Leaving Cierva Cove

Bringing the kayaks back to the ship as we prepared to set sail.

It's several hours till midnight, but I can already hear the helicopters flying over Times Square a few blocks away. I usually manage to sleep through the cheers greeting the ball drop and hope to do it again.

I think I speak for many people when I say that 2025 sucked in so many ways that I'll be very glad to see it in the rear view mirror. But it helps to remember that it wasn't all terrible, that I saw so much beauty along the way.

Two views

Some amazing blues and greens. I couldn't decide which view I liked better, close up or more perspective (with more ice) so I'm posting both.

And still more color

I'm guessing the green here is lichen, rather than iron in the glacier water, but I could most definitely be wrong.

And more color

I have no idea what made this ice look this way (iron oxides are supposed to give glaciers and icebergs a greenish cast, so maybe?) But it's beautiful.

And a little color

Those deep blues always look tropical to me, but that's marine ice, which forms underneath ice shelves and is highly compressed, so nothing remotely tropical about it. That color comes from the way the light refracts on the dense ice.

The big(ger) picture

All of this zeroing in on the wildlife was of course taking place surrounded by towering mountains and huge icebergs. Sometimes I had to force myself to quit watching the penguins and just look around me.

I am fairly confident I did notice the whale

But if you look closely, there is another porpoising penguin in the background.

Another OMG I missed this!

I had previously posted a video showing one of the gentoos flying out of the water and landing on the rocks. (You get some idea of how crazy fast they can move through the water by the amount of momentum they have when they're leaving it.)

This picture captures two penguins in midair, about to land. I missed it at first—oh look, more penguins—but the water trail caught my eye and I realized what I was looking at.

And some gentoos too

I've already posted many pictures of the mobs of gentoos along the shoreline in Cierva Cove, but this pair were hanging out by themselves on an ice floe.

This landscape of unbroken ice and snow is more like what most people imagine Antarctica looks like, but there's really less snow than you'd think in the summer (and less every year.)

And still more chinstraps

There weren't as many chinstraps as there were gentoos in Cierva Cove, and we didn't get as close to them. This picture brings it all back, and I love the wild water with the bergy bits floating in it.

More chinstraps

Bonus bird blogging

Cierva Cove was the only place I saw chinstrap penguins in Antarctica on this trip (there was one in South Georgia).

Sunday bird blogging

I planned to start going through some of my photo backlog this week, and I was going to start with South Dakota. But it's Sunday, and time for some birds, and I was sure I had plenty of penguin pictures I'd never posted, so I went to the Antarctica folders instead.

And found more than 100 photos I'd never even processed from Cierva Cove alone. Many of them, it's true, were ignored for good reason, but there are some gems there as well. Such as these rather mundane icebergs, which turned out to have a gentoo porpoising in the background.

Saturday reflections

I was desperate for fresh air this afternoon, but it was cold and the sidewalks were slippery, so one trip around the block and a quick stop at the grocery were enough of an adventure for today.

This car on 43rd Street looked appropriately weather-weary.

I'm dreaming of a white (day after day after) Christmas

We've had gray days and gale force winds for a few days now, but last night we actually got—snow! It so seldom snows anymore that it was lovely to lie in bed this morning and watch it come down.

Merry Christmas

This picture is a few years old, but it's one of my favorite things in New York at Christmas—standing in Rockefeller Center near the tree, looking across Fifth Avenue at Saks.

Astronomy Tuesday

Another image from the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards. This was a runner-up in the nebula category, but since the object on the right is the Christmas Tree nebula, it seemed an appropriate pick for this week.

Image credit: © Shaoyu Zhang

Sunday bird blogging

A timid fledgling robin peeking out from under a bench in Hell's Kitchen last summer.

Saturday reflections

A view on 34th Street looking towards Herald Square.

Urban poetry

This mural was on the wall adjacent to the sleeping birds sign on West 24th Street.

