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For RB - Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge has its own chapter in my book. It is magnificent! And the diamondback terrapin turtle has its own page and a full page plate devoted to it.

For George - contact the New York City Audubon Society www.nycas.org, for tours and volunteer opportunities on North Brother Island. No visitors are allowed on the island during nesting season.

For Marielle

The book covers 100 species of plants, animals, and mushrooms, plus the 5 geological formations in New York City. I include commonly seen species, both native and non-native, to help the reader identify and understand the ecological value of the flora and fauna we share our city with. The first half of the book is about the twelve major parks in our five boroughs.

For CH - wild turkeys are magnificent. Native people made rain cloaks from their beautiful feathers.

Pelham Bay Park IS New York City's largest park, with over 2700 acres. I have a chapter devoted to Pelham Bay Park in my book describing the natural history, human history, trails and habitats. There is a wonderful map of the park showing the trails and features.

Regarding turkeys, I thought you may like to know that in E. Hanover and adjacent Madison there are also wild turkeys.

Also - what about plants? NYC has native flora - trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, ferns, grasses, sedges, rushes. NYC has lost 75% of its woodlands, wetlands and meadows have been destroyed. We have already lost 43% of our flora including the yellow fringed orchid and swamp pink. Some plant groups have been utterly decimated. Sadly, the orchid family illustrates this point well. We used to have 30 species of orchids in NYC. Today only six species remain, consisting of only eleven populations. There is one new orchid; the exotic broad-leaved helleborine (Epipactis helleborine). Visiting from Europe, this species is found in more and more parks every year.

Your guest needs to contextualize what she is talking about - not all animals (and plants) are the same. Exotic species, like muted swans and ginko trees, aren't as rich ecological contributors as native species that have evolved here over thousands of years, like wood ducks and willow oaks - both of which are native and rare in NYC

I saw an oppossum in the Inwood, Washington Heights neighborhood where I used to live. It was the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Its a super-sized rat on steroids.

Don't forget lovely Jamaica Bay, part of the National park with New York City, and home to the largest diamondback terrapin population in New York state.

There are black squirrels in the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

I also feed squirrels, cardinals, blue jays and pigeons on my fire escape (much to the displeasure of the powers that be in the building). I saw a hawk sitting on the fire escape one day...that was freaky.

It seems that there has been an increase in the raccoon population in Brooklyn, especially in the area between Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetary. We currently have a family of a mother and two kits nesting under our deck and can't get them out.

I go down the block to St Mark's in the Bowery to sit and feed both the squirrels (unshelled peanuts) and the sparrows (shelled sunflower seeds) but not the pigeons because they are fed daily by Mary who arrives sometime between 2:30 - 3:30 every day to feed the pigeons with bag loads of bread.

I would like to know what sort of legal access do we have to the Brother Islands??? can we kayak in the rivers??

There is a flock of wild turkeys on the north shore of Staten Island. Two years ago they flew into the Stapleton area, some killed when they flew into a substation. About a half-dozen were in my back yard for a day, and they were magnificent!

Did you know that Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in the city and not Central Park.