My flew into Edinburgh, Scotland, a few weeks ago and immediately took a cab to Dalhousie Castle and their falconry program. For a 9-day trip this was the one activity I went to the trouble of arranging beforehand. It was the thing my daughter was most excited about before and after the trip. And it was totally worth it.

Falconry Scotland offers you a chance to handle falcons, eagles, hawks and–get this–owls land on your gloved hand. We ended up showing up early, had coffee in the castle then came out to see the two falconers getting 37 birds out of their cages and boxes for the day. What was most delightful was how well the women knew each of the birds. Some birds wanted a cuddle, some keep-away from the keepers.

My daughter Ginger, 7, was particularly fascinated with a talkative barn owl. I mean, this bird chatted non-stop. I asked one of the falconers, Allie, if the bird was just hungry or what. No, she explained, that owl, named Jeanne, just likes being with people.

Eventually four of us went out in the field to do falconry. Again, the most amazing thing about this place is how much our falconer Allie knew of each bird and the back-and-forth she had with them. Allie explained the tail-swishing meant the bird was ready for flight. The Harris Hawk would easily–ever so delicately–land on each person’s gloved hand to eat the meat held between the fingers. Except when it came to Ginger. For Ginger the bird swooped around, every once in a while trying to steal the meat. Ginger laughed but held steady.

We gave up on Ginger doing falconry with that particular bird, who is sometimes afraid of children. Instead, Ginger got a fabulous consolation prize: she got to hold and feed the friendly owl Jeanne. I cautioned Ginger to keep her fingers away from Jeanne’s mouth, but Allie corrected me. This is a gentle bird and would only nibble affectionately. Which she did.

Americans don’t get to do a lot of hanging out with owls. Every once in a while you might see one at a falconry display (probably not flying) or, more likely, in a wildlife rehabilitation center. Birders have a self-important etiquette code of not revealing the location of owls in the wild.  But people are constantly wanting to see and even touch owls. (Japan meets this need with their peculiar owl cafes. Animal advocates say they’re skeevy because owls don’t want to hang out with humans or in cafes.)

Other places nearby like Elite Falconry actually go hunting. (They are mainly targeting game birds because rabbits are in trouble. Also, Elite Falconry breeds owls.) And there are even a few places in the U.S. where people can go do falconry (also usually at luxury hotels). But to get to become a falconer in the U.S., you have to go through many levels of training, permits and nonsense. So it is going to be a much stricter atmosphere. If you want to befriend an owl, best go to Scotland.

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This rationale harkens back to an America that never really was. Even in 1955 only 10% of the population hunted. The numbers have been withering. Now it’s down to 5%. The vast majority of gun owners don’t hunt. Meanwhile, 30% of the population owns guns. The bigger reasons people are protection, fun and crime.

Still, politicians cling to hunters. So why do so many Republicans get so gung-ho about hunting? Hunting is the most socially acceptable of the three traditional reasons people say they need guns: defending yourself, defeating tyrants and killing deer.

The number of hunters keeps falling, down 8% in the last five years statistics are available, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Only 11.5 million Americans (5% of the adult population) hunted in 2016; nearly eight times as many Americans thought it was more fun to see living wildlife, instead of shooting it. (The industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation claims 18 million Americans hunt, which is about on par with tennis, but far less than the number who practice yoga or weight-lifting.)

The hunter excuse probably feels especially outdate to the generation of kids that attended the Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Hunting was most popular with the Baby Boomer generation and has been dying off ever since. Less than 1 in 20 16-24 year olds hunted deer in 2011; the highest rate was for 55-64, about 6% the last time the government released stats. Wisconsin hunters expect their rates will fall off a cliff (drop 28%) when Baby Boomers hit age 65.

Self-defense far surpasses hunting as the reason people say they want guns. Hunting? About the same people own handguns for the quaint pastime of collecting as hunting, according to a National Shooting Sports Foundation report.  Self-defense isn’t a very defensible political boat to ride in because study after study shows you’re more likely to hurt yourself or your family than to live out some action movie fantasy and defeat some bad guy.

When I analyzed handgun sales and crimes for Lawyers, Guns and Money about a decade ago I found what other researchers have found: there is about one handgun crime for every five handguns sold. So about 20% of handguns purchased end up in crime.

But instead of having arguments about what people actually do with guns–have fun shooting in the woods, deluding themselves about self-protection, or rob someone–we have these absurd arguments over whether Ted Nugent really needs an AR-15 to kill a deer.

