Pale Male and Lola in NEW YORK CURIOSITIES

A while back, out of the blue, I got an email from a writer named Cindy Perman, http://www.cindyperman.com/ . She was finishing up a book called New York Curiosities and she was including a section on Pale Male and Lola. C.P. said she liked what she saw on the blog and asked if we could make a deal about use of one of my photos to illustrate the Pale Male and Lola portion.


After making sure she wouldn't be making fun of the Monarch of Central Park and his mate, and numerous hilarious emails, Perman can be very funny as is the book, the deal was on. The photo above was the one that went into New York Curiosities.

In the meantime, I learned that Steve Baldwin of http://www.brooklynparrots.com/ who takes birders and the curious on the Wild Brooklyn Parrot Safaris in Greenwood Cemetery was also featured.

It looked like urban birds were getting their share of ink.

Then yet again, I heard from Cindy Perman, come to the Press Party! Astoundingly, I did. And it was a hoot. No pun intended.

Steve Baldwin sang his Ballad of the Brooklyn Parrots. And I finally got to meet him.

We'd been emailing back and forth for years and had never met. Sometimes it just takes a book to get one out of one's burrow, oops, I mean, borough, of course.

And wonder of wonders, Natalia Paruz, the Saw Lady, www.SawLady.com/blog , was there. We'd worked together on a P.D.Q. Bach show at Carnegie Hall or was it Avery Fisher, some years back.

Now this saw playing thing isn't just silliness.

Natalia is a virtuoso of the carpenter saw. She makes the most haunting eerie and beautiful music. I mean they gave her a medal of honor in Paris and that's no joke. Though people have been known to laugh in delight.

And Todd Robbins, community activist of Coney Island, and the man who spearheaded the Sideshow School, pounded a nail up his nose. Curious but also hilarious.

Then there were the local New Yorkers who came up to me and told me about their personal encounters with Pale Male in Central Park. Now we know that sometimes other hawks in the park are mistaken for Pale Male, but that was unlikely the case with my favorite PM story of the evening.

A Buddhist Monk came up to me and said, that one day he'd been running in the park. He was feeling out of sorts and didn't really know what to do with himself. He sat down on a big rock and thought, should I go to the temple, what should I do? He decided he'd sit right there on the rock until the spirit moved him. Well who should appear but Pale Male who, characteristically unfazed, perched in a tree next to the monk's rock and sat there. As the monk said, "It turned out the spirit didn't move me, it told me to stay put." And he did, just sitting at peace with Pale Male.

Curious but wonderful and there are many more stories of wonderful, talented, brave, funny, undaunted people in the book who have gone with their creativity and done all sorts of marvelous things no matter what anyone said.

And isn't that just the sort of people we like?

Birders being thought more than a little fringey themselves in some people's eyes, and hawk watchers even more so.

Hey, I'm not missing any of these people.

I'm starting New York Curiosities tonight.

And not to be outdone, on my walk home , there were some of our friends the pigeons at 11:30 PM cleaning up the street. Aren't they supposed to be diurnal? I've seen this curiosity before though rarely.

The night foraging 42nd. St. pigeons.

Remember the blog I did about diurnal animals who could switch their "clocks" and become nocturnal if the food source changed from day to night? I'm not completely sure, but I think the night pigeons may only be nocturnal on Friday and Saturday night but I'm going to have to check to make sure.

Now some might find me checking the activity of nocturnal pigeons

rather curious, but then again, they would be the people who weren't curious at all.

Donegal Browne

Photograph by Cheryl Cavert of Tulsa, Oklahoma

Jay the Red-tailed Hawk, Dad of Thunder, from the KJRH nest, does a little hunting from a unique vantage point.

Some hawks really do know how to pose for a photo don't they?


Photo by Cheryl Cavert

Cheryl Cavert, a new hawk watcher in Tulsa this breeding season, picked up a camera and has been documenting this family with a persistence not to be denied. It wasn't easy but she persevered and got her shots of Jay perched in this wonderful spot.

Hi Donna,
Just thought you and some of your readers might enjoy these photos of Jay of the Tulsa KJRH RT hawk family. He has tended to perch in more visible areas that other Tulsa urban RT hawks and after leaving the nesting tower perch last month, he has taken up residence about 1/2 to 3/4 miles away along the banks of the Arkansas River. As the road construction that had been going on in the nesting area has finished, I guess Jay missed all the construction sounds and workers so he relocated to another big construction area! The Riverparks area he has been spotted in quite frequently recently is closed to the public due to reconstruction of the walking/bike paths and other facilities.

The other evening about 6 pm on my way home from work (a rainy day) as I was driving down Riverside Drive, I noticed Jay perched in a very visible position. I did not have my camera with me so I quickly pulled over and took a couple of pictures with my cell phone camera. After viewing those, I knew those just would not suffice, so I continued on home for my camera and when I returned he was still there!!!

Jay - catching the tail end of rush hour traffic!! The full picture shows what Jay was perched on - and he was about eye-level with all the vans and trucks and SUV's - I wonder how many of the hundreds if not thousands of commuters even noticed him? I stayed on the other side of the four lanes of traffic as I did not want to send him flying off his perch - he is one of the few Tulsa RT hawks who is not spooked by the click of the camera - in fact it looks like he enjoys finding suitable posing places!!

