I take a lot of photographs of the landscape and have an interest
in the regional wildlife–particularly within the city limits–as it is a much
cleaner place then when I was a kid. I am by no description an expert on
the information contained within the confines of this article, but here it is:
The New York State bird is the Eastern Bluebird, the colorful
bird that many songwriters of days gone by wrote about. Harold Arlen (A Buffalo
Native) put a line about this songbird in his masterful work
“Somewhere over the Rainbow,” and we are all familiar with the line
about the Bluebird of Happiness and how lucky it is for him to visit you.
Sadly, European immigrants brought over sparrows to rekindle
their happy memories of their homeland (and gray squirrels, which displaced the
red and black varieties native to the area). The sparrows increased competition for food stock drove the Bluebirds
out of this end of its home range.
Yesterday, while out on a photo walk at Tifft Nature Preserve, I
encountered scores of “Bird People” out to view the migratory
visitors that fly through Buffalo along the Atlantic Flyway. They were
very enthusiastic and shared some stories and info about the countless species
that can be seen at Tifft, including a pair of Eastern Bluebirds.