The Birds of Sunset Park: The Big Chill

First, a quick update: in mid-February, the Swainson’s Hawk — which I wrote about in last month’s column — was reported to have returned to the Sims Municipal Recycling Facility, marking the fourth year in a row that this extremely rare visitor has chosen to take up winter residence in Sunset Park, rather than South America! It should hopefully stick around for much of March.

In this space, I usually write about a particular bird (or group of birds) that has a role to play in the birding month ahead, but this month, I want to step back to talk from a birder’s point of view about the historically cold period we’ve had to endure in New York City. In late January, there was a huge snowstorm, followed by a period of sustained freezing temperatures coupled with strong, biting winds that brought the wind chill well into the negative numbers in coastal areas. (As I write this, a warmer period has allowed the huge deposits of snow in roads and parks and yards to melt… but there’s another big dump of snow right around the corner!)

As a birder, I try to attune myself to nature’s rhythms, working out when certain birds might appear by understanding their movements and the factors that impact them. This brutally cold spell was hard on humans, but also on birds. Not only have these incredibly low temperatures been physically punishing for them, but also the huge storm blanketed everything in snow, covering up the food sources of many songbirds. In order to survive, those birds had to adapt.

On the morning of the snowstorm, anticipating irregular movements of birds displaced by this heavy snowfall, I went to Bush Terminal Park. I was secretly hoping to see Snow Buntings or even a Lapland Longspur, but my most realistic target was Horned Larks, small songbirds who get their name from the peaked feathers on their heads that make them look a little demonic. To my delight, after scouting around the park, through the heavy falling snow, I saw a trio of Horned Larks foraging on the hillocks, feeding on the few sparse plants that were still poking out of the snow. The species had been seen only once before in the park, but these birds stayed more than two weeks, seemingly finding just enough food there to survive. Their numbers grew to five by the time the thaw started, when they were able to move on to more familiar habitat.

The intensity of the cold hit other birds hard, too, forcing them to adapt as well. Song Sparrows sought out a tiny spot where an air vent was thawing the snow, foraged with Dark-Eyed Juncos in an area that hadn’t been mowed by the park staff, and warmed up by an electrical box, in the company of some shivering Mourning Doves.

Water birds also struggled. With the frigid temperatures that followed the snowstorm, almost all the open water froze; during the coldest days, almost the entirety of New York Harbor was iced over, which I had never seen before. Ducks, geese and gulls rested on the ice in huge numbers, sometimes huddled together for warmth; others sought out tiny pockets of water or foraged on land, some side by side with the Horned Larks. Many birds relocated out of necessity. Others died from the cold, their bodies sometimes frozen into the ice.

Seeing the Horned Larks at an unexpected location like Bush was cool, but it’s part of a bigger picture of birds being disrupted by increasingly volatile weather patterns. During this cold snap, I tried to step back to observe and absorb as much as I could about how such climate instability impacts birds. At times like this when food is in such short supply, sometimes just clearing some snow to create open ground and feeding birds in a sheltered spot can be hugely helpful. The more we can learn and understand what birds experience during these kinds of weather events, the more we can advocate for their needs.