Birds, Books, Battlefields; Insight into Thomas Hynes
By: Quincy Walter
Tags: Animals, Enviornment, Journalism, Authors, New York City

Our meeting spot was Central Park’s West 103rd St entrance, the closest entrance to Barry’s new home. Barry, New York City’s up and coming celebrity bird, is an owl who grabbed peoples’ attention. It did not take long for Barry to get his own New York Times article. There was no way to know for sure if we would spot him; luckily, there is a serious bird-loving community throughout this city. Thomas Hynes, the man I was meeting for the first time, was refreshing Twitter on the train ride in from Brooklyn to confirm that people reported Barry in his usual spot.

We circled around trees and trudged up trails, looking for people with cameras. (Hynes’ secret method to finding special animals is not to look for them; it’s to look for a big group of people with cameras.) We passed a woman who was in the woods nearby off the path with a camera pointed up. Sure enough, there was Barry.

Hynes tilted his head back and watched Barry with awe. The bird’s celebrity status is well-deserved. His round head and even more round body puffed in and out peacefully as he breathed. His eyes were closed while he slept his night and our day away. Barry is black, brown, and white spotted, and most of all, adorable. He’s a barred owl, bigger than a crow but smaller than a goose, temporarily residing in the country’s most beloved park in Hynes’ most beloved city. It was the first time I had seen an owl so close in the wild. Hynes said the same.

He is not an expert, he is an enthusiast. That’s what Hynes tells me, at least, about his relationship with animals. Specifically, animals in New York City. Hynes is the author of Wild City: A Brief History of New York City in 40 Animals. Google Books labels the book as “humour” and “nature writing”. The book presents Hynes’ satirical and sarcastic voice while teaching readers about common and uncommon animals related to the city. Everything from the basics, like rats and pigeons, to the shocking, like elephants and whales, are used to help readers form the connection of the wonderful city to its ecosystem which is home to such special critters.

Hynes shared with me some wildlife wisdom while we strolled through Central Park. It was midday on a Friday, on a right-before-winter day. The kind of day when everyone is outside because of the fear it may be the last comfortable day before true, pure New York cold. But the slanted sun was shining bright, bright enough to where Hynes’ Mets ballcap and sunglasses were not helping enough. While walking and squinting, Hynes made it clear he did not grow up adoring animals. Instead, he grew up adoring New York City. He was raised in Stamford, Connecticut, by two Brooklyn-native parents. His family took trips into the city to visit the house in Park Slope where Hynes’ grandfather and great aunts grew up. Stamford is 45 minutes away by train. When Hynes was in high school, he and his friend escaped here often to go to concerts (like RadioHead) and buy things they could not buy in their rural hometown (like fireworks).

Hynes has been a New Yorker for ten years now; he currently lives in Dumbo with his wife, Veronica Thew, who plays more than just a supporting role for Hynes’ work. According to Hynes, she was the only person allowed to see the drafted writing for Wild City. Hynes wouldn’t dare show the draft to his family and to this day believes his family thinks they could have written it better. To Hynes, Thew is brilliant and smarter than him; but to Thew, she is taking the opportunity to be helpful toward her husband and his success. “I never edit is his voice,” Thew said “That’s one thing that makes his writing unique and likeable.”

The way Hynes tells stories is fun and playful. This makes sense when you consider his favorite book is Tenth of December by George Saunders. Unlike Saunders, Hynes’ stories are non-fiction, and the witty tone helps make the information easy to digest and stick with readers. Hynes combines facts from books; newspaper archives, like New York Times; and experts, like the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, to write scientifically and historically accurate tales about New York City and its wildlife. Then, he throws in his own style in order to deliver these facts in a way that sparks interest in others.

The book’s chapters focus on the animal and its relationship with the city, whether than means telling the story of a single tiger in a Harlem apartment or explaining how cockroaches are only surviving (let alone thriving) because we built their homes. In the “Rats” chapter, Hynes starts with: “For a city that claims to hate rats so much, New York certainly leaves a lot of food out for them…They are scurrying little reminders that people don’t clean up after themselves.” In true New Yorker fashion, Hynes turns to the New York Times as a source and quotes Matt Flegenheimer, who said New York City’s mayors are 0–108 with rats (when it comes to getting rid of them). Hynes often slips his own opinions in chapters of his book for readers to see the bigger picture, the picture Hynes sees himself. The chapter finishes with: “It certainly takes a lot of gall for people to call another species invasive, diseased, and too numerous”. There is an excerpt at the end of the book discussing the possible future for New York City and its wildlife ecosystem, which makes readers consider what direction it may be headed in depending on our actions.

