The Bronx Ink

By: Michelle Bialeck

It is 8 a.m. in Van Cortlandt Park, and a sheet of ice covers a foot of snow. Walking on the surface feels like walking on a giant apple pie, breaking the crust with every step, the landscape ahead resembles a balding scalp, the few thinning hairs, the leafless trees on the bed of snow.

But in the midst of the desolate winter scene, a group of birders is getting ready for business.

A group of birders gather Saturday morning at Van Cortlandt Park (Photo Credit: Muhammad, Umar)

“Its good to bring binoculars, that’s just basic knowledge,” says Jerry Rosen, as if to say, “duh.”  A physician and bird enthusiast, Rosen  is not a first-timer, like Malinda Foy, who just moved to the Bronx.  Dee Nathans, a retired clinical social worker is also better-prepared with her thick socks on, and her binoculars and bird books in hand.

Birders meet every Saturday throughout the year, in the heat and in the frigid cold, to catch a glimpse of the Bronx’s vast array of winged wildlife. A city park ranger or an expert from the Audubon society leads a bird walk through Van Cortlandt Park, rain or shine, or snow.

On this blistery cold Saturday morning, the group is only about six people. But what the crowd lacks in size, it makes up for in palpable enthusiasm for nature and its uncertainty.

A burst of excitement erupts when a small pile of fur and rat bones is spotted, an owl pellet to be exact.  Ranger Owls swallow their food whole and leave behind pellets of undigested material from the hapless rodents who meet their path.

Yes, there are owls in the Bronx.  There are hawks, and an occasional eagle, and hundreds of species of smaller birds and waterfowl, like the mallards who look just like little golfers, floating in the icy ponds.

Andrew Baksh, "The Birding Dude" leads a group of bird watchers at Van Cortlandt (Photo Credit: Muhammad, Umar)

The birding community also has its own local celebrities of the human variety, among them Andrew Baksh. An occasional leader of the Van Cortlandt bird walks, he is also known as “The Birding Dude.”

An IT specialist, Baksh is a world-class birder who only got into birding a few years ago. The two disciplines meld in his mind as he uses technology to document his sightings, part of the new wave of birding.  Baksh likes to speak of his “spiritual connection” with birds, a connection that is no secret from the very beginning of the bird walk.  A birder needs a certain type of patience for his pastime, an endeavor that can keep him for hours at a time, waiting, scanning the landscape, and listening.

The process seems serene, not chatty or touristy, but a true exercise in fitting in with nature and  blending into the landscape of Van Cortland Park in the winter– a painting that is all white snow, the red dots that are the cardinals, and you.

That is, until Baksh spots a bird he hasn’t “gotten” yet.

“We have not had a northern harrier here this year!  This is crazy. That is excellent,” Baksh says, in a voice like a stage whisper. The group looked up to see Northern Harrier, the day’s first bird of prey, gliding across the morning sky.

Every time Baksh sees a bird he’s been waiting for, he  says “thank you” before he goes or the bird flies away.

Baksh has said a lot of “thank you’s.” A few years ago, he began building a natural habitat in his backyard, and since then he says he’s been overwhelmed with the turnout. And when he is not in scouting nature in his own backyard, he is…well, a birder never reveals his hide-out secrets.

Cardinal is spotted resting on a tree branch (Photo Credit: Muhammad, Umar)

There are, of course, different types of birders, people who go out occasionally and people who are camped out from dawn until dusk (and sometimes, past dusk, if owls are in the picture), and there is everything in between.  In this universe, “getting the bird” calls for a quick eye, the curiosity and homework to figure out what kind sparrow is darting around in front of you — the common house sparrow, the song sparrow, tree sparrow, white-throated sparrow, even the chunky, red fox sparrow– or whether that blue jay perched on a branch is a male or female.

For these birders, the treasures are endless. They will continue to search for the coots who wobble around the pond like miniature Charlie Chaplins or the chickadees, like little dominos, who will fly into your hands, or the rusty blackbirds, who after a long winter, really do like they’ve rusted from the melting snow.

James T. Harris, a fellow birder and a retiree who worked in the auto industry for 40 years relishes the discoveries he has made.

“You can grow up your whole life with this stuff,’’ he says, “and not know it’s there.”

After a massive walkout at Brooklyn Tech High school to protest school closings, demonstrators displayed messages to the Panel for Educational Policy.

By Clara Martinez Turco

Vincent Malfetano, 61, a teacher at Christopher Columbus High School, waited more than five hours before he could offer “some advice” to Schools Chancellor Cathie Black during a boisterous meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy Thursday night.

“Columbus has its problems, but we’ve been opened for 70 years and graduated scholars for years in our building,” Malfetano said before a diminished crowd at Brooklyn Tech High School. “The school needs a change of leadership, there are five principles and there has been a poor management.”

But his words and a massive walkout staged by some 2,000 parents, teachers and students during the meeting, were not enough to prevent the panel from approving the closure of Columbus High School and nine other schools, five of them in the Bronx. Along with Columbus and Global Enterprise, the panel voted to close John F. Kennedy High School, Frederick Douglass Academy III Middle School, P.S. 102 and Performance Conservatory High School.

The building had a heavy police presence as a few hundred students briefly protested outside after the walkout. They marched around the block holding banners that read “closing is not the answer” and “save our schools,” but the protesters acknowledged that they already knew what the outcome was going to be.

By the time the panel started to vote, only 80 people remained in the auditorium. “Shame on you!” shouted a group of parents as the members approved the closings one by one.

The Department of Education cited  “substantial evidence” in closing Christopher Columbus. Spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld said the school has had received Cs and Ds in the last four report cards. “Ninety-nine percent of the schools in the borough are outperforming this high school,” he said.

The panel had already voted last year to phase out the school, but a lawsuit filed by the United Federation of Teachers prevented the Department of Education from closing it. The Manhattan Supreme Court found the city had violated the provisions of mayoral control by not properly assessing the impact that the closures would have in the community.

“We knew they’d do it again,” Malfetano said of the panel’s vote , in an interview after he addressed the group. “The lawsuit last year was just a procedural victory. It just said that Bloomberg did not follow the law properly, but he needs our buildings for other schools.”

According to the proposal presented by DOE’s Division of Portfolio Planning, two new schools will replace Columbus High School and Global Enterprise High School, which shares the same building and will also close. Starting in September, the outgoing schools will not accept new ninth graders and will be closed by 2014.

Meanwhile, the two new institutions would move into the Christopher Columbus Educational Campus, which since 2004 hosts Columbus High School and four other schools.

“They are going to cram these two schools into a building that already has three other schools, it’s going to be a zoo,” said Malfetano. “It’s so out of control, we don’t have a teacher’s room to sit in anymore, there’s no refrigerator to put your lunch in anymore. You don’t even know who to go to order supplies.”

The weather has slowed down all forms of transportation in Kingsbridge, except for one.

By Ethan Frogget and Manuel Rueda

Keeping the shine, Even in hard times from Connie Preti on Vimeo.

Allan Freilich who presides over the 70-year old jewelry store in Norwood, makes a case for the power of a family business during hard times