Bird watchers are “losing their sh–” over a rare bird in Prospect Park.
“At least 100 avian enthusiasts a day are showing up at the park’s LeFrak Center to see the Florida tweeter — called a painted bunting — with its multicolored plumage,” The New York Post writes. RELATED:In which borough do rentals go faster than Manhattan? Take a wild guess. “A lot of people are losing their s–t over this bird,” a “birding-tour leader” named Doug Gochfeld told the Post.
“When I first tried to photograph it, I was literally shaking so much I had to calm myself down to get the shot,” Keir Randall, another bird watcher, explained.
So why are people going insane over this (admittedly) very pretty bird?
The painted bunting is a fairly rare bird, and that’s mostly due to its status as a “near threatened” species, with the bird seeing a slow decline in population over the past decades.
“The North American Breeding Bird Survey estimated an average decline of 3.2 percent per year between 1966 and 1995 — suggesting the population declined by 62 percent in that time,” AllAboutBirds.org wrote in an article about the species. “The eastern population is suffering from habitat loss and degradation as humans destroy swampy thickets and woodland edges for urban development.” RELATED:‘Columbus of Brooklyn’ from viral jogger video speaks out to Metro This is the painted bunting’s first recorded landing in Brooklyn (typical gentrifier), and it is “one of only 10 birds of this species to have arrived since 1927, according to data compiled by the New York State Area Records Committee,” the Post reports.
