It’s Not The Start Of A Bad Joke . . .

The Newtown Creek Nature Walk really will open at the end of the month:

It doesn’t look like much, but come next weekend, Greenpoint residents will be able to walk past a geologic marvel, down a concrete path, through a shiny metal gate and up some steps to find themselves at the very first greenway on Newtown Creek.

Years in the making, the nature walk was one of the community benefits that the Newtown Creek Monitoring Committee (NCMC), a group comprised of local residents that meets regularly with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), was able to negotiate as part of the massive Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant expansion and upgrade.

Visitors will enter the park at the end of Paidge Avenue near the intersection of Provost Street. In addition to being an oasis on a creek that has for decades been an ecological whipping boy, the nature walk will also feature many activities for children that will teach them about the creek.

You May Be Able To Keep Out NASCAR And Wal-Mart, But Deer Are Another Story

Staten Islanders worry about what everyone would think if they had to put up deer crossing warning signs, but it’s getting harder and harder to ignore:

Yesterday, cops were called to Bulls Head to subdue a frisky deer that had ventured in a backyard on Carreau Avenue, near Signs Road, at about 9:40 a.m.

Eight police officers, including a team of Emergency Service Unit (ESU) cops, tried to corral the deer, but for 20 minutes, the animal proved elusive, according to Advance photographer Hilton Flores, who captured the episode.

. . .

It’s believed that a herd of at least 40 lives in the vicinity of Clay Pit Ponds State Park.

In October 2004, a car smacked into a deer in Travis, killing it — the latest in a series of antler adventures on the borough’s West Shore.

That episode came six months after city officials passed the buck on a controversial traffic issue.

In April 2003, the city Department of Transportation chose not to erect “Deer Crossing” signs — despite increasing evidence a herd of does and bucks occasionally frolics around the Island.

Last January, the DOT said it might reconsider posting such signs on the West and South shores, where the animals have been most frequently seen and where a number of crashes have occurred.

The South Shore’s Community Board 3 advisory panel has also requested the signs. But the city determined the “confirmed sightings are isolated occurrences” and found no pattern of deer crossing Staten Island roads.

At the time, a city DOT spokesman said the agency checked with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and confirmed deer sightings along Arthur Kill Road, Richmond Avenue and the West Shore Expressway. But since the reports covered a wide geographic zone, signs were deemed “inappropriate.”

Over the years, witnesses have sworn they’ve watched deer swim to Staten Island across the Arthur Kill from New Jersey. Some naturalists have estimated that Staten Island is home to as many as 40 deer.

When The Lamb Realized Where She Was, She Bolted, And When The Falcon Came To, He Asked Where That Building Came From*

Authorities confirm that in three separate incidents yesterday, dumb old nature had to had its ass saved by man:

The collaring of a lamb that likely escaped from a Bronx slaughterhouse was one of the wildlife rescues undertaken by city agencies yesterday.

The female lamb was spotted strolling along 133rd Street in an industrial section of the South Bronx at about 11 a.m., police said.

An employee of a local moving company, Julio Rivera, said he cornered the lamb, which his colleagues nicknamed “Kimon” — after their boss — in a parking lot adjacent to the moving company. The lamb had tags attached to its neck and ears.

“She was marked for death,” Mr. Rivera said.

The lamb was rescued by police and handed over to the city’s Center for Animal Care and Control, which has already found it a home with an animal protection agency, Farm Sanctuary, a spokesman for the center, Elizabeth Keller, said. Employees there renamed the lamb “Lucky Lady,” Ms. Keller said.

. . .

In Manhattan, a falcon and a hawk were rescued in separate incidents, police said.

Park rangers at about 10 a.m. rescued a baby hawk that had been nesting on a building on West 55th Street, authorities said.

. . .

About an hour later, a local business owner came to the rescue of an injured falcon on Third Avenue, authorities said.

At about 11:20 a.m., a crowd of about 20 people gathered around the fallen falcon, which likely had collided with an HSBC Bank building, the owner of Baranzelli Silk Surplus, Ward Bitter, said. Concerned about the bird’s safety, Mr. Bitter said he brought the falcon into his store, wrapped it in soft cotton fabrics, and placed it in a box.

*Like many, we find it impossible to understand the behavior of animals without anthropomorphizing them.

City Blue Jay Population Threatened

But as for those pigeons and black birds, good riddance:

Four female Peregrine Falcon chicks have been found atop the Queens tower of the Throgs Neck Bridge, transit officials said yesterday.

Hatched about three weeks ago, the newborns are already feasting on pigeons, black birds, and blue jays about five times a day. Their talons have grown to nearly the size of a grown man’s hand.

An official with the Department of Environmental Protection yesterday climbed the 360-foot tower to tag the chicks.

Peregrine falcons, which are on the endangered list in New York, have made a comeback in recent years. About 32 now live in the city.

The falcons mimic their natural habitat of high cliffs by nesting atop bridges, church steeples, and high-rise buildings, wildlife experts said. The last falcons born on the Throgs Neck bridge hatched in the 1980s.

Location Scout: Throgs Neck Bridge.

No Way, José!

Fuckin’ A, beavers are back! And at $15 million, Representative José E. Serrano gets naming rights:

A crudely fashioned lodge perched along the snow-covered banks of the Bronx River — no more than a mound of twigs and mud strewn together in the shadow of the Bronx Zoo — sits steps away from an empty parking lot and a busy intersection.

Scientists say that the discovery of this cone-shaped dwelling signifies something remarkable: For the first time in two centuries, the North American beaver, forced out of town by agricultural development and overeager fur traders, has returned to New York City.

The discovery of a beaver setting up camp in the Bronx is a testament to both the animal’s versatility and to an increasingly healthy Bronx River.

A few years ago the river was a dumping ground for abandoned cars and rubber tires, but it has been brought back to life recently through a big cleanup effort.

The biologists who discovered the beaver say they have nicknamed it José, after United States Representative José E. Serrano of the Bronx, who has directed $15 million in federal funds toward the river’s rebirth.

In an interview, Mr. Serrano said he had always envisioned the river getting cleaner, “but I don’t know to what extent I imagined things living in it again.”

A number of people reported seeing the beaver last fall, but biologists figured that the sightings were much more likely to have been of muskrats, which are somewhat common in the area.

But the biologists were intrigued enough to investigate, and after trudging the riverbanks, they spotted gnawed tree stumps and the 12-foot-wide lodge — evidence that pointed to beavers, which are rarely seen in the wild because they tend to work at night and avoid people.

Then on Wednesday, the biologists were able to videotape the animal on film, swimming up the river looking for more material to insulate its home. The animal is several feet long, two or three years old, and appeared to be a male in search of a mate, said one of the biologists, Patrick Thomas, the curator of mammals at the Bronx Zoo, which is run by the Wildlife Conservation Society.