Prothonotary Warbler @ NYPL

My 100th bird for the month is a very lost Prothonotary Warbler that has been hanging around the New York Public Library at 5th Avenue for at least the last week and some say (based on reports from homeless people, who should know after all) for around a month.

This is a bird of the southern hardwood forests and when one occasionally shows up in the summer in a NY park or woods somewhere it is pretty big news.  For it to be living in the locust trees in the front of the library and feeding on bread crumbs with House Sparrows in October is very unusual, approaching weird.

I've read speculation that this bird is a "Wrong-way Corrigan," as some birds are--instead of migrating south they get turned around and go north instead. That make its survival very dicey.

I was debating whether it was worth getting on the subway to try to find the bird--I already have it on my life list, though not in NY--when Shari said she had to go into Manhattan around 47th Street & 5th, so the decision was made.

We found the bird ridiculously easily--just look for the horde of photographers. I didn't even need my binoculars--it was sitting on top of a wall picking at a hard candy. I guess this bird doesn't know it's supposed to eat bugs.

It is a beautiful little bird, all yellow in the front, gray on the back. It is the 2nd bird I know of named for an official in the Roman Catholic Church.  Cardinals, which mimic the red robes of their namesakes and the Prothonotary which has the yellow of the robes of the "first scribes" (literal translation) who handle certain papal documents.

It was worth the ordeal of traveling into Manhattan to see it. I would rather slog thigh-high through a marsh full of ticks and mosquitoes than walk on 47th Street in the Diamond District (which for a place with billions of dollars of gems is really seedy) getting asked every 50 feet if I'm "sellling," then walk down Fifth Avenue with its zombiefied tourists bumping into each other and me, and finally having to take the crowded F train home where an old guy got on at 34th St with a boom box and then played along with his trumpet--as best he could--a medley of "Putting on the Ritz," "All of Me," "New York, New York," and I don't know what else, all the time wondering which of my fellow New Yorkers was carrying bed bugs in his/her clothing. Give me a swamp anytime.

But I did see the bird. Finally, a note to photographers: This bird has been amply photographed; we all know what it looks like and we all know it is there so we don't need proof. You can stop now.