| CITY DWELLERS LOOK to the tabloid gossip columns for their favorite Fifth Avenue residents, including Pale Male, the distinctive red-tailed hawk that has roosted with his family on the upper floors of a posh co-op with a lush park view. He has quickly become New York’s favorite celebrity rat catcher, attracting more telescopes and cameras than Woody Allen or Yoko Ono. But Pale Male and his brood are hardly alone. Several species in Central Park rely on other animals to keep themselves fed.
In 1998, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation reintroduced six screech owls into the park. By 2005, only one of the original six survived. But this shouldn’t be considered a failure, said Chris Nagy, a City College graduate student and expert in the owl project. “The normal mortality rate for young owls is 70 percent for the first year. And then you get another 20 to 30 percent dying off each year after that. So, one out of six after so many years is pretty good.”
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“There are lots of snappers in our water bodies, mostly the lake. They do get to be very large and are very scary looking, and yes, they
do have a nasty bite.”
—Regina Alvarez,
woodland manager
with the Central Park Conservancy |
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The conservancy put 32 owls in the park between 2001 and 2002. By Nagy’s last count, there were six left, not counting the babies. While there weren’t any hatchlings in 2004, Nagy said there were two in both 2002 and 2003. “To have three babies fledge in one brood is good news,” he said. “An interesting thing about these owls is that they have all nested very early… So my guess is that the food supply is very good in Central Park.”
Finding the owls isn’t so easy. Ask anyone with binoculars where to go, and he or she might point you to a stand of pine trees at the east of the pond at West 103rd Street, above the waterfall and beside the road. |
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There, at dusk, the patient owl-watcher might see two owls and their three hatchlings emerge from the thick pine and linger on another tree’s limb before darting off for another night of hunting.
But the owls and hawks aren’t the only predators in the park. Instead of swooping down upon prey like Central Park’s raptors, the park’s snapping turtles lurk in the muddy bottoms of the Turtle Pond, lake and other bodies of water. “There are lots of snappers in our water bodies, mostly the lake,” said Regina Alvarez, woodland manager with the Central Park Conservancy, who pointed out that snappers are native to this part of the country. “They do get to be very large and are very scary looking, and yes, they do have a nasty bite.” However, Alvarez said that the snappers, despite their size and strength, pose little threat to park-goers. “In the water, if someone were to step on them, they usually just pull into their shell.” Alvarez was quick to point out, however, that no one should be wading in any of the park’s bodies of water. “On land is where you need to be careful with them, they snap as a defense and they have a long neck, so they reach pretty far.”
Alvarez said that no park employees have ever been bitten by a snapping turtle, even while working in the water, nor has she heard accounts of dogs being attacked. A snapper’s typical diet includes fish, reptiles, birds, mammals, carrion and a lot of vegetation. But the monster turtles do cause quite a stir when park-goers witness them feed. “We've seen them take down duck and geese babies. The public is usually horrified at this,” Alvarez said. “We might start the season with a family of nine ducklings and by the end of the summer there are two or three left. But that is nature and there are always plenty of ducks and geese.”
Despite all these meat-eating monsters in the park, the people and their pets are all relatively safe, with one exception. “Occasionally as people try to feed the squirrels,” Alvarez said, “they get bitten. Central Park squirrels are very tame, but still skittish. People don't realize that. If they get spooked, they will nip at you.” |
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