1. If you keep them inside, they will hatch early. Like in the winter.
2. Those cute little plastic bug cases won’t hold the babies or nymphs. They can get through the holes. The first year I only discovered they mantises had hatched when I  saw a mosquito-sized, strange looking bug on my dining room window. I spent days discreetly catching and releasing the dozens of mantises, trying not to alarm my husband, who is not as into this project as I am.
3. The mantis eggs are in a center core of the case, surrounded by hardened foam. It’s like an airbag around the eggs. Don’t worry if the foam gets hurt.
4. When the mantises hatch, they don’t start eating each other immediately.
5. You should still release the tiny mantises soon or they will eat each other.
6. If it’s too cold outside–or it is going to be–keep them alive with a fruit flies. Petco sells them by the jar in their disgusting-food-of-other-animals section by the reptiles. They will also need a wet sponge and your new fruit fly pets will also appreciate some rotting fruit.
   

   Tiny praying mantises pour out of the egg case.

Emotional Support Animals in action. Beagles get ready to board a plane.

Over Christmas I flew roundtrip from New York to Chicago in a way that goes against everything airlines stand for today: I paid no extra fees and had no unnecessary paperwork despite the fact that my daughter and I flew with two beagles at our feet as Emotional Support Animals. The planes didn’t crash. The beagles didn’t unpredictably go wild. They didn’t even steal any cookies.

The credit for these new flying feats goes technically with the Air Carrier Access Act that originally written to stop airlines from mistreating people in wheelchairs, sometimes by dragging them through the plane. But I think the real credit for the recent surge in people flying with emotional support animals goes back to another law change: airlines have to tell the public how many animals die or get hurt or lost when they travel essentially as freight on airlines. Both laws were revised to apply more broadly.

Even with everyone paying extra attention, 307 animals died, 169 were injured and 53 lost on airlines in the 10 years ending in November 2015. The result is airlines don’t want to take the risk of freezing another dog; some have stopped flying animals that way altogether.

Today there are three ways to fly with your dog: you pay a lot of money for the dog to go in cargo (same pressurized air as the cabin, but this is where horrible deaths happen or dogs get out), you pay a lot of money for a dog that fits under the seat (generally 20 pounds) or you get a letter from a doctor or other professional saying you need emotional support animals. You have to have some condition that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says would benefit from an emotional support animal.

I qualify, but for years I looked askance at people going through airports with their animals. Surely they were taking advantage of the rules. There’s a danger that if we loosen the rules for helping people with disabilities, the people who really need help won’t get the assistance and respect they deserve.  The New York Times has also worried that people who use wheelchairs at airports to get around the growing security lines are milking the disability system, too.

Would people think my beagles were seeing eye dogs? Nope. That turned out not to be a real issue. The people I encountered absolutely understood the difference. Service dogs are trained with the equivalent of a dog PhD. before they meet the person whose lives they immeasurably improve. Service dogs rightly get to go anywhere. My dogs got their certification through my diagnosis, not their skill. Huck and Moxie can go on the plane and a few extremely limited travel accommodations, but that’s it. I didn’t go in for any of the unofficial Emotional Support Animal badges and registry that you can buy easily online. I did have them wear sturdy Ruff-Wear harnesses that I already had.

The only people I was worried about in a practical sense were people with allergies. The most severe allergies are to cats, not dogs. Still, dogs on a plane wouldn’t be fun for someone with severe dog allergies. (Contrary to what I and most passengers believe, we do get fresh air in flight, but tend to share it with those in the few rows around us.) So I gave them a bath the day before–the same thing therapy dogs do before going to a hospital to reduce their dander.

Obviously I don’t care about the airlines: we have all gotten used to the adversarial way this game is now played. The airlines try to lure us in with a low fare, then charge every fee they can imagine and get away with. We, the customers, try to dodge the fees like they were bullets.  Since my dogs are too big to fly in the cabin for a fee anyway, I’m going to do anything legal I can to get them there.

As a practical matter this is how it works: I already had the diagnosis. I took it to a doctor who specializes in these letters. She asked me a boatload of personal questions, then signed off. I called the airline ahead of time–they gave me some pushback about two dogs, but were fine. I  showed up with the letter. I did pay extra for us seats with extra leg room. I made sure the dogs peed outside beforehand in the right area. And I flew Delta from the Marine Air Terminal, which is an adorable toy airport.

