Urban poetry

I admit that I am a wee bit curious about what exactly this Room for Rent (seen in the Rockaways last summer) looks like.

Sunday bird blogging

An oystercatcher at Jacob Riis Park in the Rockaways.

It will probably be January before I can go to the beach again—a lovely time of year for it—but I can close my eyes and pretend I'm there.

Trees at Jamaica Bay

I don't know if these trees are dead, or just lost all their leaves in one of our recent hurricanes, but they were beautiful.

I've been inundated with schoolwork, including creating an educational game using Google Slides (which only took me about ten times as long as I had planned) but I'll be studying from the Jersey Shore for the next couple of days -- one of the advantages of life in the age of Zoom. I can go to school anywhere that has wi-fi.

Jamaica Bay

Despite the exotic name, this Jamaica is in Queens. I drove past the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge on the way back from the Rockaways a few weeks ago--one more place in New York I've never been despite having lived here for so long--so, finding myself with a free morning last week, I went back.

It's an easy enough drive from Manhattan, assuming that one has something to drive, of course. It turned out that there wasn't that much to see there; many of the trails were closed for maintenance, and none of the birds I saw let me get anywhere near them. Still, it was a pleasant place to walk for an hour or two instead of doing homework.

I am amazed to find myself with a huge backlog of unprocessed pictures again. It's been so long since I had so many new things to photograph.

Sunday bird blogging

Back to the beach.

I remain terrible at telling one seagull from another, but since first-year herring gulls are the only brown gulls in this part of the world, I can at least be confident about this guy.

Once he grows up and turns white, that will be quite a different story.

Urban poetry

This is just a grocery store/deli in Rockaway Beach, but I was charmed by the name and the bright colors.

More pictures from Rockaway Beach

Now that summer is officially over.

Sunday bird blogging

A beautiful oystercatcher on the beach at Jacob Riis Park Wednesday.

I love that the bands on his legs coordinate so perfectly with his beak.

Wise words

I loved this sign in the bathroom at Jacob Riis Park at the beach.

Please check the roll before you commit are definitely words to live by.

This is how I dress for the beach

Long sleeves, pants rolled up, hat, sunscreen.

(Thanks to Jayne for the picture.)

More on the beach

I've lived on the East Coast for many decades now, and yet the idea of wearing bathing suits on the beach still seems so wrong to this San Francisco native.

On the beach

I really wanted a beach to be the next stop on my Dipping a Toe Back Into Reality program, so I spent an afternoon in the Rockaways. (Technically I spent an afternoon in the car driving out to Queens and back again, with an hour walking barefoot on the sand and another spent eating lunch.)

It was glorious. And these guys made me smile.