Results tagged “bird”

One New York City parrot had an exciting weekend, and the NY Times recounts the tale of the red-tailed macaw. Seems it escaped from an office in Hell's Kitchen while its owner was vacationing, which left an employee's boyfriend, Frank Guido, on a wild bird chase for 26 hours. The paper reports back saying he pounced "from rooftop to windowsill to billboard, in sun and rain," trying to capture it. Finally, yesterday afternoon he trapped it on some scaffolding. The 55-year-old was left to capture the bird on his own because after calling the NYPD, FDNY and Animal Control... no one came to help. He told the Times, “They don’t help. Nobody cares.” The NYCACC suggests that if you lose your pet, you contact the closest shelter—but has no advice listed on their site for an escaped bird that you can't get your hands on. Maybe just take PETA's advice and don't get your hands dirty in the world of exotic animal trade.

Will the pigeon bullying story be a plot line in an upcoming 30 Rock? The NY Post talked to Morgan Pitts, who rescued the baby falcon from the gang of birds in Greenpoint; he's an assistant prop master at the show, and his first course of action was to bring the little one over to Silvercup Studios, where a friend's wife at the Animal Medical Center was called. The American kestrel has been named Alice Cooper for the markings around its eyes (a moniker that's bound to toughen it up), and it's sex is not yet known—one of the vets saying, "I love this bird. He or she is so cute." Agreed.

That's right, bird on bird violence is happening in our own backyard: Brooklyn. WCBS reports that a man recently rescued a falcon from a troupe of pigeon bullies! While an adult peregrine falcon could have taken them all out, this one was just a baby, being chased and pecked at by the larger birds. "Morgan Pitts says the falcon was either abandoned by its mother or fell from its nest in his Greenpoint. The frightened chick is now in the care of veterinarians at The Animal Medical Center in Manhattan." One day he'll encounter those pigeons again and the tables will be turned. Until that showdown, however, check out the baby falcons that were born at three different city bridges earlier this year.

Someone's been bringing their parrot to Riverside Park, near the 79th Street boat basin, to entertain passerby—and one spectator has just posted this video!

The National Transportation Safety Board released a photograph of a feather that was found in the left engine of US Airways Flight 1549, the plane which landed in the Hudson River somewhat miraculously without any deaths or major injuries. The plane's pilots had both said the Airbus A320 hit birds, suggesting the dual engine failure was due to a bird strike.

Birds—they think they own the skies. Ever since the Wright Brothers they've been vying for supremacy up there, landing their first fatal blow in 1912 by downing a plane into the surf off Long Beach, California. Yesterday's emergency landing in the Hudson River was just the latest chapter in an ongoing pitched battle between bird and plane. Of course, from the point of view of the Canada geese believed to have been consumed by both engines of U.S. Airways Airbus A320, yesterday's strike must have seemed a bit of a Pyrrhic victory (though there's probably a sweet flock of virgin geese greeting them in the afterlife, hey-oh).

Wolves and Wishes, the fourth LP from the wizardly Martin Dosh, may have been fused in Minneapolis (with contributions from artists like Will Oldham and Andrew Bird), but hear it through headphones while wandering New York at dusk and you'll think it was specifically made to accompany aimless strolls through the city's more deserted quarters. That the album's expansive soundscape is richly layered with looping keyboard, guitar, sax, banjo, percussion and other surprising instrumentation will come as no surprise to those familiar with Dosh's last album, this fascinating video, or his immensely fruitful collaboration with Bird.