On a recent weekend, five Vermont artists — Barbara Zucker, Leslie Fry, Lynda McIntyre, Catherine Hall and Meg Walker — flew their coops in the Green Mountain State and landed at the Wild Bird Fund on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The name is a bit of a misnomer; the “fund” is actually a facility that accepts rescued injured birds and nurses them back to health as they’re able. Then, says Zucker, the caretakers return the creatures back to whence they came and release them.
The facility also accepts baby squirrels and turtles, she notes, but its mission is primarily avian rehabilitation.
So what have Vermont artists got to do with a New York bird rescue? Zucker, whose step-granddaughter works at the Bird Fund, wanted to do something to benefit the facility’s work, which she calls “wonderful.” Being an artist, she reasoned that she and some likeminded friends could do what artists do — make art — and then offer the works to the Bird Fund to use as it wished.
And so the five Vermont artist friends headed to the city, drew and painted birds during the day and stayed in various places at night. Zucker described the experience as unexpectedly, and deeply, moving.
“The birds seemed to know they were in a safe place,” she says. “They weren’t afraid. That kind of intimacy with creatures happens only in very rare situations.”
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