Not every dog would be right for air travel, but Moxie and Huck are nearly perfect. They are jolly, calm and always have time to say hello to someone. They are used to being model beagle ambassadors because everyone loves to say hi to a beagle. Nearly, but not quite, perfect. Moxie “Epoxy” sticks with her family. Huckleberry will run if he catches a scent of food.

This lead to the one incident in our travel. For some odd reason, the dogs have to go through the metal detector with neither collars nor person. Huck had no problem. Moxie, however, didn’t want to leave me. I eventually got her through by pretending to throw a treat (The real ones were, unhelpfully, in my purse on the conveyor belt.) But just as Moxie went through, Huck got bored and took off through the LaGuadia Marine Air Terminal. I ran after Huck in my socks and my daughter and Moxie ran after me. Huck didn’t get too far–just to the free magazine rack. The TSA was remarkably good-humored about the whole thing.

On the plane, the dogs settled in at our feet, mostly under the seat in front of us. They slept–except for the usual airplane bumps. The Delta staff at the were as nice as could be. The dogs didn’t bother anyone, even when the flight attendants brought around those delicious speculoos cookies. We got off to a surly, delayed crowd at O’Hare, which immediately made way for the beagles and smiled at them. The only disruption they caused was that so many people wanted to say hi to them.

O’Hare is now starting to accommodate the growing number of emotional support travelers: last fall they opened a pet relief area in Terminal 3 (sadly, not our terminal.) Getting your dog certified as an emotional support animal seems to be the way of the future. Eventually someone will come up with a way to let airlines just charge us for a regular seat for our dogs. But for now this is the uneasy truce between dog people and the airlines.

Fire Island Deer in Contraceptive Program

The National Parks Service seems to be marching closer towards killing off an enormous portion of Fire Island white-tailed deer. Deer lovers on the barrier island off New York have feared since 2012 when the federal agency announced it was coming up with a plan to “manage” the deer population that there was only one way this was going to go.

The Parks Service announced on December 31–talk about a late night news dump–that despite years of deliberation and 400 pages of public comment, they are planning to kill off one-third to two-thirds of the deer population. And then come back and do it again. And specifically target deer that approach humans, which seems especially cruel. It’s also a way to interfere with the natural evolution of a species in an world that is dominated by one species, humans.

It didn’t need to happen at all. Much of the comments are angry at the idea the Parks Service is going to kill wildlife in the name of protecting the grounds of an historical estate and to try to recreate an exact moment in the natural history of the island–after humans had killed off the large predators, but before deer and other prey species thrived in their absence. In the parks service view, a natural environment and balance that require constant human intervention and shooting is preferable to whatever happens naturally.

There’s a last ditch change.org petition to try to stop killing the deer, though that seems hopeless. The Parks Service decided a long time ago they wanted to shoot the deer on Fire Island and that’s what they’re going to start doing.

Bat alert and ready to go after warming up.

Bats in New York City are falling wearily onto sidewalks in our recent sudden cold spell. This morning I found one–at first mistaking the gray fur for a dead mouse. I got sticks to move it out of the pathway chopsticks-style. And then the poor thing started hissing at me. A completely empty threat as it was still too weak to get up. I picked the bat up in a plastic bag–as a dog owner, I always have plenty–and brought it to warm up in the sun. Still nothing.

I carried the bat home in one hand and pushed the stroller and held the beagle leash in the other. I was afraid to put the bat bag in my pocket because I could either suffocate the bat or end up having to reach into a pocket with a bat. In New York bats are a rabies vector species–meaning they potentially carry the disease. I would need a higher grade wildlife rehabilitator license to take care of one, but that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to foist it off on someone qualified or get instructions on a quick release. I reached out to some wildlife rehabilitators.

Seemingly dead bat. Don’t pick one up with your bare hands.

Meanwhile, I warmed up the bat under an incandescent bulb. I went looking for bugs, lacking mealworms, the preferred food of captive bats. My daughter Ginger, 4, eagerly helped me hunt for spider webs and then, failing that, collect acorns to soak to find weevils. No luck. My poor cleaning habits paid off: inside a light fixture I found dead bugs. I added them to warm honey water and served them up on a straw. The bat grabbed and licked the straw. And then she or he started to feel better, began climbing around.

Right now I’m reading the educational and entertaining book The Secret Life of Bats by Merlin Tuttle, the bat man of Austin. He tells of learning to become a professional-level photographer to get pictures out of bats that weren’t terrifying. As the tiny bat hissed and chomped its tiny teeth, I thought of his difficulties. I would need a lot more time to get to see this bat’s sweeter side, but it’s best to move the wildlife back to the wild quickly.

