Bird Watching @ Pelham Bay Park
By Dr. Aihua Zheng,
Pelham Bay Park is the biggest park in New York City, located 1.5 miles north of the Einstein campus between I95 and Long Island Sound. The 2700-acre park contains different kinds of habitats including woods, saltwater wetland, shoreline, freshwater pond and wetland, meadow, a small hill and a landfill. Each habitat has its own bird community giving a total number of 264 species. I have been bird-watching in the park for the last two years and spotted almost 200 species. It is also a great place for bicycling, running, hiking, boating, horseback riding.
Please do enjoy this wild place that is close to Einstein community.
Here is a link to a local bird-watching website established by Jack Rothman with a lot of information about Pelham Bay Park (not only limited to birds).
If you are interested to explore Pelham Bay Park and get to know all the birds in the park, please check out the following links:
“Black capped chickadee”. Taken in Bronx Botanical Garden, easy to feed by sunflower seeds. If you bring peanut, you will get Tufted Titmouse. Tufted Titmouse is shy, so be patient.
Female “Northern Cardinal”
Male “Northern Cardinal”. One of the most beautiful American birds. It can be easily found in the garden.
“Mourning dove”
“Dark-eyed Junco”
“Cooper’s Hawk”
“Red-tailed Hawk“ just caught a Morning Dove
“Osprey” just caught a red fish. They are nesting in the Park.
“Common Grackle”
“Red-tailed Hawk”
“Red-tailed Hawk”. A young guy. The photo was taken by my cell phone. I could almost feel its breath.
“Great Horned Owl” The biggest owl in America and the bird is nesting in the Park during the winter. The photo of this chick is taken by my cell phone (through spotting scope).
“Cedar Waxwing”
“Cedar Waxwing”
“Ruby-throated Hummingbird”
“Ruby-throated Hummingbird”. It can be easily found during the spring and the summer around plants in flower.
“American Oystercatcher” is nesting on the jetty.
“Canada goose”
“Red tailed hawk”
“Red tailed hawk”
“Northern Saw-whet Owl”. They migrate to the Park every year during the winter. It is the smallest northern owl.
"Mute swan". During the winter.
“Monk Parakeet”. Common in the park. Make huge stick nest at Rice stadium.
“Monk Parakeet“
“Black capped chickadee”
“Blue jay”
“Blue jay”
“White throated sparrow”
“Red-winged blackbird”
“White-breasted Nuthatch”. Often seen on the trunk climbing upside down.
"Brant". As common as Canada Goose in the winter but the size is smaller.
"Black-throated Blue Warbler".
I found this bird on the trail in front of Price center in a busy morning during this fall. For every spring and fall, a lot of warbler pass through Einstein and stop by on the trees to take a rest. But this one was obviously unfortunate. It might hit on the glass-wall of Price center earlier as we can see the beak is bleeding. I put it on the meadow and try to feed some water, of course with gloves on in case of bird Flu. However, half hour later it passed away.
"Black-throated Blue Warbler".
Every year, billions of birds are killed by the buildings in the city. They might be attracted by the light at the night or confused by the refection of sky during the day. Or, just the city sits in the way, especially for Manhattan which is exactly on the Northeast migration route. People have tried to prevent this kind of incident by different strategy like handing some hawk outside the wall to scare the birds. Since a lot of birds migrate in the night, I don’t think it will them. Anyway, this is really heartbreaking.