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Central Park is one of the best places to see birds during migration in all of northeastern
North America. But if you should happen to arrive on a day when the weather is bad, just
walk across the street and come in here to the American Museum of Natural History, and
there are plenty of birds to see regardless of the weather. We're now standing in front
of the Oyster Bay Sanctuary diorama that was dedicated to honor Theodore Roosevelt. For
the most part, these birds are what you would encounter on a spring day in Central Park.
A variety of wood warblers, as well as the bright and colorful larger songbirds that
migrate up from the tropics in the spring. Things like Scarlet Tanager, Baltimore Oriole
and Rose-breated Grosbeak. On your birding expedition through the American Museum, you
can choose to stay in North America, or travel abroad. Many of the dioramas feature not only
the big mammals, but they also include all of the plants, and birds. So besides visiting
the Hall of North American Birds, or Birds of the World, you can add a number of species
to your list on every floor of the Museum. We're now standing out on the American Great
Plains as they would have appeared in the mid-1800s with vast herds of American Bison
moving across them in search of fresh grass. We'll note in this diorama that there's a
bird that's quite common still today featured with the bison. The brown-headed cowbird likely
evolved with the American Bison and adapted to the habit of the animal moving in herds
constantly. The cowbird doesn't build its own nest. It seeks out another bird in the
process of nesting and deposits its eggs in that birds' nest and allows that bird to incubate
and raise its young. There are no longer the big moving herds of bison, but we still have
lots of brown-headed cowbirds. They've benefitted by our agricultural practices across the country.
They feed around the feet of browsing cattle on the insects stirred up by the animals,
and also feed on parasites and insects on their coats. And also they're very fond of
bird feeders. Our birding expedition has now brought us into the Hall of North American
Forests. In the 1950s, this hall was designed to utilize the diorama to teach ecology and
to show the relationship of all plants and animals to a specific ecosystem within the
North American continent. The birds of the Olympic Forest are some of the Northwest's
most beautiful, Varied Thrush, Harlequin Duck, Dipper, Blue Grouse, all within this complex
and somewhat hidden and secretive forest environment. So the forest is complete with all its lush
detail. But being an accurate rendition of the Olympic Forest, you will have to search
for the birds and use your naturalist's skills to find them. We're standing before the Walrus
diorama, which features a site in the Bering Sea, off in the distance, across the water,
you can see East Cape, in Siberia. Francis Lee Jaques visited this site in the 1920s,
and completed the background for this in 1939. If you look up in the sky on the right side
of this background painting, you'll see a beautiful flock of Common Eider, the sea ducks
that are used, or their feathers are harvested for very warm winter gear, sleeping bags and
down-filled vests. In Akeley's Hall of African Mammals, the Upper Nile diorama features a
view of the river system on the Nile. If you have your binoculars handy, and scan that
landscape, you'll note the river edge is populated with a variety of birds. You'll find birds
that you might easily see in Central Park. Some of the water foul that are painted in
that scene are birds that are circumpolar. They are located in the entire Northern Hemisphere.
So if you study those birds with your binoculars, that are right out on that mud spit, there
are Northern Shovelers and Pintail ducks, birds that we frequently see in Central Park
or the Hackensack Meadows, right over in New Jersey. I know that when you're walking through
the Museum and viewing its dioramas, were they to be devoid of birds, even when they
do depict the bigger mammals, they would appear strange to us, because birds are diurnal,
they're ever-present, and they're in all ecosystems and habitats of the world.