Subject: Wild bird poaching incident at Ridgewood Reservoir Sat 6/23/07
approx 8:15am.

The Ridgewood Reservoir is in Highland Park on the Brooklyn-Queens border.
The reservoir is getting a lot of attention recently because some money has
been allocated for the land, and how that money will be spent is still (at least
allegedly) up for discussion. There is a meeting this Sat 6/30/07 from 2-4pm
at the Oak Ridge Park House in Forest Park (One Forest Park, Woodhaven, NY
11421) If you would like to attend, call 718-235-0815 or email
Margaret.Carrillo-Rosas@... to register. You can just say you are a
local birder, you
do not need to be part of an organization, but if you do have an affiliation
you can mention that as well.

On Sat 6/23 there was a series of special events at the reservoir, sponsored
by iLAND, the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Art, Nature and Dance. They
have undertaken Ridgewood Reservoir/iMAP, a yearlong performance project that
investigates the unique landscape of the reservoir. This 50-acre site comprises
wetlands, native swamp forest and urban wilderness, and as part of this
project, some birders from Brooklyn (Heidi & Steve Nanz & others) have been
documenting breeding and migrating birds, as well as other flora & fauna. (see
Rob
Jett's blog http://citybirder.blogspot.com/ for his story of the Italian Wall
Lizards they found here as well as much additional info on the reservoir)

I arrived at 8:00am and started around the reservoir, looking for the group
from Brooklyn. A young family was walking behind me, as they later told me,
following in the same direction because I looked like I knew where I was going.
I did have an idea where I was going, but I didn't know where any of the
dances were to take place. As we approached the pump house, I saw a man
standing
there. It did seem odd he was just standing there watching us approach, since
most people were running or biking around the loop, but he didn't look
menacing in any way.

All of a sudden the young child from the family gleefully pointed to a
beautiful bird in a cage on the fence near the man. At the same time, I
realized
that the beautiful bird was a male American Goldfinch, that there were at least
6 different cages, and all had wild birds in them. I didn't confront the man
directly because I didn't want to jeopardize my own or the young family's
safety, but I did immediately start the long process of trying to report the
incident. Through a series of calls back and forth to several agencies by both
myself and Al Ott (who was home at the time and trying to get me help) it
finally
got reported to the Urban Park Rangers, who seemed to be the most concerned.

Unfortunately, by then the man was long since gone, but Rangers Kreft and
Billak came to the sight and got the details and specific location so they can
include it in some random checks of the area. For future reference,
718-846-2731 is the direct line to the Park Ranger Office in Forest Park, and
you can
call that number for any incident in Queens parks. You can leave a message if
there is no answer, and the machine is checked from the field for messages.
Officer McCullough from PEP also came by, and although I brought her over to the
spot where the man had been, since that area can't really be accessed by car, I
don't know if she would go back.

Needless to say, most of my morning was consumed with this incident, and I
didn't pay as much attention to the beautiful dancing taking place throughout
the morning as I would have liked. On the positive side, we documented several
breeding species including Cedar Waxwings, Yellow Warbler (Steve was esp.
pleased that the parent was feeding a baby Yellow Warbler and not a baby
Cowbird),
and after I left, a male American Redstart bringing food to a fledgling
Redstart.

Jean Loscalzo
Richmond Hill, NY
<BR><BR>**************************************<BR> See what's free at
http://www.aol.com.</HTML>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]