Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
In 2017, we marked the occasion of two young Great-horned Owls fledging after having quite a few adventures during their stay in the Mertz Library nest. This was the same nest built by a pair of Red-tailed Hawks back in 2009, which also happened to be the last year that Red-tails nested at NYBG—until now.
I’m happy to report that there are now three fledgling hawks getting to know their way around our 250 acres. Special thanks to Debbie Becker, our eagle-eyed wildlife expert, for the news! Back in April, she spotted both parents flying overhead. They soon landed in a tree in a heavily wooded section of the Garden, which became their nest. The rest, as they say, is history!
I’ve been lucky enough to follow two of the fledglings around with my camera shortly after they left the nest. It’s fascinating to watch them explore the Garden, and I look forward to watching them grow into effective hunters like their parents.
Pat Gonzalez is back this week with a fresh highlight feel from her adventures in the Garden, something I always eat up. As both a guest and a Visitor Services Attendant with the NYBG, Pat has spent the past five years documenting the lives of our raptor residents through the lens of her camera, creating a timeline of activity among the Great-horned Owls, Red-tailed Hawks, Cooper’s Hawks, Kestrels, and other winged wildlife that crosses her path. While I’m sure she’ll laugh off the comparison, I like to think of her as our very own Jane Goodall of the bird world.
Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” is a nice touch, I think, that highlights the streamlined elegance of these birds. Though a brief look back into Pat’s Plant Talk postings will show you just how well it belies their hilarious clumsiness at times. There’s something about seeing a young hawk divebomb a park bench in its efforts to figure out hunting that I can’t help but laugh over.
For the birders and animal lovers out there, Debbie Becker’s long-running Bird Walk returns from its summer hiatus on Saturday, September 7, giving you ample time to prep your notebooks, binoculars, and cameras for some time wandering the Garden. It’ll go a long way toward helping you understand the joy that Pat feels each time she happens across one of her feathered friends.
When you’re home to more than 250 acres of flora, you don’t have to stray far to uncover a virtual menagerie of fauna within it. Cormorants and wood ducks draw zig-zags in the duckweed of Twin Lakes, while Red-tailed Hawks hunt skinks and black squirrels from far overhead. There’s even a cranky snapping turtle or two. But for every rabbit or warbler out to make itself seen in the NYBG, there’s another species living out its life away from our cameras! As Director of the Forest, Jessica A. Schuler has turned some of her focus toward the elusive creatures living in our woodland.
Through a collaboration with Jason Munshi-South of CUNY Baruch College and Mark Weckel of Mianus River Gorge Preserve, Jessica is doing her part to help the pair document the many animals living throughout the city and Westchester county, as well as the effects of the urban environment on evolutionary biology. In the case of the NYBG, this is done by arranging four motion-activated, all-weather cameras in locations throughout the Garden’s 50-acre Forest, ready to capture the movements of any and all woodland wanderers that might amble by. And after only a month on site, capture they did! Calibrated to go off at even the slightest hint of a passing animal, these cameras accurately snapped shots of several familiar species lurking in our woods.
The holidays are photogenic: all those sparkling lights and (glögg-induced) rosy faces! It’s a time that screams for grampa to pull out his old film camera, for auntie to stick a Flip in your face, and for mom to beg the entire family to pose in those special reindeer sweaters she managed to find in everyone’s size. But not every holiday photo need be awkward.
Here at The New York Botanical Garden we’ve got photo ops aplenty, and they’re all beautiful! But there’s no need to take our word for it. Just ask any of the 250 members of The New York Botanical Garden group pool on Flickr. Or, better yet, take a look at some of the beautiful photographs that our visitors have posted on their own! And then, if you like what you see, you can join the group (by signing up for Flickr) and begin uploading your own shots from around the Garden.
In 2017, we marked the occasion of two young Great-horned Owls fledging after having quite a few adventures during their stay in the Mertz Library nest. This was the same nest built by a pair of Red-tailed Hawks back in 2009, which also happened to be the last year that Red-tails nested at NYBG—until now.
