Category: Inwood Hill Park
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Early Morning Birdwatching in the Heat of Summer

Birdwatching during the early morning hours is often a favorite time for birders in general, but during a summer heatwave, the earlier the better. The month of July is frequently hot in New York City, but in the past few days the heat has been amplified by high humidity and poor air quality. Still, an…
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The Birds of Inwood Cool Off in the Natural Springs

The recent heat wave over the Northeast lasted an entire week, from June 17 to June 23, 2024. The air was often oppressively hot. Amid the dangerous conditions of combined heat and humidity, officials in New York City opened cooling centers. Staying indoors in air-conditioned buildings seemed the best solution for those particularly vulnerable to…
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A Common Grackle Takes the Waters of Inwood Hill Park

A Common Grackle has lately been foraging for food and bathing in a flooded part of the path leading to the open athletic fields in Inwood Hill Park. I’ve observed it splashing in the puddle and dipping berries into the cool water. Many other birds have taken to this large puddle, including Mallards, European Starlings,…
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Inwood Hill Nature Center Opens and the Summer Begins

On Saturday, June 1, 2024, Inwood residents and visitors finally got to walk inside the Inwood Hill Nature Center. Shuttered for twelve years following extensive damage from Hurricane Sandy in October of 2012, the renovation of the Art Deco building in Inwood Hill Park (originally designed as a boathouse before it became a nature center)…
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Scaling the Heights with the Black-and-white Warblers

For a bird I’ve seen infrequently, the Black-and-white Warbler has played an oversized role in my personal life over the last decade. When I moved to the Inwood neighborhood of Northern Manhattan in 2014, I wasn’t familiar with the area. I just found it to be wild. I had previously lived in Greenwich Village, and…
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The Sparrows of April

The month of April could be told in sparrows. That rusty-capped little sparrow you may have seen this past month in the local parks, the Chipping Sparrow, is currently traveling north from Mexico and South America, stopping here on its long migration journey. It breeds in late April and May. The Chipping Sparrow trills loudly,…
