![bronx zoo s:3 e:5 weird birds bronx zoo s:3 e:5 weird birds](https://cdn-7.nikon-cdn.com/Images/Learn-Explore/Photography-Techniques/2009/The-A-List-At-the-Zoo/Media/Julie-Larsen-Maher-Little-Penguins.jpg)
So, for the past four years, in woodland on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo, Seewagen, who is twenty-eight and taciturn, with close-cropped red hair and broad shoulders, and Slayton, who is forty-two and talkative, shaggy, and slight (and also Seewagen’s half brother), have netted some four thousand migrants. To know how the city affects birds, Seewagen and Slayton need to know whether they are able to get enough food to plump up to flying weight. That’s like a person running at top speed from sundown to sunup.’’Īfter such a night, a warbler drops out of the predawn sky in a condition called “hyperphagia,’’ from the Greek for “eat’’ and “a lot.’’ It must rebuild its body fat to stay alive and to fuel the next stage of its journey. This bird was probably flying all night long from Connecticut. “See the red on its crown? That’s a Nashville warbler. Seewagen carefully parted the bird’s blue-gray head feathers. Five inches long, and weighing about the same as two nickels, the bird stuck its beaked head out above the turret of Seewagen’s gently closed fingers and kept completely still except for the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of its heart, beating five hundred times a minute.
![bronx zoo s:3 e:5 weird birds bronx zoo s:3 e:5 weird birds](https://c532f75abb9c1c021b8c-e46e473f8aadb72cf2a8ea564b4e6a76.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/2020/04/16/1852i9u8an_Julie_Larsen_Maher_3422_Wreathed_Hornbill_PPZ_08_20_14.jpg)
Birds in an urban park, Seewagen said, are in a tough spot: “They’re concentrated into a small area, food is limited, there are lots of people and dogs and other animals all over the place.’’Īs usual during migration season, he had a bird in hand. If this has happened to you in New York City, it is the work of Chad Seewagen and Eric Slayton, ornithologists who want to understand how birds like you cope with cities, which, inconveniently, have been built under your Atlantic migration route.