Have you ever watched the History Channel show "Life after People"? It shows how Nature would overtake all the remnants of civilization if humans suddenly disappeared. Working in Manhattan, that scenario seems reliably remote, but in fact, several episodes of that show were filmed in New York City. Not in Manhattan itself, but on small islands in East River and New York Harbor.
One day this July, we took a river cruise that took us to some of these islands. The skies looked suitably apocalyptic:
After we slowly paddled under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and turned around, an island came into view, and you could tell something wasn't right with the buildings there:
It was the Swinburne Island, and it was virtually covered by hundreds and hundreds of cormorants.
Apparently, this set of buildings used to be a quarantine hospital and later a marine training station, but for the past several decades it's been abandoned.
The island is now managed as part of a national park that spans between Jamaica Bay (JFK airport) and Sandy Hook NJ. I don't know about you, but seeing it colonized by the birds like this is kind of creepy to me.
We also visited a sister island called Hoffman Island. That one doesn't have any buildings, but it has an abandoned pier. And another set of several hundred cormorants.
While we were at it, we also took a swing around one of the lighthouses in the area. The light-keeper was in. How can you tell?
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