Nature of New York When the Nature of New York City comes to mind you usually think about a garden in front of a house and the trees that are growing in your backyard, which will provide shade on a sunny day. New York When you hear New York City, some of the first words that come to mind are busy, noisy, too much cars, hustling and bustling and of course the city that never sleeps.

INWOOD PARK Our recent trip to Inwood Park was the first time we realized there was another side to New York. A side which is peaceful and calming, a side which people tend to overlook because their lives are more important than anything else. A trip to this park not only showed us nature but it gave us a history lesson of N.Y. such as hills, and rocks that were over 600,000 years old. We had a hands on experience with birds in the park, they landed on our hands and we fed them peanuts from our hands e.g. the black-capped chickadee. Some of the other birds we saw included blue jays, mallards and the red tailed hawk. We also saw turkey tailed mushroom, scallions, which we had no clue grew in the wild.

One of the other exciting experience was standing on the snow covered hills and looking at the Hudson River from a distance. It was a magical sight because we do not see these things often

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge This wildlife refuge is a designated area of land, about 9,155 acres, set aside by the government for the preservation of nature. It contains diverse habits, including salt marshes, fields and woods and these areas are occupied by more than 325 species over the last 25 years. On our journey through the wildlife refuge we saw Canada Geese, Snow Geese, Mallard, American Wigeon and Swans. We also saw Herring Gulls and how it obtains it’s food. It does so by dropping clams on hard surfaces. The smarter gulls with more experience drop the clams in the parking lot made of asphalt. This shows that birds go through a learning process like humans do.

The Cardinal is one of the most beautiful birds that we have ever seen. We saw it in all the places that we visited this week, like Inwood Park, Central Park and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. It was at the Refuge that we had our closest encounter with this bird, which was just a few feet away from us.

Conclusion Finally we have come to the conclusion that N.Y. is a big city, it’s not only composed of humans and buildings, but also of a more softer and calmer side of life, which is nature as a whole. For the past few days we all have experienced what nature is and what it is all about. We took an ecological footprint quiz, which is the impact that our lifestyle has on our environment and from the results we realized how much is at stake today.

Group Members Carona Paris Sherene Devega Zellon Alexander