I can't see the beak, but the size and coloring sounds like a
Woodcock to me. I've only ever seen them deep in the woods before. What is the terrain like surrounding your home, Pulsegleaner? I thought you lived in the city. They are really unusual and fascinating little birds. I had one walk calmly in circles around me once, trying to lead me away from its nest.
Technically, I live about 30 miles
outside the city, but it is a really easy train ride in so I go in once a week.
Around my house is sort of woody suburban. There's enough trees (mostly oaks) that we get populations of things like turkeys coyotes and raccoons an such, and the odd fox or two. And of course, lots and lots of deer.
At the time I was just sort of generally worried about the bird. As I said it was bitterly cold that day, plus the bird did not look all that healthy (that white splash in front of it is a VERY large bowel movement. Wahtever it was, it was clearly not meant to be there. I only got around to leaving when the doorman at the bank said he had in fact called the police (in NYC, a division of the police are responsible for any animal rescue events. I wanted to do the same thing with the other bird yesterday, but I couldn't find a police officer who looked sufficiently non-busy to ask.
My money would be on woodcock. The bird had a slender beak, but it was not nearly as long as a snipe's would be (snipes are needle beaked birds, right). While a snipe would have made more proximal sense (there is water all around Manhattan, so it would not surprise me if the odd snipe lived around the edges and occasionally got lost) but the beak was wrong (het for all I know, there may be woodcocks in Central Park)
A few years before that (also in the dead of winter) I saw a possibly non native bat (the only bat we have around here is sort of mousey grey brown, and this one was blonde or tan I think.)curled up on the sidewalk.
This animal sightings always make me feel a little guilty. I know enough not to try and touch them (if they are in these odd places, they are almost certainly ill and possibly contagious.) But I always feel a little bad that I can't help them.
Oh and I mentioned this before, but this summer when I was wandering around among the burlapped trees at my local nursery I heard an odd sound, and wound up having to basically deal with a very misplaced and VERY pissed off plover (those little things can get AGRESSIVE).
Oh and years ago a mysterious blue feathered black billed goose wandered around our neighbor's yard one day. Clearly an escapee from somewhere, but we never figured out where (the historical restoration near us has geese, but all of them are white. And the only wild geese we have are Canadian. Maybe it came from Blue Hill (who knows what kind of geese they raised.)
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