The Nature Pages

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	Wild Nights Nature Returns to the City by Anne Matthews North Point Press, 2002
	Exploring New York City by night in the company of amateur and professional naturalists, ecologists and urban planners, author Anne Matthews discovers a hidden bestiary of flora and fauna that will surprise even native New Yorkers.		Night Life:  Nature from Dusk to Dawn by Diana Kappel-Smith
	A contributing editor for Preservation magazine, Matthews writes with a preservationist's slant and skillfully blends field observations with environmental history and public policy to create pieces of literary journalism in the style of John McPhee.
	"For years, I had looked at Greater New York and seen only what I expected: a profoundly unnatural landscape; a competitive maze; a wonder of money and art that seemed a thrilling human triumph on some days, and on others, a declensionist's delight," Matthews explains in her introduction. "Yet above, around, behind, below, I began to find another New York, suppressed or silent in daylight, exceedingly lively from twilight to dawn."
	Matthews' quest for nocturnal wildlife takes her to Wall Street to collect or rescue migrating birds that have collided with skyscrapers, to the East Sixties to visit a peregrine falcon's nest, and to the Brooklyn shore to find horseshoe crabs. These first person accounts provide the best moments in this book, which also dwells on the history of New York's development and an apocalyptic view of the future.