A Wander Among the Willows
It’s embarrassing, actually. It’s right there, so close that through our apartment window we can see the treetops. But in these last 20+ years, we visited only once.
A pandemic changed that situation.
The “it” is Willow Lake Preserve, a 106-acre preserve that connects the Forest Hills and Kew Gardens Hills neighborhoods with a half-mile greenway that beats driving any day!
On our first visit all those years ago, the only access point was in Kew Gardens Hills via a footbridge over the Van Wyck Expressway, but we were confronted by overgrown phragmites that completely blocked the preserve’s path. No luck on the Forest Hills side either as the footbridge that crossed the Grand Central Parkway had been deemed unstable and the gate closed for many years.
With a new footbridge over the Parkway, and what must have been a Herculean effort to clear those phragmites, the Preserve reopened in 2013 and christened the Pat Dolan Trail in memory of a local civic leader.
But for whatever reason, we didn’t visit. Meant to, but things just got in the way. Mind you, from my window looking at those treetops, the birding certainly looked promising – I regularly saw various geese, Great Egrets, Osprey and even Bald Eagles.
With travel so limited these days it seemed the time was right for a short visit during a recent sunny Saturday.
As you’d imagine, a preserve nestled in between two major highways and abutting the MTA’s Jamaica Yards does not present itself as an idyllic natural locale. With all the recent rain, the muddy path did have puddles that shimmered with oil runoff but overall, the trail was far cleaner than one would ever expect.
We only saw a handful of people on the trail so given our current world situation, it was the perfect place for social distancing. Not distant was nature!
Being a wetland, I expected to see Red-winged Blackbirds and they certainly didn’t disappoint – what must have been over 100 were out in fine feather. Song sparrows perched high on the willow trees (they call it Willow Lake for a reason!) sang over the rumble of a subway car pulling into the yard for a rest. Tree Swallows and Barn Swallows flooded the sky looking for lunch.
Always a treat, we spotted an Osprey over the lake and hoped to see the Bald Eagle I viewed from the apartment window just a week before, but without luck. No matter, as we enjoyed a show offered by a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher picking at a spider nest under a trail sign.
A couple Gray Catbirds, hidden in bushes, announced their arrival from southern wintering grounds. In a distant tree, a Green Heron flew to a quieter spot away from the argumentative Common Grackles nearby, soon followed by a Black-crowned Night-Heron. A couple little yellow cuties flew between trees lining the trail, but I couldn’t tell if they were American Goldfinches or Yellow Warblers.
Our field trip was less than two hours but given the recent confinement, felt as refreshing as a two-week vacation.
