A gull endangered by a careless smoker’s discarded lighter carried it away from a neglected section of the West Promenade. Marta Balla caught it in a photo.
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Photos courtesy of Marta Balla
“I saw this bird trying to eat a lighter,” Balla wrote.
“I hated seeing this poor bird so desperate to get this lighter. I tried to get the lighter, but it didn’t let me.”

From bottle tops to pen lids, seabirds consume plastic discarded by thoughtless humans.
Often mistaking plastic objects floating in the sea for food, the adult birds pick them up and then feed them to their young, with disastrous consequences.
Is it so hard discarding used objects in appropriate containers instead of just dropping them in public spaces? Birds aren’t the only ones endangered.
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AVAC Is Working. The Model Is What’s Aging.
Roosevelt Island’s AVAC system is often discussed as if it were either a miracle or a menace. In truth, it is neither. It is functioning infrastructure that has reached a point in its lifecycle where how it is maintained matters as much as whether it exists at all.










