THE NEWSLETTER OF NEW YORK CITY AUDUBON SUMMER 2017 / VOLUME XXXVIII NO. 2 THE URBAN AUDUBON NYC Audubon’s Summer Island Home 12th Annual Jamaica Bay Shorebird Festival On Becoming an Activist NYC AUDUBON MISSION & VISION Mission: NYC Audubon is a grassroots community that works for the protection of BIRD’S-EYE VIEW Kathryn Heintz wild birds and habitat in the five boroughs, improving the quality of life for all New Yorkers. s I write mid-spring with thoughts of summer, thousands upon thousands of Vision: NYC Audubon envisions a day when birds and people in the five boroughs enjoy enthusiastic and energized environmental supporters are turning out across the a healthy, livable habitat. Acountry for a second weekend in a row to support science, research-based in- quiry, climate study, and conservation. These ground-swelling public events show why THE URBAN AUDUBON Editors Lauren Klingsberg and recent attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency and our national parks and mon- Marcia T. Fowle uments will not succeed. We who love nature and respect the earth are in the majority. Managing Editor Andrew Maas We will not stand passively by. Newsletter Committee Ellen Azorin, Lucienne Bloch, Ned Boyajian, Suzanne When we went to press for our Spring issue, our appeal was to be vigilant, to stay Charlé, Diane Darrow, Meryl Greenblatt, informed, and to engage with our voices and support. We are doing all of this and more. Catherine Schragis Heller, Mary Jane Kaplan, Abby McBride, Hillarie O’Toole, We are marching and on the move. So what do we do next? What do we do to help birds? Don Riepe, Carol Peace Robins My answer is to keep up the pressure nationally and continue to act locally. Our own backyard, New York City, chal- Printing & Mailing Kase Printing, Inc. Design Whitehouse & Company lenges birds with its heralded and majestic Art Director Christina Rubin structures—buildings, bus shelters, anything TAKE ACTION! Publisher NYC Audubon with deadly reflective or clear glass. The city RECEIVE NYC AUDUBON THE URBAN AUDUBON is published four that never sleeps endangers birds with the lure ACTION ALERT EMAILS times per year (spring, summer, fall, and of artificial lights. The desire to develop and re- winter) by New York City Audubon Society, Stay current on pressing Inc. claim land threatens birds’ precious remaining environmental issues that require natural habitats—even those previously pro- BOARD OF DIRECTORS tected. What we must do locally is make the immediate action. Enroll to receive President Jeffrey Kimball Executive Vice President David Speiser places under our control bird friendly. We must environmental action alerts from Vice President Catherine Schragis Heller make our homes, windows, windowsills, roofs, NYC Audubon by sending your Treasurer Fredric Spar Secretary Alexander Ewing balconies, and yards welcoming and safe. We can email to communications@ Immediate Past President Harrison D. Maas treat windows, turn lights out, and grow native nycaudubon.org. Directors Robert Bate; Karen Benfield; plants. Those of us commanding larger domin- Drianne Benner; Christian Cooper; Richard H. Fried, VMD; Sarah Jeffords; Lauren ions must influence workplaces and community Klingsberg; Deborah Laurel; Lawrence spaces, as well as municipal, state, and federal legislation. We can and must carry out Levine; Eugene Nardelli; Rachel Quiñones; John Shemilt; Alan Steel; Tom Stephenson; these things. From the simple to the complex, whatever our individual capacities, every Michael Tannen act of every size matters. Now we welcome summer. Join us at the Tern and Shorebird Festivals. Come out to ADVISORY COUNCIL Co-Chair Marcia T. Fowle; Co-Chair James R. our new seasonal visitor and education center at Governors Island—and come out often. Sheffield; Oakes Ames; Richard T. Andrias; Get outside and get birding! Sarah Grimké Aucoin; Claude Bloch, MD; Marsilia A. Boyle; David Burg; Albert K. Butzel; Clifford Case; Rebekah Creshkoff; Andrew Darrell; Joseph H. Ellis; Andrew Farnsworth, PhD; Lynne Hertzog; Mary Jane Kaplan; Robert J. Kimtis; Kimberly Kriger; Janice Laneve; Pamela Manice; Peter HELP US ON GOVERNORS ISLAND Rhoades Mott; Dorothy Peteet, PhD; Don Riepe; Lewis Rosenberg THIS SUMMER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Kathryn Heintz e are seeking friendly and bird-knowledgeable volunteers to help DIRECTOR OF CONSERVATION AND out this summer during our inaugural residency on Governors SCIENCE Island. Volunteers are needed weekdays and weekends now Susan Elbin, PhD W through October 1 to greet and engage with visitors at our Nolan Park house as well as to lead bird walks. To apply, please email [email protected]. RECYCLED Supporting responsible use of 2 www.nycaudubon.org forest resources IN THIS ISSUE SUMMER 2017 ©NYC Audubon NYC AUDUBON 71 West 23rd Street Suite 1523 New York, NY 10010 Tel: 212-691-7483 Fax: 646-606-3301 www.nycaudubon.org Cover Photograph: Common Terns ©paul Blathwayt* Small Banner Photographs: Susan Elbin, Steve Nanz, and Don Riepe *This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 6 ©Chris O’Flaherty FEATURES * 6 NYC Audubon’s Summer Island Home by Suzanne Charlé 7 7 “It’s Your Tern” Festival at Governors Island ©Debra Kriensky 8 New York City Nightlife: Hanging with the City’s Bats by Ned Boyajian 8 Remember the Birds 9 On Becoming an Activist: Sharing the Learning Curve by Meryl Greenblatt 10 Birding Cemeteries in the Five Boroughs: Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery 11 by Mary Jane Kaplan 11 12th Annual Jamaica Bay Shorebird Festival ©David Speiser 17 Kingsland Wildflowers 20 The Fall Roost DEPARTMENTS 4 Conservation Notes 16 Book Reviews 5 Volunteer! 