Saturday reflections

The ponds at Sapsucker Woods on Thursday. These woods are part of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which runs the wonderful All About Birds website, and like the state park, they're only a short drive from Ithaca. It was gray and drizzly, and though the only birds I saw are the same ones I see in Central Park on a regular basis and there wasn't enough light to take pictures of them anyway, I did enjoy walking all of the trails. It's a beautiful chunk of unmanicured woodland full of fairy-sized ponds and witchy trees, with a few paths and boardwalks to make traversing it easy. But I didn't see any need to go back on such a short visit.

Until I woke up yesterday morning to bright sunshine and the itch to get out in it before spending most of the day in the car. Although I had to pack and clean up the AirBnB before checkout, I wondered if I might have enough time for a short visit to the woods. Since I could also pick up one of the wonderful breakfast sandwiches from the Ithaca Bakery on my way back, it was easy to convince myself that I was actually saving time by getting breakfast and a snack for the road before cleaning and packing.

And the woods were even more magical in the soft sunlight and I saw three birds I'd never seen before, and got pictures of two of them. Definitely worth the scraped bumper I acquired trying to get out of the bakery parking lot.