Marty Bast, effectively the game keeper of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, offered to release her properly once she warmed up. He said this was the third bat found in this sleepy, cold torpor on the ground in the last two weeks. People often think they’re dead and go to pick them up with bare hands, then get bit. That leads to these bats getting euthanized and the person getting preventative rabies vaccines. Not only does the cold slow them down, it reduces the number of insects out there for them to eat.

New York has nine bat species. I’m not sure if this one was a little brown bat (which hibernates in caves) or a silver-haired bat (Lasyionicterius noctivagans) which migrates.

If the bat hits a tree and falls, they can’t take off again from the ground. So, you release them on a tree, not on the ground. Bast found a sunny tree near where I’d found the bat a couple hours earlier. He removed her from my cage with special bite-proof gloves. She quickly but awkwardly climbed up the tree to safety. When he gets calls for a live bat not moving on the ground, he warms them up and lets them go.

This praying mantis lady is eating a bee.

I was shocked to find a praying mantis sitting on a flower in a Brooklyn park this week. How rare! Aren’t they endangered? Well, I was shocked again to find out that they’re nothing close to endangered–the IUCN (the union of concerned scientists that decides which species are threatened) hasn’t even been concerned enough to evaluate whether the common North American mantis is in trouble.

But that didn’t stop me–or my friend Gabriella or my toddler daughter–from enjoying the extremely unusual show of a four or five inch bug trying to hide from other insects, then pouncing on them.  And not in some kind of graceful swoosh. How do bees not notice this monster sitting on a flower? It would be like me not noticing a lobster the size of a bus.

Everything the praying mantis did was clumsy. The way she walked, jumped, flew. But she still caught two bees in about an hour. And when she did, she tore off the bees’ legs and shoved them into her mouth with the extra legs or claws that stick out of her jaw. It was like legs eating legs.

Our friend David came by and showed us how you can get the mantis to walk on your hand and pet its wings. He finds their brown, styrofoam-like egg cases from time to time in the park. So they’re not endangered or rare, just really freaky and fun to watch.

Praying mantis pulls apart a bee.

Puffin swims by tour boat

Puffins are one of the oddest, most charming and hardest to see birds to see in the United States, but it’s getting easier. The birds spend almost all their time on the ocean, but for a few months they nest on three islands off Maine during the summer. Most of the action is about five hours’ drive Down East from Maine’s southern border. Eastern Egg Rock, by far the easiest island to see if you’re a human just an hour from Portland, now has enough puffins that it’s worth the trip.

Puffins once lived on six islands off Maine, but were nearly wiped out by people eating them and wearing their feathers. By 1901 there was only one pair on Matinicus Rock. Protection brought them back hundreds to the upper islands.  Since puffins return to the island where they hatched to breed, it seemed unlikely they would ever reclaim their old territory. But biologist Stephen Kress had the idea to transplant chicks from Newfoundland, where they were still all over the place, to Eastern Egg Rock. No one was sure what mechanism they used to find their way home or when it kicked in–was it when they hatched or when they swam out to sea?

Kress and the National Audubon Society started moving chicks in 1973 in what became Project Puffin.  The first adult came back started in 1977 and their numbers have climbed steadily to 148 nesting pairs as of 2014. That’s an all-time high, but it comes after an alarming dip for a couple years when higher water temperatures cut their food supply and nesting success dramatically.

Courtesy of Project Puffin newsletter

I’ve wanted to see a puffin in the United States, but didn’t really think I had much of a chance. When I went to book a cottage near Boothbay Harbor, even the guy who owned it and stood to make money off my visit tried to talk me into going further up north. “It is about a 5 hour trip from Boothbay Harbor, but it is so worth it.  You land on the island and get to go in blinds to [photographically] shoot the puffins,” he told me.  “The tours out of Boothbay will get you near to some puffins in flight but that’s about it.”

If I were travelling alone on a puffin safari, fine, I’d make the trek to Machias Seal Island, which Audubon calls the “grandaddy of the puffin islands,” and get to see puffins from a blind. That’s if could swing a reservation. And if a dinghy from the boat would be allowed to land, which it often can’t in the rough seas. But I was travelling with a reluctant birding husband, a toddler and two beagles. The best choice for us all was Cap’n Fish’s puffin cruise, despite a name that is embarrassing to say. They even let you buy a $10 ticket for your dog–which is a huge deal because it means we don’t have to leave one adult behind or chance leaving the beagles alone in a strange hotel (lest Huckleberry should cry.)

