This one is going to be short—a little Friday edition that’s basically just a couple of announcements. Stay tuned for a longer one soon!
The first announcement is that after a historic freeze of NYC’s waterways, the harbor has opened up a little and Classic Harbor Line is planning to start running our Seals & Seabirds Winter Wildlife boat tours again this weekend! Thanks to the handful of you that chipped in for paid subscriptions after my last letter. I appreciate you! If you’ve been waiting to grab a ticket because of the ice, now’s your moment.
These first few tours are pretty exciting since the environment has been so mixed up by the ice, and it feels almost like starting the season over! I’m looking forward to getting back out there and seeing what’s around. For tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day tour, I’ve been brushing up on my courtship facts about the winter wildlife on New York Harbor, so get extra excited for that. Obviously, there’s still some ice around, so it’s still a little touch and go as we get our bearings.
In addition to those, I’m leading a free NYC Bird Alliance walk on the beach in Rockaway this coming Monday, February 16th at 11:00 AM (Presidents Day).
Finally, I wanted to share my latest writing in Urban Omnibus. This one is called Heat Islands, and it’s a look at the so-called “heat habitats” people create in cities and some of the animals that take advantage of them in interesting ways! Once again, artist Millie von Platen, who wrote a cool children’s book about Zohran Mamdani’s big end-to-end walk of Manhattan during the campaign, did beautiful illustrations.
This is the second installment in an ongoing series about how wildlife in cities adapts to human changes to the physical environment. If you missed the first one, which was about the marine animals that navigate the submerged world below our piers and bulkheads, you can find that here!
Okay, this was a short letter, as promised! Enjoy your weekend, and I hope to see you out along the water at some point soon.
Sincerely,
Russell
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