Sunday bird blogging

A song sparrow rooting through the leaves looking for a treat.

They're allegedly quite a common bird, but I seldom see them -- this guy was surrounded by house sparrows and white-throated sparrows so maybe I just don't always notice them.

Saturday reflections

I wasn't sure if I liked this one better in color or black and white, but I've decided to go with black and white because the yellow of that taxi is too much of a distraction otherwise.

Those buildings are reflected in the windshield and hood of a car parked on Lexington Avenue (you can see the top of the Chrysler Building peeking out at the bottom.) The cab is nicely framed in the driver's side window. 

Winter seems to have settled in early this year, but as long as it isn't too windy I don't mind temperatures in the 30's. I've been putting my Antarctica gear to good use, although sleeping in my wool long johns generates so much static electricity that I can see bright blue sparks when I turn over in bed at night. So they provide entertainment as well as warmth!

Urban poetry

I have no idea what the cables dangling from this apartment building are for, but they add some interesting detail to this wintry twilight.

Astronomy Tuesday

That little speck in the upper right is Jupiter's moon Io rising above the vast horizon of its parent planet. The Juno probe took this picture in October.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstad/Justin Cowart

Sunday bird blogging

I love the patterns of shadow and light on the path, and the fat bluejay in the middle of them.

Saturday reflections

Another in the car series, a headlight plus some lovely reflections around the corner on West 44th Street.

I've been dealing with the early winter weather by crawling into bed early every night with a book and a cup of hot chocolate. Until I am up to traveling the world again, there are far worse ways to spend my time.

Headlights, as promised

I love the way these two came out in black and white.

Urban poetry

Leaves, actual and reflected, in a car windshield around the corner from my apartment.

I went weeks without taking pictures with an actual camera when I came back to New York in September, and then when I was finally well enough to be glad of the distraction photography provided, I still wasn't well enough to venture very far from home.

So I took many pictures of cars and windshields and headlights and taillights on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. I used to be obsessed with headlights and taillights, and I'd forgotten how much fun they can be. Anyway, I think so -- I'm not sure anyone else has ever enjoyed them as much as I do, but I'll post some of the new pictures in the next few days and you can decide for yourselves.

Astronomy Tuesday

The Red Spider nebula is located 3000 light years away in Sagittarius. It's a planetary nebula, meaning all of that gaseous beauty is the product of the stellar winds from one extremely hot star.

Image credit: ESA/Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University, the Netherlands)

Sunday bird blogging

Well, this is an improvement: a titmouse with some detail and a better background, taken with my Canon and a telephoto lens on Friday.

I won't be in any rush to drag that lens back to Central Park any time soon -- I spent most of yesterday recuperating -- but it was so beautiful in the park, crisp and cold and full of sparrows and squirrels rooting through huge piles of fallen leaves, that I think I felt really myself, really home, for the first time since I left for Africa in August.

The missing season

I feel as though I missed autumn this year. It's always the best season in New York -- fall colors, new movies and cultural events, and weather that makes walking anywhere a pleasure.

But maybe it wasn't just that I spent most of the past couple of months too sick to walk very far, much less get any pleasure out of it. I don't think we actually got much of an autumn this year. It was hot and humid until, abruptly, it wasn't, and the unseasonable blizzard killed all the leaves before they had a chance to turn.

The picture on the left is the Azalea Pond in Central Park a little more than three weeks ago, at the end of October. I took the picture on the right yesterday.

Saturday reflections

One last picture from the parade: an elf reflected in the glass of an office building on Sixth Avenue.