My eyes wanted proof. Standing in a Woodbury industrial park on a sunny Sunday summer morning, I thought I was looking at an eastern kingbird. Until June I'd only seen the eastern kingbird at Cape Cod and in Montana. I'd never seen them on Long Island before June when I first saw some in Montauk. When I had seen them, it was in a natural landscape near water. An industrial park in a tree next to a well-traveled road was the last place I would have expected to see one. If this eight and a half-inch bird was indeed a kingbird, I wanted to see it close up to be certain.

The bird flew off across the road to a tree and I followed. It looked like a kingbird: charcoal gray head, scrunched half-white face and the telltale horizontal white line across the base of the tail. The bird flew off the tree and flew in the characteristic circle but to another tree. Then another. When it did those circles my brain believed what my eyes were telling it. But why was it in an industrial park?

A second kingbird raced toward the first one and they both flew off to a tree, then over a white building leaving only a shadow on stone. When I couldn't find them I went back to the road and heard myself involuntarily mutter "there they are." The birds were flying onto a branch back where I'd first encountered them. One was in the spiky "cup" of some ridged bare branches. The scene would have made quite a photo. But now they were closer than before. I examined the wing and back colors of one and then turned to look at the other. I didn't yet know but obscured by leaves, quietly perching in the adjacent tree was more than just another kingbird.

Panning with my binoculars I saw a third bird. Then a fourth appeared. If this were poker I'd have had four of a kind! Wondering if I was miscounting because the birds moved from tree to tree and to different limbs so quickly, I waited until I could see all four simultaneously. Then wrote in my notebook 4-4-4-4 wanting to have some evidence later that I saw four rather than vaguely remember. I turned my attention to the bird's tails. One appeared to have a shorter tail and soon I was able to compare it to one of the others, which had a clearly longer one. This strongly suggested that the short-tailed bird was a fledgling. It looked like I had found a family, but again the nagging question: Why in an industrial park?

One of the birds opened its bill showing a yellow mouth. Soon another flew to it, and although I couldn't see if anything was actually exchanged from one bill to another, it seemed as if some food, perhaps an insect, was passed to the fledgling. One of the flying birds went to the limb of an adjacent tree then flew down to the grass and immediately came up to one of the two birds that perched but hadn't flown. What followed looked like a passionate movie kiss between the two. I was sure that the fledgling had just received a fresh insect from one of its parents.

I was not only filled with excitement but these kingbirds had now touched me. There is something about watching a fledgling open its yellow mouth and seeing an adult apparently feed it that registers in one's unconscious. If feeding a helpless youngster is an act bathed in love for humans, it seemed that way also for these birds.

Two of the birds perched next to each other each facing the other way, like crossed swords. A third was on a distant limb or sometimes the adjacent tree. The fourth one perched in front of me with its feathers all "plumped" out. I examined every bit of the wing's? feather arrangement and hues. Above the telltale white band across the tail I could see four marks, which I never would have seen at a distance. The effect was like getting close to an impressionist painting and seeing the artist's brush strokes up close which at a distance created a different look.

Meanwhile the adult or adults were flying and the distinctive flight pattern, which seemed before to have a helicoptering motion actually had two such motions: one with the bird in a horizontal position and the other partly vertical with bill up. These birds could also hover in midair, advantageous in catching insects, which comprise most of their food and are often caught in mid air. If one can see them up close with a scope you can see the very tip if their top mandible is pointed down, a nail-like way to hold an insect firmly.

At home after doing some reading I had one possible answer to what this family of kingbirds was doing in an industrial park. Kingbirds appear to have a strong affinity for a nesting site. An account of eastern kingbirds on Long Island from 1924 written by an observer who watched them stated that despite what he called "development," kingbird pairs returned to the same place year after year for 35 years.

Were the kingbirds that I observed the latest in a long line of others that had preceded them here? This industrial park had been a potato field until about 25 to 30 years ago. Were the kingbirds hardwired or imprinted with this place as their nesting site or was it something else? Are they adapting to the available land because of the loss of other preferred habitat? Or is the habitat of the industrial park the type that they like and why they chose this industrial park simply a mystery? I'll look here next spring to see if they return. In the meantime a quiet Sunday morning walk has become an intellectual adventure.