Maybe it’s her soft voice that gets Lili Taylor cast as a caregiver, even if those she looks after happen to be dead, as they were in 1999’s “The Haunting.” These days, the “Six Feet Under” star is in Broadway’s “Marvin’s Room,” playing the devoted daughter of a man who’s spent the last 20 years of his life dying. In real life, Taylor’s devoted to birding, a hobby she’s shared, with mixed success, with her husband and their 9-year-old daughter. “I’m on the boards of the Audubon Society and the American Birding Association,” the 50-year-old tells Barbara Hoffman. Here’s where you’ll find her on those weekends when she’s not tending the bird feeders near her Cobble Hill home.
Because of the play, I spend a lot of the weekends in Midtown, and I always go to La Colombe coffee. They have a draft latte that’s made with nitrogen and looks like a Guinness, but it’s coffee — and it’s amazing! The cafe itself is spacious, with high ceilings, and the baristas are fantastic.
Then I go to the Japanese bookstore Kinokuniya. They have Japanese magazines, pens, paper, sticky notes and all these little Japanese things you didn’t think you needed. I got some really nice erasable pens there and some drawing pencils and brushes you can fill with water and paint with on the go.
I like to draw birds. I always loved them but didn’t know there was a whole community of birders out there! There’s a lot of bird life in Bryant Park, and it’s almost like a treasure hunt. If you walk slowly along where the shrubs and flowers are, you’ll usually find a bird there, looking for food. In the summer, you can find catbirds — they’re a little smaller than a robin, with a black cap, and they make a sound like a cat. I just found a pair with two little fledglings. The last time I checked, they’d moved from the south side of the park to the north, where it’s a little less busy. The little ones are growing up, they’re finding insects and they’re doing OK.
In Midtown, they’ve carved out a little space on Broadway between 40th and 41st streets, and filled it with little flimsy tables and chairs. Here and there is a homeless person, a young couple, an old couple — all colors and creeds. I try to find those moments, and they usually happen in public spaces, that reaffirm to me that the city is still alive and thriving. In this day and age, when there’s a lot of stuff going on, I like to find humanity.