18 Acknowledgments 12 10 Annual Meeting and Conservation 19 News & Notes Update 19 Support NYC Audubon’s Mission 12 Events and Adventures Summer 2017 3 CONSERVATION NOTES uring most summer days (and ©NYC Audubon some nights) you can find our Dconservation staff and volunteers out in the field. Spring migrants have come and gone, but summer is right in the middle of the breeding season, which means we are hard at work monitoring breeding populations of herons, egrets, shorebirds, gulls, terns, and more nesting throughout the City. Here are some updates from the field: PROJECT SAFE FLIGHT This spring, we partnered with Dr. Greg Dobler, data scientist from New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress, to begin a study looking at the role light plays in building collisions throughout Herring Gull and Chicks Nesting on Javits Green Roof lower Manhattan. A recently installed high- tech camera perched at the top of One Bryant At the beginning of May, we once again WATERBIRDS OF NEW YORK HARBOR Park will be tracking light levels at various took to the green roof of the Jacob K. Javits We are currently in the middle of our buildings, while our dedicated Project Safe Convention Center to monitor for birds, bats, 33rd Annual Harbor Herons nesting survey, Flight volunteers will be patrolling those and arthropods. Each year we find that more led by Tod Winston. For over three decades, buildings to track bird collisions. We are bird species are using the roof as habitat, we have been recording colony size and looking at 16 different buildings located such as eastern kingbird and white-throated species composition in rookeries on our harbor from Battery Park to Midtown. If the waves sparrow. We will also be monitoring the roof’s islands (and some on the mainland). Last of migration should pass further to the west, growing colony of nesting herring gulls. Last year’s comprehensive survey of 20 locations few to no birds would be flying over lower year we had 11 nests and 17 fledged chicks throughout the City showed a continued Manhattan, and collisions would be rare. on the sedum roof. Through a grant from decline of black-crowned night-heron, To help us determine whether birds are the Greenpoint Community Environmental though they remain the most abundant wader present over lower Manhattan, Dr. Andrew Fund, we began similar monitoring this nesting in the harbor. But, glossy ibis has Farnsworth, NYC Audubon advisory council spring on the new Kingsland Wildflowers increased by 45% since the last full survey in member and scientist at Cornell University, green roof in Greenpoint. Dustin Partridge 2013. Go to www.nycaudubon.org/issues-of- will be adding a weather radar layer to the and Kaitlyn Parkins are once again leading concern/harbor-herons to find the complete data set to tell us where exactly the birds are the team, along with Dr. Alan Clark of 2016 report. migrating. The data we collect from D-Bird Fordham University. Citizen science volunteers are also out in is also a very important component. This Some additional hot-off-the-press news: force for our Harbor Heron foraging surveys, work has been made possible by a generous we were awarded a grant from the New York which help us learn more about where and grant from the Leon Levy Foundation. Community Trust to advance the science of when these birds are foraging. We are still During one day in late March, we had green roofs as habitat by facilitating a working tracking Edward, the great egret fitted with a an overflow of reports—over 40 in total—of group of urban ecologists and resource backpack SMS transmitter in 2015 on Staten injured and dead American woodcocks that managers. The working group meetings, Island as part of a project in partnership had collided with glass windows.While very designed to help us better understand the with John Brzorad, the U.S. Forest Service, sad, the data will help us understand more function of green roofs as habitat and make and New Jersey Audubon. Edward goes about where and how often this is occurring. recommendations for the creation of more back and forth between New York City and The New York Times published a story, quoting green roofs, have been hosted by the Javits South Carolina, but as of April 5, he’s back Dr.