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4/24/12 DOL Name 1. i always look at the birds in the cage in dr robinsons office 2. ms sanchez and him clean the cage dayly NO P.E.

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How was Mr. Kang's hua mei different from Copernicus, the red-tailed hawk in this interview?

By ISHAI GOLDSTEIN Published: July 15, 2007 ON a recent Sunday morning, more than 20 elderly Chinese men gathered in Chinatown to listen to four newborn birds sing. A breeder named Tommy Chan had brought the babies, along with his other birds, from Hyde Park in upstate New York down to Sara Delano Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side, specifically to a half-moon garden just south of Delancey Street. Mr. Chan is among a group of men who keep songbirds as pets — among them white-eyed finches, blue jays, starlings and sparrows. But the showstopper is the hua mei, the loudest and most varied in notes, and the bird for which this small garden is named. On weekdays, a dozen songbirds can be heard in the park, on weekends as many as 50. Most of the men who come to listen to them are retired; the oldest are in their late 80s. Yui Kang, who has been coming to the Hua Mei Bird Garden since the mid-1990s and has been collecting songbirds for more than 50 years, is known as the chief. “We are old men,” he said the other day. “We like bringing the birds and drinking the coffee. We feel better.” The garden began informally in 1993 when three Chinese men hung birdcages between two London plane trees. The men wanted to establish a bird garden like the ones common throughout China. In those years, the park was little more than a patch of concrete, littered with trash and frequented by drug addicts and prostitutes. The men petitioned the Parks Department to recognize the bird garden, and when that happened in 1995, they set about making improvements. Drainage pipes were installed and used as posts from which to hang the birdcages. Japanese maples, river birch and hemlock trees were planted, along with various Asiatic shrubs, some of which produce berries that the men feed to their birds. Legend has it that the hua mei were trained for singing during the Ming dynasty. They are now regarded as the most popular songbird in China. Their plumes are grayish-yellow, and they have a golden-brown belly. Hua mei means “painted brow,” in recognition of the thick white and violet markings around the eyes. The males are fierce competitors; if a female is nearby, the competition is intense. “The men sing to each other as if they are arguing, but with a woman they flirt,” explained Mr. Chan. If the hua mei are not singing, they are known to get depressed. They can also be finicky. “I tried to breed a hua mei this year and don’t see no baby yet,” a man who identified himself as Mr. Wong said as he admired a 10-day-old white-eye softbill nestled in the cage beside its mother. “They need room. They need privacy. And they need a lot of insects.”

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