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Look up to the skies
Local fowl-fanatics take part in Christmas Bird Count
By Ben Verde
Brooklyn Paper
Dozens of Bird-loving
Brooklynites flocked to the
borough’s greenspaces over
the weekend for the 120th annual
Christmas Bird Count,
where they recorded over
26,000 feathered creatures
throughout Kings County.
Ninety bird watchers took
part in the event, where they
spotted numerous rare types
of birds, including 11 American
Woodcock, 4 species of
Warbler, and a Bald Eagle.
The hobbyists also recorded
a 93 Carolina Wrens
— an extremely high number
for this time of the year,
which one aficionado credits
with a warming climate
that keeps the birds from flying
south.
Birders at the boathouse in Prospect Park.
Photo by Zoe Freilich
“That’s got to be a climate
indicator,” said Stanley Greenberg,
a member of the Brooklyn
Birding Club who ventured
through Prospect Park
on Saturday morning.
Overall, the 26,834 total
birds spotted throughout the
borough was a record-low for
the 120-year-old event, and
comes after a study depicted
dramatic decreases in the
number of birds across North
America — although Greenberg
cautioned that the low
numbers could not be definitively
attributed to any greater
downward trend.
“It’s like the difference between
weather and climate,”
he said.
The annual bird count was
started on Christmas Day in
1900 as a way to keep track
of fowl populations nationwide
— at a time when the
most common way to study
birds was to shoot them and
study their corpse.
And despite this year’s
oddly-low overall count, the
avian enthusiast said the event
was worthwhile.
“We had a great time of
course, because we were out
birding,” said Greenberg.
Small park, expensive toilet
Price of Bushwick space raises eyebrows tial safety issue, so we had to
By Kevin Duggan
Brooklyn Paper
City parks honchos unveiled
a new greenspace and
an eyebrow-raising $3.8 million
bathroom in Bushwick
on Friday.
Beaver Noll Park now lives
on a half-acre triangular lot
at the corner of Beaver Street
and Bushwick Avenue — featuring
a new playground, concrete
game tables, planted
greenery, and benches.
The Parks Department
launched the $3.2 million
revamp of the lot in 2012 after
taking over the land from
the New York City Housing
Authority, and finished the
majority of the work last July
— but workers still needed to
add finishing touches such
as adding plants and coats of
paint, according to the agency’s
Brooklyn commissioner
Martin Maher.
The agency also opened
the $3.8 million bathroom two
blocks away at Green Central
Knoll — a 3 acre park at Evergreen
and Central avenues,
which boasts a baseball field
and a playground.
make the contractor correct
that,” said Martin Maher.
The bathroom’s eye-popping
price is slightly above the
staggering average cost of $3.6
million for the city to build
a new loo, which comes as a
result of the stringent building
codes and expensive construction
costs in the city, according
to Maher.
“When you’re bringing
in heat, gas, and all of those
things — these are what the
costs are, these are the real
numbers,” he said.
One local civic leader
was glad to finally see the
new facility, but lamented that
city officials didn’t build it until
the construction of a controversial
yuppie apartment
complex at the former Rheingold
brewery site nearby.
“It’s long overdue, but it’s
a pity it didn’t happen until
after this,” said Community
Board 4 chair Robert Camacho,
while pointing to the
sprawling residential development
at Noll Street.
Bushwick suffers from a
severe lack of open space, with
only 0.2 acres per 1,000 people
— compared to the city’s
goal of 2.5 acres.
Photos by Kevin Duggan
Parks officials cut the ribbon on Beaver Noll Park
Friday, a new open space on a half-acre lot once
owned by NYCHA. The agency also unveiled a $3.8
million comfort station at Green Central Knoll Park.
The bathroom was slated to
open in August, but was delayed
due to the contractor’s
design of the wheelchair-accessible
ramp not being up to snuff
for the Department’s specifications,
according to Maher.
“There was a condition on
the ramp that we didn’t like
that we thought was a poten-
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