Broadway is for the birds this summer thanks to this artist
You won’t need binoculars to spot these birds.
Along the Broadway Mall, from 64th to 157th streets, are 10 oversized birds, whose real-life counterparts are threatened by climate change. Working with the NYC Audubon Society, Brooklyn artist Nicolas Holiber used lumber from old floorboards and shipping pallets to fashion a flotilla of colorful fowl.
The largest — a 14 ¹/₂- foot-long red-necked grebe with a trio of baby chicks on its back — sits in Dante Park, across from Lincoln Center. Its bill points toward a clock, where it may well be watching its time here tick down: By 2080, scientists say, more than 90% of the grebe population will have headed north in pursuit of cooler temperatures.
“I did wonder what it had to do with Lincoln Center,” says David Gilmore, a visiting singer from Tucson, Ariz. “Was it a bird spotted in the fountain?”
Up at 148th Street, midway between a Dunkin Donuts and a computer store, 18-year-old Tomas Vidal trudged past a snowy owl with an armload of dry-cleaning. “I didn’t know it was an owl,” he tells The Post. “I just thought it was a piece of wood.”
At 105th Street, the double-crested cormorant — orange beak, spread wings and all — had its fans.
“It looks like it’s shaking its feathers,” says Matthew Reynolds, a director who was shooting film of a sneaker store across the way. Adds fellow filmmaker Brandon Cruz: “It doesn’t have to be in a gallery to be art.”
A small but mighty American bittern, its chest painted in red and white stripes — Holiber says he took a few liberties with the color, which is really golden-brown — stands, bill raised to the heavens, at 79th street.
“I think it’s very striking and fits in well with the neighborhood,” says Benjamin Strobel, who was visiting from Winnipeg, Canada.
Few paused at the scarlet tanagers lined up along a rough-hewn wall near the entrance to the 86th Street subway.
“I’m not crazy about them,” one passerby said. “They look aggressive.”
A big, majestic-looking brant — a kind of saltwater goose — sat virtually unnoticed the other day at the busy intersection of 96th street. Only a pigeon gave it a second look.
“I have mixed feeling about pigeons,” says Holiber, 34, who lives in Greenpoint. “Luckily, where I [am], we have more of a cat problem.”
Avian Sculptures by Nicolas Holiber
Tamara Beckwith
Avian Sculptures by Nicolas Holiber
Tamara Beckwith
Avian Sculptures by Nicolas Holiber
Tamara Beckwith
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