Flying Against the Wind and The Chill of Frozen Hearts

Frozen.

Squatting down in ice to warm feet, the geese and ducks reach out necks to try and grab seeds.

Frenzy!

A goose flying in place tonight through punishing winds.

 

The winds were so brutal tonight at the Central Park Reservoir, several of the geese were literally flying in place. -- Suspended in the air like puppets and barely moving despite their vigorously flapping wings.

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I had never seen anything like that before.

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And yet I could commiserate, as I felt just like the flying-against-the-wind geese.

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Tonight was the first night all winter, I felt truly exhausted, drained and spent. -- Like its just so hard to get through still another week or two of this. Call it, "piling on" -- just like the snow and ice keep piling on and piling on.

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It was of course, just one more day of bitter temperatures and near zero wind chills. One more day of navigating the black ice, frozen snow and gusting winds that could threaten to pull your legs out from under you. One more day of feeling that the pitiful nourishment I brought for the frozen birds on ice just wasn't enough to sustain them through still another week of punishing nature.

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The meteorologists are claiming this is close to the "fourth coldest February in NYC ever recorded" and "the coldest since 1934.".  http://pix11.com/2015/02/20/the-coldest-month-since-the-depression-causes-emotional-depression-as-well/

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I believe that as I have never seen such frenzy and sheer desperation in the water birds as I am witnessing this winter.

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The behavior has become even more frantic over the past couple of weeks as I suspect the birds' fat reserves have severely depleted at this point.

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Yet watercourses are still frozen over and grounds still covered in ice and snow at a time food sources would normally be coming available to the birds. One has to presume this is why we have had a rash of bird deaths on the Reservoir over the past two weeks and it appears there were two more this morning far out on the ice. (I could not tell what the frozen lumps actually were for the distance. -- Perhaps gulls.)

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Tonight, mallards were pecking at my jeans and scrambling at my feet. Others almost tore off my gloves in attempt to grab food from my hands.  The geese jammed their heads through the fencing at the top of the embankment and a few even attempted to fly over the fencing to the running path, but apparently determined the landing space too narrow and retreated back.

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I did not see Willow, the little female wood duck this evening.  But I am hopeful that with the blistering winds, she simply elected to stay safely back on the open water than try to fight her way through the cold and the frantic crowd of desperate birds before me.

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There was one moment when the winds were so battering and practically blowing the food I tossed to Fifth Avenue that I felt like giving up as all my efforts seemed futile.  At that point, a red-tailed hawk flew overhead and all the geese and ducks suddenly bolted back to the water in the middle of the frozen ice.

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What more can go wrong for these birds, I wondered?

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But, of course there is always one more thing that can go wrong -- especially for the geese of Central Park.

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Earlier in the day, I had noticed the "Geese Police" van patrolling Central Park to ensure that if any of the geese have ideas about trying to graze on frozen lawns, they will put a quick stop to that.

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Better that the geese should all starve to death at the frozen Jackie Onassis Reservoir, is the apparent mantra of the Central Park Conservancy, as well as the city of New York.

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So yes, it seems there is reason to feel that getting through just another week or two of this merciless brutality is simply too insurmountable. 

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Question is, if I feel that way when only being out for a couple of hours a day, what must it feel like for the birds and other animals who actually have to live this misery 24/7?

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Perhaps it's better they not know that tomorrow morning is predicted to be 3 degrees with sub zero wind chills. But, I suspect the geese and ducks somehow know that already without the meteorologists telling them.

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Pity their poor frozen hearts.

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And yet when thinking that, I question, is it the hearts of the animals so forced to endure this merciless winter or the icy hearts of those who so detest and wish to make them disappear, that require actual pity?  -- PCA

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