In preparation for the trip I read my three-year-old daughter Ginger the kid’s book Project Puffin over and over. She was so excited to see them. On the way out she started fussing and we figured she was a little seasick. Then she mercifully fell asleep.

We got to the island there were plenty of birds to see. Puffins, terns, guillemots swarmed the island. They swam in the water near the boat. They hopped up and down on the rocks, where each pair took care of one chick, hidden away in a burrow. I tried to wake Ginger up, but she wouldn’t have it. A puffin fly just a few feet over out boat, where Pete Salmansohn, the education coordinator for Project Puffin, told us about the colony’s history. When seabirds were first protected, gulls took over these islands. Part of the project was to remove the gulls to make way for puffins. And terns. Ginger would have been delighted; he’s the co-author of her puffin book. At any rate, we saw plenty of puffins doing all kinds of puffin things: flying, flying with fish, swimming, hopping, hanging out together. We circled the island twice and got a good long look.

Ginger woke up as we neared the harbor. She thought we were just getting to the puffin island, then started crying when she realized she missed them. Salmansohn consoled her with puffin keychain. I asked him why Project Puffin doesn’t start reclaiming more of the old puffin islands (Western Egg Rock, Large Green Island) He must get asked that a lot. Puffins were never really in danger of extinction because there are so many of them in Canada and Europe, he said. Terns, now there’s a bird in trouble.

Yeah, I don’t think Project Tern will ever really catch on. Does that mean that the whole Project Puffin was just something to give Americans our cute and charming puffins back and make us feel good about fixing a past wrong? A symbolic win for the green team? And I’m just a typical American, excited about the cartoonish puffin while the serious tern is boring people to death? Well, maybe.

The biggest threat to puffins now may be climate change. As Mother Jones reported last year, the water temperature has been rising so much in the Gulf of Maine, the puffling’s favorite fishes (hake and herring) aren’t around. There isn’t enough plankton to feed the fish that feed the pufflings. In 2013 one-third of nest burrows went unoccupied and only about 10% of chicks survived long enough to fledge, or leave the nest, on Machias Seal Island. But in 2014 puffin numbers turned around: 85% occupancy and 75% success in fledging.

The water temperature rise may have been a fluke. Maybe. We hope so. Because, if not, there’s no easy fix. Transplanting an entire colony of elusive seabirds will seem easy compared with lowering the temperature of the ocean by a few degrees. So get out there and see those cute puffins while you can.

Puffins hop near their nest holes, where their pufflings are hiding, waiting for delivery of fish and to grow up.

Puffins and terns fly over their nests on Eastern Egg Rock.

Allan D. Cruickshank Wildlife Sanctuary on Eastern Egg Rock

Cap’n Fish’s boat cruise out of Boothbay Harbor lets you buy a $10 ticket for your dog.

Plymouth Long Beach

The good people of Plymouth, MA, are too pre-occupied promoting their Pilgrim amusements and adorable downtown to notice they’ve got something unique in the northeast: beaches where people can bring their dogs–even during the days of summer.

What’s so special about that? Isn’t that the normal time of day and year to go to the beach? Yes, but almost no town on the East Coast is so generous and sensible. Most other beaches ban them altogether, for the summer or, if you’re lucky, only for daylight hours. The rules just seem to keep creeping: the island of Chincoteague and the National Wildlife Refuge there doesn’t even allow dogs in your car. Towns like Mamaroneck, NY, has a waterfront park where dogs are banned year-round after 6 a.m. (Which is why we won’t be buying a house there.)

In all of these places I imagine some horrible town council dominated by one or two people–cat people, probably– who are both dog-hating and power-loving. The smaller the jurisdiction, the more likely they are to have some hateful and capricious dog ban–and lots of other rules. The broader the government body, the less likely they are to ban dogs. So, tiny, useless town parks (like in Irvington, NY) ban dogs, but many federal beaches on Cape Cod or Fire Island are immune to this kind of political grandstanding.

Are they worried about dog waste? Then that’s a separate law.  And as a mom to a human child, I found a recent sign in Maine’s Range Pond State Park chastising people that even dog poop buried in the woods was a threat to our children a bit of a stretch. Or are they concerned dogs will run into people? Then why not ban sports? Oh, wait, some have even done that, too.

