Bryant Park 4/19--Chuck-will's-widow

Chuck-will's-widow
iPhone photo: Shari Zirlin

On a day that had been set aside for non-birding activities in NYC we managed to squeeze in a visit to Bryant Park before we met a friend for brunch. The celebrity bird of the park has been hanging around there for close to a week, but I wasn't all that optimistic about finding it. I didn't even take my good binoculars in to the city because I didn't like the idea of checking them at the museum we were going to. I didn't take my camera because I didn't feel like lugging it. In other words, I was pretty much unprepared to find the bird.

When we got to the park I looked at all the bare branches and figured it would be pretty easy to tell within a few minutes whether or not the bird was still there. It was. While Shari looked in one section, I walked toward the statue of Bryant in the middle of the eastern part of the park and scanned the branches. And there was last week's species of Shari's glee and my chagrin--Chuck-will's-widow, my life sighting, asleep, in plain view, as New Yorkers walked to and fro oblivious to its presence.

I called Shari over and said, "Now what do you want to do." If only all the chases were this easy. That I found it myself added to my satisfaction. Often it is a case of "look for the birders, not the bird," but today we were the birders to look for as soon 3 more people gathered at the spot.

Now I was kicking myself for not taking the camera. I had no idea it would be so photogenic. Shari took a few photos with her iPhone, but believe me, even through the crappy binoculars I had, it looked great--much better than the lump you see here.