Writer and journalist Marie Winn passed away on December 25, 2024, at the age of 88. Her articles and a book about Pale Male, the City’s first resident Red-tailed Hawk, inspired a generation of wildlife advocates. 

Long involved with NYC Bird Alliance (then NYC Audubon) and as a documenter of the City’s birding community, Marie took an active and vocal role—dressed as a Cardinal—in the protests following the removal of Pale Male’s nest from its perch on Fifth Avenue in 2004. Marie was awarded with the NYC Audubon Chapter Award in 1983 and again in 1993. 

You can read more about Marie in her obituary in the Wall Street Journal, and in the remembrance below from NYC Bird Alliance advisory council member and founder of Project Safe Flight, Rebekah Creshkoff.

Rebekah Creshkoff, NYC Bird Alliance Advisory Council | January 31, 2025

Marie Winn—author of the 1998 book Red-tails in Love about New York’s most celebrated hawk, Pale Male, and the people who watched him—died on December 25, 2024. She was 88 years old.

 

I first met Marie in October 1991—in Central Park, of course. I was walking with Sarah Elliott after her Sunday morning birdwatching class. We encountered Marie on Cherry Hill. Turned out she was taking Sarah’s class, too, on Wednesdays. As she nattered away excitedly about what she’d seen that morning, I was charmed by her energy and enthusiasm. And when I learned she wrote a nature column for the Wall Street Journal, I was positively dazzled.

 

Soon we were birding together and joined the Central Park Conservancy’s Woodlands Advisory Board to represent the birds. Unasked, we took it upon ourselves to create a bird list for the park. That involved poring over old records, including those we solicited from more experienced birders, and many rounds of reviews. We developed a unique design to make the list intuitive for non-birders.

 

It was a huge amount of work, and when we handed it in to our Conservancy liaison, all we got was an oral “Thanks.” So Marie sent her, as she put it, the letter the Conservancy should have written. “Dear Rebekah and Marie, thank you so much for the bird list. We know you slaved hundreds of hours over it and are composing an epic poem in your honor. We have also commissioned a statue of Rebekah and Marie Doing the List. We hope you do not mind that it is four times life size.” Our liaison promptly sent each of us a coffee table book about the park.

 

We edited each other’s writing and loved sharing nature notes. I found her so interesting that much of what she said lodged itself in my brain. Here are some of those recollections:

 

She inherited her passion for nature from her father, whom she adored. He called Dark-eyed Juncos “little nuns.” When Great Crested Flycatchers nested at the family’s summer cabin, her father wrote the noted theater critic Brooks Atkinson, who was also an ardent bird watcher. Atkinson wrote back, saying “I envy you, Sir.”

 

In Red-tails, she attributed to Charles Kennedy, a Central Park birder, a number of things she actually did herself—for example, the idea of staking out the Downy Woodpecker roost hole to document precisely when it flew in and out. She felt that the story worked better that way.

 

In 2004, when building managers removed Pale Male’s nest, I rented a couple of cardinal outfits (the costume shop was out of hawks). Dressed like sports mascots, Marie and I were part of the protests across from the hawk building on Fifth Avenue, which ultimately succeeded in getting managers to let the hawks return.

 

She often said, “I have a great capacity for boredom.” She was a big believer in just sitting down somewhere and watching, waiting for whatever came by. Once she flushed a mother turkey with her chicks. Marie settled in and waited. “After a long time, Mom gave the ‘all clear’ signal, and the chicks came out.”

 

I loved going to her apartment. She maintained a nature display atop a low bookcase—birds’ nests and such. Her collection expanded over the years and came to include tiny mammal bones gleaned from owl pellets; a Luna Moth that had flown in through her sister-in-law’s window on Long Island; and porcupine quills I sent her from upstate.

 

Among the items was an antique taxidermied Barn Owl, which she had smuggled into the country. At JFK, she told the customs agent it was a stuffed animal. Touching the owl’s downy head, the awestruck agent said, “It almost looks real!”

 

Once she brought home a Black Swallowtail chrysalis she’d found on the underside of a bench in the Shakespeare Garden. When it was about to emerge, she stayed up to watch. Even her husband was enthralled. It was so fascinating, the hours passed like minutes.

 

The world has lost a brilliant writer and lover of nature. But I have lost my dearest friend.