Fortunately, more and more of them can reach their destination thanks to the help of kind humans. When the man finds a hurt bird, he uses panhandled change to email Booth from a computer at Staples she swaps him socks, sweatpants and food in exchange for the animal.Helping New York City Birds | Kind volunteers want NYC's migratory birds to soar!įlying through the skies of New York with its famed tall skyscrapers, can be a real challenge for birds migrating from Central or South America to the Arctic Circle during the spring and fall migration seasons. “Some people who have had a lot of suffering in life are the most generous,” she says. One of Booth’s greatest collaborators is an unhoused man who lives under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Building custodians and guards hold on to stunned birds to turn over to McRae on her rounds. A Midtown flower shop owner who grants sanctuary to rescued fowl on her Westchester property. There was the liquor store owner who donated a stack of paper bags when Parkins’ supply ran out one recent morning. She learned her bagging system and other essential techniques from them.Īll these volunteers say they rely on the kindness of so many strangers – an informal but even vaster network of kindhearted urban nature lovers – to pull off their rescues. Debarking from the PATH Train in Newark, many mornings she’d run into two veteran rescuers collecting that city’s collision survivors to bring to New Jersey rehabber Raptor Trust. When McRae moved to New York from Southern California in 2016, she discovered, “It’s hard to go very far without seeing who’s not doing well,” she says. Treehugger editorial director Melissa Breyer signed up for Project Safe Flight this past spring, for example, after seeing a photo on WBF’s Twitter feed of 26 bird strike victims all in pile from one morning, that was it – she knew she had to do something.īreyer sought out McRae for some practical advice about getting started: bring a permanent marker for writing IDs of dead birds on zipper bags get those binder clips and sandwich bags ready. Volunteers are often drawn to rescue after an encounter opens their eyes to the need. If the bird’s in the water, I’ll get Gowanus Dredgers to come out in their kayaks. “If the bird needs a ladder, the fire department’s good. In her rotating toolkit are weighted nets to facilitate capture, birdseed and birdsong played off the internet to attract the capture-wary, plastic carrying cases for large creatures like geese, wrap-around goggles (“I cannot stress this enough – any long-billed bird like a grebe is gonna go right for your eyes,” Booth says) a wetsuit for water rescues and a mental tally of potential accomplices. “I’m drawn to the underdog, and I feel like, if this bird is suffering, I don’t care what it is,” she says. She’s collected unwanted roosters flung over the fence of a SoHo community garden, chukars escaped from live markets in Bushwick, a gull with a broken pelvis in Orchard Beach and more pigeons than she can count from every distant corner of the boroughs. “When it’s a hawk, people are running for that job,, ‘I will swim there if I have to!’” says Booth. Volunteer Victoria Booth holds a mourning dove she rescued. They carry kits containing tiny scissors, tweezers, cotton swabs and antibiotic ointment so when the listserv announces a “stringer”, they can perform onsite operations to remove painful snarls of thread from around pigeons’ feet. But the group’s numbers also include more specialised volunteers. Some rescuers, like environmental journalist Reynard Loki, putters out on his motorcycle a few times a year to lend a hand to what he calls “one of our smartest birds, that we take for granted”. NYC Pigeon Rescue Central is a listserv with about 700 members. Through an all-volunteer network, they provide a valuable service to window strike and poisoning victims: they scoop them off the streets and deliver them to aid. Other folks, though, have a longer-standing interest in some of the city’s less fortunate birds. When the pandemic hit in March, more and more people started taking delighted notice of the many local and itinerant avians flitting through the trees.
During spring and fall migrations, it plays temporary host to weary travellers (warblers, woodcocks). It’s home to year-round residents (cardinals, crows). A portrait of Jorge, volunteer Victoria Booth’s pet rescue pigeon.
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