I have no idea who those gentlemen flanking the Tin Man are, and Google provided no hints.

Hell's Kitchen

Walking home from where the bus dropped me off on Fifth Avenue a few days ago, I passed through the Theatre District, and the sign for Hell's Kitchen: the Musical was a nice signpost reassuring me that I was almost home.

Astronomy Tuesday

NGC 6960, the Veil Nebula, in another of the winners in the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year for 2025.

Image credit: © Zixiong Jin (China)

Astronomy Tuesday

This amazing image was one of the winners in the ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year for 2025. It was taken during the lunar occultation (when the moon passes in front of another celestial object) of Saturn in August.

Image credit: “Saturnrise” © Tom Williams (UK)

Saturday reflections

The porthole on a washer in our laundry room makes a fun frame.

That brand-new white comforter I was congratulating myself for buying just a few days ago? Well, it had an unfortunate encounter with a chocolate protein shake and I spent much of Wednesday schlepping up and down the five flights of stairs between my apartment and this washing machine, when I really should have been doing class prep.

Those stairs are not getting easier with age, arthritis, and injury, but one thing I have acquired is the ability to laugh things off and then just deal with them—that stupid accident would have had me pissed off at myself for days in my youth. (I was much less sanguine about having no internet all day Thursday and having to install the new modem and router that had been sitting in boxes on my living room carpet waiting for a convenient time. I hope my mother was covering her ears up in heaven because there were several hours of loud, nonstop cursing.)

Urban poetry

Bryant Park becomes a Christmas market during the holidays, and picking my way through the crowds on on the adjacent sidewalk on my way home tonight was annoying. It was so cold and these people are so slow!

But this line of pedicabs waiting for fares cheered me up, though my admittedly Scroogey self would have probably gone for the one not dressed as Santa Claus. Just because.

I did actually take a pedicab once, many years ago. I'd been to a corporate Christmas party, and it had started to snow. I wasn't dressed for the weather, and there wasn't a cab to be found (pre-Uber days) and so when the guy on the bicycle offered to take me home for what a cab would have cost, I climbed aboard. And it was strange, but fun, and I will probably never do it again.

Another day in this endlessly fascinating and amusing city

I saw this sign on West 24th Street on my way back from the dermatologist yesterday.

I was tempted to take a peek but I did not disturb the birds.

Astronomy Tuesday

It's been a long time. I do occasionally see images from the Webb telescope and think, Oh I should post that. And I don't.

But I especially love this Webb look at Sagittarius B2. This molecular cloud near the core of the Milky Way is one of the largest in the galaxy. This image was taken in near-infrared, which doesn't capture all of the clouds of dust and gas but is better for seeing the stars. And such stars!

Image credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam Ginsburg (University of Florida), Nazar Budaiev (University of Florida), Taehwa Yoo (University of Florida); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Sunday bird blogging

Another look at the irritated crow in Glacier National Park this past summer.

It's been quite cold, and it's lovely to be able to snuggle inside all day if I want to. I usually use a weighted blanket in the fall and winter; I don't know that it really helps me sleep better but I do love the sensation of lying under a pile of warmth in a chilly room. But after I hurt my knee, it was hard to turn over in bed, and impossible under all that weight. I sleep with the window open a few inches (in New York apartments with steam heat, the thermostat is the window) but sometimes it goes from pleasantly chilly to downright freezing over the course of the night. I'm hot. Then I'm cold. And I missed my weighted blanket.

All of this is to say that after weeks of being annoyed about this, it finally occurred to me that I could just buy another comforter. Not weighted, just a regular comforter. Now I'm warm when I need to be, and I can turn over no matter how grumpy my knee is feeling, and I feel like an idiot for not having thought of this sooner.

Saturday reflections

This appears to be a defunct handicrafts shop on the main street in Faringdon, seen this past summer. The reflections are mostly in the shop name, though I do like how the window reflections and that rusty grate below them make a face.

