect Park Alliance lined up all sorts of fun for its members. We got exclusive use of the pedalboats; fueled by hot dogs and watermelon, Spouse and I peddled doggedly under Terrace Bridge, while lazy Daughter lounged behind us. We passed swimming dogs, a meditating lady, and the snowy egret, who was coasting from tree to tree with his skinny black legs stuck straight out behind him.

The boats allow one to approach the islands from the water; I loved this scrim of phragmites in front of an apple tree whose fragrance wafted across the lake. However, I failed to spot any Interesting Ducks. Will I ever see anything besides mallards?








We did, however, see Marty Markowitz, as well as this Mr. Magoo-lookalike box turtle (a rescued pet, not a park native) at the Audubon Center. Both seem to relish their public duties, although the turtle did retract his head after awhile (Marty didn't, I doubt he ever does). There was also a huge hissing Madagascar Cockroach on display, which Spouse petted...he has clearly been working for a natural history museum for too long.  

The Lefferts House received a steady stream of visitors; they were making yarn at the "Flax and Fleece Fest." We opted instead for rides on the world's best carousel.










The phrase unlimited carousel rides must be among the most marvelous in the English language. (And Prospect Park members get 'em.) After ice cream treats, we went on twice; the calliope played "My Wild Irish Rose."


A bit tired for the walk home, we were tickled to board the trolley (or as I call this faux-trolley-bus, the Folly), which was exclusively for Us Members. It was stuffy and crowded with raging toddlers, but it dropped us off at the Peristyle a few blocks from home. Something about the entire outing felt very Victorian: an afternoon of good, earnest, fresh-air frolicking.

Apres le deluge, moi

You know how it is after days of rain: You probably shouldn't come out yet, but you just need a good stretch.

This wormie on the Parade Grounds was fully the length of my size-10 ladies' sneaker, even while not fully extended, which means that if he grows at all, he will need to shop at the Big'n'Tall Worms Shop. I placed him considerately on some grass, where he had a better chance of rethinking his asphalt compulsion and making a meal for one of the countless yodeling robins nearby.

It was one of those Prospect Park walks that coalesced around no particular theme other than random cool stuff, starting with this school project abandoned inside one of the little colonnaded shelters at the Park Circle. You could really see the logic ticking: I got my grade, what'm I gonna do with this thing anyway, and my buddies want to go play. Screw it. But...it's cool enough that I'll prop it here for display. I can't quite figure out the theme of the diorama; it may be a cross between a farm and an ampitheatre.



This magnolia was the cover girl for my calendar last year; here it is looking east instead of west, with a haze of spring green in the distance. Yesterday's beating rain was brutal on petals.

But it was even harder on this old willow. The damage was so fresh that you could smell the sap in the torn trunk.  An egret hung out on the fallen branches.

Right next to the real lake, a duck enjoyed the privacy of his own boutique lake in this vast puddle.

Pictures, moving and otherwise

Yesterday was yet another in April's Interminable Winter Series, with a raw breeze blowing off the lake and making the magnolias shiver.

The woods on Lookout Hill were full of song, although a woodpecker and countless robins were the only ones I saw besides the cardinal.













These finely engineered catkins sprouted from a tree on Wellhouse Drive that had fallen but not given up. Overall, though, spring seems slow and muted; tomorrow's anticipated 70-degree sunshine should unleash pandemonium.

 

Speaking of Wellhouse Drive and Lookout Hill, here's an amazing find on E-bay: an ancient stereoview card showing the 1869 Wellhouse (still there, now used as a storage shed) with its original tower (demolished in the 1930s, according to Forgotten New York) and peaked entry hood, with the well itself in front. Note that there are practically no trees cloaking the hill behind it. Bidding is through the roof on this rare glimpse of a raw young Prospect Park; wish it could be mine.

YouTube, Ebay...if Frederick Law Olmsted were alive today, he (unlike me) would be tweeting on Twitter!

Out like a...hawk

I can't remember if March came in like a lion or a Thompson's gazelle or what, but it went out like a lamb, which would have made a tasty meal for this raptoriffic guy atop one of the Cobra-head streetlamps on Wellhouse Drive. He was easy to spot if you're an ace birder like me: Just look for real ace birders standing around with long telephoto lenses, looking up. Bird identification is easy for us experts, too: Eavesdrop alertly until you hear a long-lensed person say something like, "Juvenile red-tail, that's why his tail isn't red yet."

After indulging his paparazzi for awhile, he (or she?) hung out low in a nearby tree, grooming breast feathers and scratching an itch with one taloned foot. This "juvenile" looked to have a slouchy paunch, belied by that screamin' evil eye that says, "You. I'll bet your soft parts would make a decent snack." This shot is no match for the telephoto-endowed, but it's my best hawk shot ever!

Other things of note: Magnolias busting out of their fuzzy coats near the Vanderbilt playground...

...and the tree shadows (still skeletal) now fall on soft green grass instead of sere stubble.

Today marked "One and a quarter years in the park." I've slacked off a bit in visit frequency, but am loving the idea of making AYITP more collaborative. Thanks to those who've already contributed some great stuff. The rest of ya: Bring on the photos, artwork, writing, archivey goodness, video or whatnot, in or about Prospect Park, and we'll share the journey.