The spot was in the heart of an urban bedlam, surrounded by the hurtling traffic of the Triborough Bridge, the smokestacks of Con Edison, the grim warrens of Rikers Island, the roar of La Guardia jets and three sewage treatment plants.
Yet there hunched on a beach on South Brother Island in the East River, looking like old philosophers mulling a tangled question, were five great blue herons.
These long-legged waterfowl would seem to find the quiet of the Everglades more congenial than the hurly burly of New York City. But for many years now, herons -- as well as egrets, ibises and other wading birds -- have been nesting or roosting on South Brother Island and 13 other uninhabited islands managed by New York City's Parks Department or the National Park Service with help from the New York City Audubon Society.
Several of the islands are unlikely sanctuaries, a stone's throw from Gracie Mansion or the United Nations or Co-op City. Yet the fact that there are wading birds hovering near these landmarks is a lyrical measure of the restored health of the city's waterways and of the salt marshes where the birds feed.
While the herons' taste for New York may suggest a wackiness that should make them fit right in with the city's other eccentrics, ornithologists think the birds' choice may be a sign of shrewd intelligence. A healthy island amid turbulent waters and urban eyesores is actually an ''oasis in the wild,'' said Alexander R. Brash, chief of the Parks Department's natural resources group, discouraging countrified predators like barn owls and raccoons as well as trespassing humans.
While 1,837 pairs of herons, egrets and ibises have been thriving on seven of the 14 islands, the news is not all good. These species have all but abandoned three islands in Staten Island's refinery-lined Kill Van Kull and Arthur Kill waterways, where they once flourished.
Some blame human intruders, pollution and the proliferation of trees unsuitable for nesting. Others say wading birds have forsaken those islands because owls, hawks and raccoons who once fed on garbage in the Fresh Kills landfill have ventured farther afield as the landfill gradually closed and are preying on heron eggs and young on the island.
Correction: December 5, 2003, Friday A picture caption yesterday with an article about waterfowl that thrive in New York City was published in error. The picture showed an osprey nest on Shooters Island off Staten Island, not the home of hundreds of black-crowned night herons on North Brother Island.