The idea of Wild City sparked after Hynes published an article on Untapped New York about the legend of alligators in the New York City sewer system. Once the article was published, a friend of Hynes said he should check out the non-native Monk Parakeets in Green-Wood Cemetery. Hynes typically would ignore any sentence starting with “You should…” but once his friend mentioned these other curious creatures in the city, the lightbulb went off. Since Wild City was published in May 2020, so Hynes still spends a lot of his time doing things to promote his book. Hynes bikes to bookstores across the city and offers to sign copies. Reviewers, while few, have overall enjoyed the book, and the bookstores love his visits. Hynes loves them more, since they move his book from the corner of the third floor to front and center stage near the store’s entrance.

A surprising, successful form of advertisement for Hynes has been flyers posted around town by Hynes and a few friends on their bikes. The flyers are eye catching because of their playful phrases, fun facts, and popping pictures. One flyer on St. Marks Place (posted earlier this fall and still there now) has a peregrine falcon on it. The caption: “FAST AS FUCK!” — which is fitting, considering they are the fastest animal on earth. Thanks to the sign, people can learn there are more peregrine falcons in New York City than in any other place on Earth.

The eye-popping pictures on the flyers come straight out of the book. Each of Wild City’s 40 animals have their own digital illustration. The artwork was done by Kath Nash, an artist Hynes personally picked out. It was clear to Nash that the book was a culmination of Hynes’ enthusiasm about history, nature, the environment, and conservation. “All passions Hynes should be proud of,” Nash said. Illustrated pictures gave Nash and Hynes the freedom to portray the animals of New York City in a narrative way, for example making a hawk sit on Lady Liberty’s head or a shark with an “NYC” keychain stuck in its tooth. The pictures avoided the limitations that would have come with sticking to photographs, and they go hand in hand with Hynes’ light-weight narration. Of her Wild City work, Nash is proudest of her nighttime scene of two pigeons on a high building, with the Manhattan cityscape in the background. “It’s whimsical and romantic,” said Nash, “and fits perfectly with the theme of the book and that chapter.”

Writing about New York City wildlife isn’t all fun flyers and bird sighting games, though. As we walked around a pond in Green-Wood Cemetery, Hynes said to me that he pretended to be objective throughout the book, but any reader paying attention will clearly pick up on his stance for conservation and activism. “The juxtaposition of New York City and wildlife is a surprising topic,” says Hynes. “By teaching people there are whales and other special animals in New York City, the idea of wildlife in the city becomes less abstract. This has potential to influence people’s behavior that effects the ecosystem and therefore the animals.” What Hynes hopes to do is to show New Yorkers this is their city and its worth taking care of. Hynes wants to make connections between possible actions and their results. When it comes to change, Hynes feels browbeating and shame has never been an effective coercion strategy. Instead, he wants to simply illustrate what’s happening — “and, I hate to quote The Matrix, but, ‘slowly unplug people’ from the habits they should start changing.”

We met for the last time on a Friday. The day was nice again, but in a different from the Central Park day. It was later in the year, one of the few days in December where the sun isn’t covered and you can’t see your breath. Our meeting spot was the entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery. The cemetery is home to the tallest point in Brooklyn, a point tall enough to see the Statue of Liberty. The public treats the cemetery, which was also a battle ground, similarly to a park. Many visitors come only to walk around.

Hynes and I went specifically to see the non-native monk parrots that live at the cemetery’s entrance. There were about a dozen that could be seen and heard that Friday. The noises they all made were not pretty, like high-pitched screeches rather than normal bird chirps. Their nest overtakes the center pillar of the gothic archway that serves as the entrance and exit. When we walked under the archway on our way out, I wondered what would happen to the parrots once they died. I then realised there are enough of them to continue their pandemonium. As long as no one takes down their nest atop the gothic niche, they can and will stay in their unlikely Brooklyn home.

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/nyregion/central-park-owl-barry.html

https://untappedcities.com/2015/03/10/cities-101-uncovering-nycs-sewer-alligator-legend-fact-or-fiction/

Hynes, Thomas. Wild City: A Brief History of New York City in 40 Animals. HarperCollins Publishers. May, 2020.

https://www.green-wood.com