Wild birds in New York zoo

This video from the USA says about itself:

Just one day after being born, wood duck hatchlings must take a frightening leap of faith to reach their mother.

From the Wildlife Conservation Society in the USA:

The Bronx Zoo Birders

July 21, 2010

At WCS’s Bronx Zoo, a group of WCS birders have been surveying the grounds for nesting wild birds. Their goal: to find out how the Zoo’s 265 acres, an important rest stop along the mid-Atlantic flyway and a green oasis in the midst of the big city, provides for breeding birds, and which species it attracts.

The birders are turning up some surprising finds, like wood ducks, warbling vireos, and black-crowned night herons. What’s even more surprising is where they’re finding them—singing in trees on the Bison Range, swimming through the once blighted Bronx River, even nesting in exhibit signage. Below, WCS publicist John Delaney leads a birding tour of the Zoo.

Just off the New York coastline lives an undersea wilderness. Sharks, sea turtles, dolphins, whales, seals, skates, and rays swim below the many flying shorebirds and seafaring ships of the eastern Atlantic. In all, more than 300 fish species feed, breed, and migrate through the New York Bight, which stretches between Montauk in northern Long Island to Cape May in southern New Jersey: here.

Amidst the Bronx’s miles of highways and railways, another force steadily rushes by: the Bronx River. Once plagued by pollution and neglect, today the New York waterway is home to alewife herring, night herons and egrets, muskrats, and even a lone beaver. The return of native wildlife is proof of the river’s improving health, and a testimony to community restoration efforts by WCS and other local groups: here.