Central Park is one of the best places to see birds during migration in all of northeastern
North America.
But if you should happen to arrive on a day when the weather is bad, just walk across
the street and come in here to the American Museum of Natural History, and there are plenty
of birds to see regardless of the weather.
We're now standing in front of the Oyster Bay Sanctuary diorama that was dedicated to
honor Theodore Roosevelt.
For the most part, these birds are what you would encounter on a spring day in Central
Park.
A variety of wood warblers, as well as the bright and colorful larger songbirds that
migrate up from the tropics in the spring.
Things like Scarlet Tanager, Baltimore Oriole and Rose-breated Grosbeak.
On your birding expedition through the American Museum, you can choose to stay in North America,
or travel abroad.
Many of the dioramas feature not only the big mammals, but they also include all of
the plants, and birds.
So besides visiting the Hall of North American Birds, or Birds of the World, you can add
a number of species to your list on every floor of the Museum.
We're now standing out on the American Great Plains as they would have appeared in the
mid-1800s with vast herds of American Bison moving across them in search of fresh grass.
We'll note in this diorama that there's a bird that's quite common still today featured
with the bison.
The brown-headed cowbird likely evolved with the American Bison and adapted to the habit
of the animal moving in herds constantly.
The cowbird doesn't build its own nest.
It seeks out another bird in the process of nesting and deposits its eggs in that birds'
nest and allows that bird to incubate and raise its young.
There are no longer the big moving herds of bison, but we still have lots of brown-headed
cowbirds.
They've benefitted by our agricultural practices across the country.
They feed around the feet of browsing cattle on the insects stirred up by the animals,
and also feed on parasites and insects on their coats.
And also they're very fond of bird feeders.
Our birding expedition has now brought us into the Hall of North American Forests.
In the 1950s, this hall was designed to utilize the diorama to teach ecology and to show the
relationship of all plants and animals to a specific ecosystem within the North American
continent.
The birds of the Olympic Forest are some of the Northwest's most beautiful, Varied Thrush,
Harlequin Duck, Dipper, Blue Grouse, all within this complex and somewhat hidden and secretive
forest environment.
So the forest is complete with all its lush detail.
But being an accurate rendition of the Olympic Forest, you will have to search for the birds
and use your naturalist's skills to find them.
We're standing before the Walrus diorama, which features a site in the Bering Sea, off
in the distance, across the water, you can see East Cape, in Siberia.
Francis Lee Jaques visited this site in the 1920s, and completed the background for this
in 1939.
If you look up in the sky on the right side of this background painting, you'll see a
beautiful flock of Common Eider, the sea ducks that are used, or their feathers are harvested
for very warm winter gear, sleeping bags and down-filled vests.
In Akeley's Hall of African Mammals, the Upper Nile diorama features a view of the river
system on the Nile.
If you have your binoculars handy, and scan that landscape, you'll note the river edge
is populated with a variety of birds.
You'll find birds that you might easily see in Central Park.
Some of the water foul that are painted in that scene are birds that are circumpolar.
They are located in the entire Northern Hemisphere.
So if you study those birds with your binoculars, that are right out on that mud spit, there
are Northern Shovelers and Pintail ducks, birds that we frequently see in Central Park
or the Hackensack Meadows, right over in New Jersey.
I know that when you're walking through the Museum and viewing its dioramas, were they
to be devoid of birds, even when they do depict the bigger mammals, they would appear strange
to us, because birds are diurnal, they're ever-present, and they're in all ecosystems
and habitats of the world.