![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
After work yesterday, I went up to Central Park to see and smell the flowers along the Lilac Walk. It's early for lilacs yet, but a few were fully in bloom and a few more starting: delightful but not overwhelming. I smelled all of them, started to walk away, then turned back for another visit to one bush. Mmm, lilac. I suppose other species are sometimes aware when they're reacting to tropisms.
Other things in bloom nearby included the last of the forsythia and some wonderful flowering cherries. (If I don't happen to visit the park in those two weeks, I can easily forget how many fine cherry trees are growing there.) I wandered past the south edge of the lake to Strawberry Fields, where I saw some birders settled in with serious binoculars, on tripods. I asked someone standing there what they were looking at. She told me it was an owl, but she didn't know what kind. I waited a minute or two, and when someone else walked away, I asked one of the people if I could look through his binoculars. He said yes.
He had them focused on the owl. An Eastern screech owl, he said. Sleeping in full view on a tree branch, facing toward us (well, full view to birders at the right angle and with good eyes or good optical tools: probably quite adequately concealed from anything the owl needs to worry about). I took a nice long look: the tripod helped, because while I can't stand entirely still on a slope, any movement of the image was only from my own movement, and I didn't come close to losing the owl. He commented that he likes this place and time of year because "you can see three new birds a day."
When I got out our book to add the owl to the life list, I realized that it's been ages since![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cattitude or I had gone out actively looking for birds. The previous entry is the peacock I saw along I-84 last summer. (Some of this, of course, is that after a while you know most of the local birds: but I suspect I could add a few species by taking the A train to the right stop.)
Note: the Lilac Walk is just north of the Sheep Meadow: about 69th Street at the center of the park. The best of the flowering cherries are just west of the Reservoir, but I didn't walk that far north this time, just enjoyed a few scattered near the Lilac Walk. Strawberry Fields is at the west edge of the park, near the 72nd Street entrance; the south end of the B/C station is handier for the Lilac Walk, the north end for Strawberry Fields, and that's how I traveled yesterday. I thought of walking down to Columbus Circle but one foot didn't like that idea.
Other things in bloom nearby included the last of the forsythia and some wonderful flowering cherries. (If I don't happen to visit the park in those two weeks, I can easily forget how many fine cherry trees are growing there.) I wandered past the south edge of the lake to Strawberry Fields, where I saw some birders settled in with serious binoculars, on tripods. I asked someone standing there what they were looking at. She told me it was an owl, but she didn't know what kind. I waited a minute or two, and when someone else walked away, I asked one of the people if I could look through his binoculars. He said yes.
He had them focused on the owl. An Eastern screech owl, he said. Sleeping in full view on a tree branch, facing toward us (well, full view to birders at the right angle and with good eyes or good optical tools: probably quite adequately concealed from anything the owl needs to worry about). I took a nice long look: the tripod helped, because while I can't stand entirely still on a slope, any movement of the image was only from my own movement, and I didn't come close to losing the owl. He commented that he likes this place and time of year because "you can see three new birds a day."
When I got out our book to add the owl to the life list, I realized that it's been ages since
cattitude or I had gone out actively looking for birds. The previous entry is the peacock I saw along I-84 last summer. (Some of this, of course, is that after a while you know most of the local birds: but I suspect I could add a few species by taking the A train to the right stop.)Note: the Lilac Walk is just north of the Sheep Meadow: about 69th Street at the center of the park. The best of the flowering cherries are just west of the Reservoir, but I didn't walk that far north this time, just enjoyed a few scattered near the Lilac Walk. Strawberry Fields is at the west edge of the park, near the 72nd Street entrance; the south end of the B/C station is handier for the Lilac Walk, the north end for Strawberry Fields, and that's how I traveled yesterday. I thought of walking down to Columbus Circle but one foot didn't like that idea.
Tags: