Ten Things We Learned from Tonight's Birders: The Central Park Effect


There are over 200 species of birds in Central Park, as well as several hundred birders who roam the woods in search of them. The birders appear in tandem with their feathered friends at the beginning of the migratory season, and many of them, migrants themselves, disappear again when the birds fly away. Some say things like "Holy frickin' Moses" when they spot a special bird, and others excitedly clench their fists at their sides when they correctly identify one, like a grade-school teacher's pet who has gotten the right answer in class.

HBO's Birders: The Central Park Effect, directed by Jeffrey Kimball and airing tonight at 9 EST, shows the non-birders among us what we're missing out on. And it's pretty cool. We probably won't start carrying a pair of binoculars around our necks at all times, but the documentary is a fascinating look at the avian world, the state of nature today, and Central Park and the birders who inhabit it, including novelist Jonathan Franzen. Read below for 10 things we learned and tune in tonight for a glimpse at a world few even know exists.


1. Jonathan Franzen's birder conversion story: "I'd been walking in Central Park pretty much daily for the previous seven years, and I thought it was a place of pigeons and sparrows. [Some birder friends and I] proceeded on down into the ramble, and it was like the trees were hung with ornaments. It was amazing. Seeing this familiar urban park filled with birds like that—and gaudy birds; bright yellows, greens, reds, blues, blacks, whites—was one of those rare times in an adult's life where the world suddenly seems more magical rather than less."

2. Yes, Franzen is more articulate in speech than most people are in writing. It's awesome.

3. There are nights when literally millions of birds, going to or coming from the tropics, fly over Manhattan. At the end of nights like that, a few thousand will drop into Central Park, a bug-filled oasis in the urban landscape. This funneling is called "The Central Park Effect."

4. Starr Saphir (pronounced "Star Sapphire") is the Central Park birder matriarch, and she's a badass. Gaunt, stoic, and diagnosed with terminal cancer, she leads the birder flock through the park four times a week every spring and fall. Obsessive and passionate, she sets birding goals and writes every species she's seen in a coded notebook and tallies the columns like a ledger. She's had over 80 of these notebooks since her childhood.

5. The reigning king of the Central Park bird-dom is a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male. He has lived at 927 Fifth Avenue for over 20 years and has taken many lovers and fathered many eyasses at that location.

6. Sometimes, hawks bring New York City sidewalk pigeons up into the trees to eat them. Be kind to the pigeons.

7. Birding is cool even when it's not. From Franzen: "There's always something sort of interesting to look for [while birding], and even when there's not, each bird is itself this microcosm of behavior, often inscrutable, mysterious. So even when there's nothing interesting going on in the macrocosmos, you've still got this Towhee scratching around in the dirt doing its Towhee thing, which is so dear and so unlike anything else."

8. When Franzen first started birding, it manifested like an addiction. He would skip day after day of work to wander around the park. Thank you, birds, for Freedom.

9. Every December for the last 110 years, Central Park birders have gotten together for the annual Christmas Bird Count. They try to number every last bird in the park. After scouring the land, they get together to take a communal tally and say things like "This has been a big year for the titmouse," and "Did anyone see the turkey today?"

10. Lastly, a nice birding metaphor from Franzen: "It's the writer's life, really. Any artist's life is failing, failing, failing, waiting around, nothing will ever work again, all the interesting birds are gone, nature's falling apart... and then, suddenly you're seeing a prothonotary warbler and all of that is forgotten, and there's this moment when the world's okay."

Follow Us On...

  • GQ SHARP + SMART (Daily)




Subscribe to GQ
Subscribe to GQ