What these towns don’t seem to consider is that families go to great lengths to travel with dogs, so a tiny accommodation would be a huge attraction. My family was driving back from Maine to New York and looked online for a dog-friendly beach town. New England Dog Travel pointed us to Plymouth.

We found (at least) two dog friendly beaches. Long Beach allows dogs in summer just at one end and on a leash. There’s free parking, trash cans, and a bar nearby.

Beagle down! Moxie loves the beach so much she runs in big circles, rolls in sand and tries to eat shells.

The real gem, though, was Nelson Memorial Park, maybe the best beach for dogs, kids, and birders in New England. The woman at the visitor’s center sent me there after I said we came to town for the dog-friendly beaches. “Oh, you must have been disappointed then to find out they have to be on leash,” she said modestly. No! That’s totally fine.

We have two former research laboratory beagles; you’ve seen videos of beagles like them shocked to be on grass or sunlight for the first time. That’s what they were like when we got them. Moxie, who spent two years in a lab, wouldn’t walk down the street without cowering. Then we took her to a beach, months later, and she went bananas. She ran in huge circles. She ate sand. She chewed shells. She rolled on the sand in excitement. So, I feel morally obligated to take her to a beach whenever I can. She doesn’t go in the water or bark. Because of the leash law, she couldn’t run in huge circles. But she still was just so happy it was worth spending a night in Plymouth.

Nelson Memorial Park has everything you could want, including an unbelievably close Osprey nest.

Here’s how amazing Nelson Memorial Park is: You can buy food at a stand, wear your kids out on the playground, cool them down in the splash pad, and then amble along the long beach and its gentle, shallow water. The beach featured all kinds of shells, and it’s the only place I saw people playing with their kids in the water, even in the reeds. There’s also some kind of spring that makes a warm water tidal pool, where toddlers plopped. Unbelievably, within 20 feet of the beach is an osprey nest on a pole, close enough that we could see two chicks playing tug of war with a fish.

Plymouth seems like it might be the only town in America that just didn’t order their beach rules sign off a template. In fact, I never found a beach rules sign. Even their wording of the announcement of limited dog rules makes it seem like the Fish and Wildlife Service made them do it to protect plovers, not just people who hate dogs.

For a while we were the only people with a dog. I started to worry I’d gotten the rules wrong. When another woman with a dog came along I sheepishly said how much I loved the dog-friendly beaches, hoping to get some confirmation. She said she was from Plymouth and didn’t think it was anything special. I explained how rare it was all the places we’d seen. “That’s so weird,” she said. “Because walking on the beach with your dog is such a New England thing to do.” I know, right?

For about four years I’ve been tracking the cardinals of Prospect Park, cultivating a friendship with generations of them along a path in the Ravine–and all the time hoping and scheming to get to see the Elusive Cardinal Nest. This year and last I’ve found cardinal nests that failed elsewhere in the park. But this year I got to see one of the notoriously well-hidden cardinal nests up close.

Luckily for me this cardinal pair–one of three along the path behind dog beach–built their nest in a thorny shrub easily seen from the path instead of the vast area of fenced off woods. This is the first year I didn’t see George–a cardinal we’ve known for years for his jutting white wing feathers and eagerness for sunflower seeds. I whistle. George comes and gets sunflower seeds. And eventually, George, George’s wife and several neighboring cardinals, whom I think are George’s sons. He would castigate them for invading his territory and they would submit to him. But this year, no bird with white wing feathers. I don’t know if they fell out or he died. But now there are several cardinals in the area who know the routine.

Whoever the cardinals are that built this nest, they are part of George’s clan. I whistle, they come for sunflowers. Or, if I’m busy talking, they come and demand them by chirping loudly and jumping around. I saw one go to the nest, which is still pretty hidden despite being just five feet off the path. I’d see mommy cardinal on the nest. The dad would eat sunflowers and sometimes the mom would take a break and get some.

I didn’t get to see the babies until this week when they were almost ready to fledge. There are at least three. The parents preferred to feed them freshly caught bugs while they ate the sunflowers themselves. One day the mom was missing for a long time and the dad kept calling for her. Finally she came back. I guess she needed a break. By then the babies were stretching their wings and getting ready. And then this Friday they were gone. Good luck, cardinals.

A mother cardinal feeds her babies a juicy green bug.

Meet my friend, the pushy cardinal of Prospect Park …