Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why some birders will train their binoculars on the 9/11 Tribute in Light. We’ll also get details on the loss of a $70 million federal grant for Head Start preschool programs in New York City.
The solemn ceremony this morning will be followed by another ritual tonight: Two beams of light will be switched on in Lower Manhattan. Like the reading of names at the World Trade Center site in the morning, the lights in the evening will be a reminder of what was lost in the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. “Everyone who sees the two beams of light about the 9/11 Memorial joins our shared commitment to never forget,” said Beth Hillman, the president and chief executive of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Dustin Partridge’s role tonight will be to see that birds are not lost in the lights. He is the director of conservation and science for the NYC Bird Alliance, which changed its name from NYC Audubon last year, and will ask the production team running the lights to turn them off briefly if too many birds are drawn to the installation. “Light is incredibly disorienting to birds,” he said, and the lights are powerful. The National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum says they can be seen from 60 miles away. They reach four miles into the sky from the roof of a garage where they have been assembled — 88 units, each containing a 7,000-watt bulb, all positioned to simulate the size and shape of the original twin towers. Partridge will depend on bird counts by volunteers from the NYC Bird Alliance. Lying on their backs on yoga mats or bean bags near the light units, they will aim their binoculars and spotting scopes into the beams and tally how many birds are circling. If the total reaches roughly 1,000, Partridge can ask the production team to turn the lights off for 15 to 20 minutes. The request is not made lightly. “It is one of the most difficult nights of the year,” he said. “It is emotionally very moving. You’re thinking about what happened in 9/11 in 2001 and you’re there with people who lost loved ones in the attacks, and you’re seeing these beams and thinking of their lives. And at the same time, as a conservation scientists, you’re thinking of all the thousands of birds moving through and getting trapped in the beams.” He said the production team had never said no when the birders asked to shut off the lights. “The stimulus of light at night is so powerful that once the lights go off, the birds snap out of it and clear the site and continue their migration south,” he said. A spokeswoman for the memorial and museum said the organization worked with the NYC Bird Alliance to see that “while we honor those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, we do not bring harm to the thousands of migrating birds who can be attracted to the installation.” As it happens, September is a peak time for the fall migration in New York City, a time when, by some estimates, 25 million birds fly through, mostly after dark. Having spent the warm-weather months in New England and Canada, they are headed south. They are the white dots in the sky when the beams are on. “Most people don’t realize those are birds,” Partridge said. For several years beginning in 2008, researchers studied what happened each Sept. 11 during the Tribute in Light. A study published in 2017 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that birds had gathered in greater densities — sometimes 20 times greater than in surrounding areas. That increased the chances that they would collide with one another or crash into buildings, always a hazard in urban areas. And because they detoured toward the lights, they were at risk in another way: The rerouting took them away from their usual paths south and the food they could count on finding along the way. Partridge said that some of the birders who volunteer to take part in the monitoring lost relatives in the Sept. 11 attacks. “You can feel the emotions that people have around the site, and you know how many eyes are on this event” when the numbers of birds climb, he said. Once on Sept. 11 — “I think it was 2022” — was “one of my least difficult nights. It rained all night.” WEATHER Today will be sunny, with temperatures near 81. Tonight, the sky will be clear, and temperatures will fall to around 64. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Sept. 23 and 24 (Rosh Hashana.) The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. New York loses a $70 million Head Start grant
The message to preschool providers was troubling: It said that New York City would lose more than $70 million in federal funding for its Head Start program. That word came in an emergency call with the city’s Department of Education, which oversees free Head Start programs attended by several thousand children, including those who are homeless and whose families receive food stamps. The mood on the call was a mix of sadness, anxiety and alarm, according to someone who took part. But the Head Start preschool programs won’t be required to close during the school year that began last week; the city has committed local funding to keep them going. Free prekindergarten slots for 3- and 4-year-olds will not be affected, because they are managed separately from the Head Start program. The elimination of the preschool funding comes as preschool programs face broader questions about Head Start, which has faced scrutiny from some Republican leaders. President Trump considered proposing the elimination of the program in his plan for the next budget year. METROPOLITAN DIARY Heart Stopping
Dear Diary: He thought he saw me first. But the truth is we both saw each other at the same time. It was 8:30 a.m. at East 53rd Street and Second Avenue. He was in his Jeep waiting for the light to change. I was ready to cross the street, but something made me turn, and I saw him staring at me. His strong, handsome face and salt-and-pepper hair and mustache took my breath away. My heart stopped. He said later that his heart had stopped when he saw me, and that he knew I would be his. Then the light changed, and we both moved on. Ten hours later, he walked into my place of work, and, amazingly, we were face to face. Our lives changed forever at that moment. Now it is 50 years later, and we still have those moments when we gaze at each other, and our hearts stop again. — Rose Ross Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Makaelah Walters and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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