The headliner of the night was award-winning novelist Jonathan Franzen, who has chronicled his affection for the winged creatures in several pieces for The New Yorker. Franzen stood before a packed room to explain why he regards birds so highly, and why he feels it’s imperative for people to care for the injured and sick of the flocks that pass over our city.

“They don’t really interact with you except to try to bite you. They really have very little to do with us directly, and that’s partly why I like them,” he said.

He called birds “the great other of the world,” the direct descendents of dinosaurs who had the earth to themselves for a good long while before we came along. Now, Franzen said, there are roughly 100 billion birds in the world, but the 7 billion-strong human population is making it harder and harder for those birds to survive.

“We’re basically taking over the world rapidly, and building cities like New York City, and birds have no choice but to interact with us, to accommodate for us,” Franzen said. New York lies directly in the East Coast flyway, the path that migratory birds travel on their way south for winter and north for spring. Thousands of birds are killed every year when they fly into tall buildings that we’ve placed in their way.

“Like it or not, we’re the stewards of birds now,” Franzen said. “We claimed the planet.”

Rita McMahon (who was dressed in a kimono bedecked with pigeons that was one of the items up for bid in the silent auction) and Karen Heidgerd, co-founders of the non-profit Wild Bird Fund, explained to the crowd why their Upper West Side location was so important, and why they were asking for much-needed donations.

“It’s a great location, but it comes with a price,” Heidgerd said as a video of the rehab center, days away from officially opening, played behind her. The expensive storefront on Columbus Avenue is right across the street from Animal General, where they can bring the birds for veterinary treatment.

The rehab center accepts injured birds and treats them until they can be released back into nature. Franzen likened rehabilitating birds to a spiritual and moral mandate, the duty of an enlightened society.

“The fortunate birds get better and go back to being others, as they should be,” he said.

With the help from students at P.S. 166 on West 89th Street, five little ducklings made their way from the shade of a schoolyard evergreen bush to a lake in Central Park, near West 100th Street.

Last month, a wild female mallard duck unexpectedly chose to lay six eggs in the school’s Reading Garden, bringing students a rare wildlife education experience.

The mother duck and her ducklings.

After spotting the misplaced duck, the school contacted the Wild Bird Fund for advice on what to feed her as she warmed her eggs for nearly a month. The students, from grades K-5, treated the duck to mealy worms, corn meal, vegetables, cereal and water.

Garo Tekeyan, the school’s science consultant, and James Mitchell, the office administrator, fenced off a nesting area around the bush with grass sod to prevent the eggs from rolling away.

“At another school the duck might not have survived,” said Emily Fano, a parent on the PTA who helped monitor the duck’s progress. “The kids didn’t try to bother her.”

On May 14, the eggs hatched and five fuzzy ducklings tested their wobbly webbed-feet—luckily, on school grounds. But Tekeyan knew the ducklings would need water as quickly as possible.

However, getting to a Central Park basin for a mother duck followed by a line of ducklings is not as simple as it is cute.
So Tekeyan brought them a wading pool and stacked a couple bricks up to its rim to make an easy entry. The students observed quietly and learned about food chains, webs and wetlands. They also scouted out possible habitats for the ducks in Central Park, aware that a schoolyard couldn’t remain their home forever.

Less than a week later, the Wild Bird Fund transported the legion of yellow ducklings in a carrier to their new home in Central Park.