But the sign on the door says that G & L Evans is in attendance during business hours, and available by phone 24 hours a day. Google tells me that this is a funeral provider, which explains their availability, but not why they are operating out of this rundown storefront.

More urban poetry

I always wished I had a better version of this picture—I was on a bus heading back to Lisbon from Belem in 2011. I loved those yellow chimneys under that sky and wished that I could see them better. But at least I have this picture.

Urban poetry

Washington Heights last winter. Taken from the window of my car, which gives me a (very brief) moment of regret.

Sunday bird blogging

This picture is a couple of years old, but I don't think I ever posted it.

Tufted titmice always make me smile, and I'm already happy because I had a great class yesterday and now I have a week off.

Don't pet the fluffy cows

A bison calf trotting obediently after Mom in Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

A large herd of bison decided to stand in the middle of the road and were in no hurry to move on, so we had plenty of time to watch them while we sat in the long line of cars. Many pictures, which I will share—really!—at some point, but this is my favorite.

The road goes ever on

Somewhere in North Dakota this past summer.

Between living with a pissed-off knee and weeks spent fighting off a a really vicious sinus infection, I have not had time or energy to devote to anything beyond the necessary weekly prep and teaching chores. (The embarrassing amount of clutter in my apartment at the moment provides ample evidence, but I'm definitely not going to document it.)

So I'm going to try to clear out some of the clutter in my blog photo files, and post a few things that don't require much explanation.

Sunday bird blogging

Pigeons on the Upper East Side.

Urban poetry

Evening on the Upper East Side this week, as the long nights begin again.

I hesitate to say it because I've been wrong many times in the past several weeks, but I think I am finally better. I haven't coughed once today.

Blue

These shapes and that color are very soothing, and I'm so sick of coughing I can use all the soothing I can get.

Sunday bird blogging

(I know it's not Sunday any more, but sue me.)

A robin noshing on berries in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park on Saturday. I took the picture with my phone so it's not that detailed, but I loved the colors.

I'm not usually that far uptown, but Saturday was our class field trip, and we went to the Museum of the City of New York on 103rd Street. The students really enjoyed it, and after the visit, some of us crossed the street and spent a little time in the park.

I had fun too, but I've been fighting a nasty sinus infection for a week, and I was more than usually exhausted after a day of being a tour guide. Still am, and the ringing in my ears is like fire alarms blaring 24 hours a day, but at least the coughing only woke me up once last night. Progress!

Sunday bird blogging

I noticed this white bird on top of a building across the block this morning. I think it's just a leucistic pigeon, but I decided to pretend that it was a dove and take it as a harbinger of peace.

Oxfordshire

I was able to explore a little on my second day in Faringdon, walking to the folly (tower) that's the main landmark.

It was closed for renovations but I wouldn't have climbed to the top anyway; just walking there used up most of my energy, and I sat for a while on a bench looking out over the Oxfordshire countryside and eating an excellent cheddar and chutney sandwich from the shop next to the inn. (I somehow managed to get completely lost trying to get back to the center of town, and found myself wandering through fields instead of quaint Cotswold streets, so it was a good thing I'd fortified myself beforehand.)

All Saints

This 12th century church was around the corner from the inn in Faringdon. I wasn't able to go inside, but I did like that headstone about to topple into the path, and the oddly jaunty pennants over the graveyard.

The church lost its spire to a Royalist cannonball during the English Civil War, and I'm not sure why they haven't built another in the almost 400 years since. Maybe it's just the cachet of being able to say Cromwell did that, as two different residents asked me if I'd seen the church and told me about the cannonball during my brief time walking around the town.

One thing about that very comfortable bed

I had a nice view of the town center from my bed, except when one of the local buses pulled up outside. It was apparently the end of the line, as the bus sat there for several minutes before leaving again, and I got to watch the people sitting on the upper deck right outside my window.

I never noticed anyone looking back, and honestly I didn't care. I just thought it was funny.