Recently I was looking up some pigeon information and came across the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Pigeon Watch Program (www.birds.cornell.edu/pigeonwatch). It has lots of information about pigeons as well as information about collecting data on the pigeons in one's neighborhood/town.

Thanks for all the wonderful photos and stories on your blog. It has given me a different and wonderful perspective as I watch the many animals in my neighborhood! -- Cheryl in Tulsa

Cheryl,
I think you're right, Jay did miss the construction. I'm betting he has figured out that when there is construction, all the disturbance tends to disrupt the rodents and gets them on the move, making them easier to catch.

Jay, being a clever hawk, is waiting patiently for them to break cover and swoop, grab--Jay will have dinner.

Many thanks for sharing your adventure, the photos, and including the link for PigeonWatch. The neighborhood kids in Hell's Kitchen loved participating in that program.

Check it out folks, perhaps there's room for PigeonWatch in your community.

I ended up going out a bit late in the day and began to think I wasn't going to see bird one. When suddenly a gull appeared from the south behind a building but then swooped into a dive and disappeared behind another.

Thinking that was that, I started to walk home and there he was again.

Heading towards the sunset and the Hudson River.

Only to make another circle in the golden light before heading home to the river for the night.

Donegal Browne

Things feeling bleak? Perhaps It Is Time For A Book!

Blog contributor, Karen Kolling, sent me an email saying, "Maybe there should be a children's book about one of the pigeons, if it could be done without scaring them about the injuries."

And indeed there is. Pigeon Hero, winner of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Award, based on the WWII Carrier pigeon G.I. Joe.

I've gotten this book for nearly every child I know when they reach the appropriate reading level and Joe has created many a youngster who suitably appreciates the wonders of pigeons and therefore all birds.

Perhaps you might want to consider doing the same for a child? Pigeon Hero is a paperback usually priced around $4, and well worth it in so many ways.

And just what did G.I. Joe do, you ask?

During the month of October 1943, the British Fifty-sixth Brigade was trying to advance on the German held Italian town of Colvi Veccia. In an effort to weaken the German position, the infantry ordered an aerial bombardment of the town by the Allies.

On October 18th, 1943 the German resistance fell and 1,000 British soldiers took up positions inside the town, where they found Italian civilians, who at that point had no interest whatsoever in fighting anyone.

Unfortunately the bombing run was due to take place within the half hour, the radio was broken, the telegraph lines were down, and the Germans were likely just over the next hill. The soldiers hunkered down, prepared to take whatever came, while a panicked message was tied to the leg of G.I. Joe and sent to headquarters.

In Pigeon Hero, the men tell Joe to fly as fast as he can and off he goes. First he's shot at with a machine gun by the Germans, so he flies higher and higher. Then he runs into a hawk who wants to eat him and he flies lower and lower to evade capture. (As flying beneath a hawk would not be an evasive action taken by a pigeon in his right mind who didn't want to be lunch, this is artistic license. Otherwise we'd never ever have heard a word about Joe.) Joe then battles his way through a rain storm and finally brings his message home just as the planes are about to take off. G.I. Joe saves the day.

In reality, Joe was shot at, he evaded the hostile fire, flew 25 miles in 20 minutes, that's better than a mile a minute, (Think about that, he went faster than a mile per MINUTE.), and yes, in actuality arrived just as the bombers were taxiing for take off. The message was read and he saved well over a thousand people from being blasted to smithereens by five minutes.

In November of 1946, G. I. Joe was given the Dicken Medal for gallantry by the Lord Mayor of London.

Which brings us to a second question. What exactly is the Dicken Medal?

According to Wikipedia---

The Dickin Medal was instituted in 1943 by Maria Dickin to honour the work of animals in war. It is a large bronze medallion, bearing the words "For Gallantry" and "We Also Serve" within a laurel wreath, carried on ribbon of striped green, dark brown and pale blue. Traditionally, the medal is presented by the Lord Mayor of the City of London. It has become recognised as "the animals' Victoria Cross". As of February 2008, it has been awarded 62 times.

Which brings us, of course, to--Who is Maria Dickin?

Also from Wikipedia--

Maria Dickin was the founder of the PDSA (People's Dispensary for Sick Animals), a United Kingdom veterinary charity. She set up the medal as an award for any animal displaying conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty whilst serving with British Commonwealth armed forces or civil emergency services. The medal was awarded 54 times between 1943 and 1949, to 32 pigeons, 18 dogs, 3 horses and 1 cat, to acknowledge actions during the Second World War, after which the medal was officially replaced with the PDSA's non-military Silver Medal.

The animated film Valiant, released in 2005, is a tribute to the role of homing pigeons during World War II, and the fact that they won the most number of Dickin Medals during the war.

A special "one-off" posthumous Dickin Medal award was made in 2000 to a Canadian dog for actions in 1941 which would have been honoured at the time, had the PDSA been informed.

The medal was subsequently revived in 2002 to honour three dogs in relation to the September 11 attacks, and was awarded to two dogs serving with Commonwealth forces in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq respectively.

A comparable award, the PDSA Gold Medal, is an animal bravery award that acknowledges the civilian bravery and devotion to duty of animals. Created by the PDSA in 2002, it is now recognised as the animal's equivalent of the George Cross.

What's a George Cross? Not this time, you can't expect me to do all the work. You'll just have to look that one up for yourself. But wait, before you do, scroll down past yesterday's post about John Silver, and down to the next until you see a Blue Bar pigeon.

Now what might that be around his neck?

Donegal Browne