London Wildlife

Visited my daughter in North London (Muswell Hill) last week. There’s plenty of wildlife in the metropolis. It is probably the greenest city in the world, with parks – large and small – everywhere, including what we Americans call downtown areas.

A stately-looking duck or goose who quacks discretely with a posh accent. She lives near Buckingham Palace.

This gray heron lives in the same green space as the goose: St. James Park.

This black swan lives in Hyde Park, not to be confused with the Boston neighborhood Hyde Park.

London pigeons are splendid. I’m not kidding when I say that. They’re regal. Maybe it’s all the rain which creates ideal conditions for black soil and green grass year year round. Instead of dieting on leftover Big Mac, they eat the real stuff, like worms and grubs. This wood pigeon makes his home in North London.

Green parrots are everywhere throughout London. A male and female must have escaped from a zoo at some point and begun mating. Now they’re becoming `local’ birds. Pardon the lack of focus. They’re nervous birds and never seem to be still.

Seals

On what will likely be the last wintry weekend in terms of temperature in what has sadly been a mostly non-winter, my friend Darra and I visited the John Chafee National Wildlife Refuge. It’s a beautiful sanctuary for birds and other wildlife, including seals.

The pictures below aren’t great. But you will get a feel for what you can see. A volunteer seal guide, Wade, was so kind as to offer everyone a peek through his Nikon zoom lens. These amazing creatures like to hang out on the rocks at low tide. Apparently, they will soon be joined by hundreds more seals as spring approaches.

The seagulls looked majestic.

At the train station, I encountered perhaps the oldest and strangest-looking pigeon I had ever seen. He had a curious white mark on his back, which looked like the Nike logo.

Feeble Winter Continues

The feeble winter continues. But at least this week it looks and feels a bit like winter. It may be short-lived, however, as beginning next Monday it looks like a Pacific air intrusion will push the cold out. And because the ocean is so relatively warm and the air not so cold there won’t even be much snow this week.

Took advantage, however, of the mini snow event (maybe 2 inches) by taking a brief walk in the park before it changed to sleet and then, depressingly, just plain rain. See pictures below. By the way, I believe we get the word sleet from Icelandic, slydda. There’s a ton of slydda in Southern Iceland as the warm jet stream which passes just south of the island transports fairly mild air in the upper layers of the atmosphere while it’s cold at the surface. In the 2000s I flew Icelandair a lot and so I got acquainted with the local newspaper, Morgunblaðið. I’d `read’ what I could of this wonderful language. The weather report invariably posted lots of slydda around the island. And when it was raining in the capital, it would say “rigning í Reykjavík,” pretty close to English.

You’ll notice that there is zero ice coverage on the Esplanade Lagoon in mid January, a first in my 21 years of living close to this body of water. The geese seem to enjoy being able to swim around without having to navigate the ice floes.

North Korea fired intercontinental ballistic missiles. Here’s the City of Boston’s deterrent.

The Esplanade Park was a splendid conservation project. It successfully integrates urban wildlife sanctuaries, if you will, with numerous playgrounds, baseball and soccer fields, tennis and basketball courts, community boating with canoes, kayaks and sailboats, pedestrian and bicycle paths, a beer garden and the Hatch Shell for concerts. It’s used by so hundreds of thousands of people year-round.

Winter … Sort of

Climate change can be gleaned from the migration of crickets and other summer insects north to places like Quebec and Northern New England where they were rarely seen, if ever in decades and centuries past. It’s the temperature trend which keeps moving upward that really grabs our attention. This year’s mostly non-winter thus far throughout the most of the Lower 48 is historic. To illustrate, there’s been zero ice coverage in the Boston area, and I mean nothing but a few very thin pieces of ice last month which couldn’t even hold Canada geese. I’ve never witnessed so little ice in my lifetime.

We’ll be getting a snowstorm this weekend, and it has turned temporarily colder. But the snow will all melt by mid week as yet another mild stretch looms. So, in my second favorite season I’m left taking pictures of holly bushes, a robin’s nest (they’re now all visible as the leaves are gone) that’s about 5 feet from one of the busiest thoroughfares in Boston, Storrow Drive, and a mini hatch shell, a so-called hatchling, of which the Esplanade Park Association has placed 9 throughout the park. The festive lights are solar-powered.

November Torches

Late fall colors on yet another sunny autumn day in Boston. It’s been a nice stretch of a lot of sun and relatively little rain the past 6 weeks. The first torch below is in Cambridge (picture taken today) in front of a building that houses Microsoft, Akamei, Shire, and the British Consulate. On my daily jog I get to see this magnificent tree produce light and then dark red colors that only fade away and turn brownish purple by late November. Took this picture with my zoom lens from across the river in Boston.

Below is a picture of a little torch taken a couple of weeks ago – someday he will grow up to be a big torch – in the Esplanade Park. Like the tree above this tree displays different shades of red: From the light red you see here to a deeper crimson you see in the picture above.

Late Foliage

Late foliage can be quite beautiful. While the colors aren’t quite as vibrant, the different shades of orange and brown are distinctive. Autumn’s last hoorah. This picture was taken just north of Norwich, Vermont.

Tranquility of Autumn

As the world experiences tumult, the tranquility of autumn in Boston provides the perfect antidote. It’s good to remind ourselves of how lucky we are to be in a region with no war and relative prosperity. Most of the world is less fortunate: The majority of people live in (near) poverty and/or areas of persistent conflict.

Fall colors are about three weeks late this year. A combination of a wet and warm summer and early autumn has contributed to the delay. The first picture is of Maple Row on the Boston Common. These maples are usually bright red and orange by late September. Only one of 8 maple trees is showing foliage.

The yellows along the Esplanade often peak by mid September. Not this year.

The reds and purples are far from peaking. This looks more like September than October.

O’Neill Bike Path

The O’Neill bike path in Rhode Island runs from Kingston (train station) to Narragansett. It is a scenic route that takes you along swampland, ponds and other bodies of water, and the quaint town of Wakefield. At the very beginning of the trip my friend Darra and I saw America’s bullet train – well, 60% of the speed of its faster Japanese and European cousins – whiz by. At a safe distance of at least 100 feet it was an impressive sight to experience. Equally impressive were the sights and sounds along the bike way.

We saw an unusual bird perched in a tree, above the water. At first I though it was a female kingfisher. The call was like a kingfisher. But upon referencing my North American bird book it is not.

A serene scene in Kingston, Rhode Island

Monarch butterflies are a bit harder to find these days. But one made an appearance in the yard (the labyrinth) adjacent to the Church of the Ascension.

Humid and Shitty

Boston feels like a swamp when you go outside. People often say “soupy.” To me it feels like you’re part of a swamp. You step outside the door and in an instant you’re sweaty and gross and feel like you’re surrounded by swamp creatures, from water bugs to alligators. It’s about as sticky as it can get. Hot at times, but what’s far more impactful is the humidity. As Robin Williams, imitating Walter Cronkite, once said: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhDIuVjbbWE

A bunny family lives underneath the building next to mine. This juvenile was lying in the shade, with an ever watchful eye.

The white goose who likes to hang out, well, live with Canada geese, has now been joined by another of his or her kind. The two of them are very much part of the Canada geese clan. Here they are munching away at grass on the oval in front of the Hatch Shell (Esplanade Park).

Osprey in Rhode Island

The Osprey is an impressive bird with a 5 to 6 foot wingspan. The insecticide DDT killed most Osprey in New England, but the bird made a comeback after DDT was banned in the early 1970s. Surely, this is proof that environmental action can have positive effects on wildlife. Below you’ll see pictures of an Osprey couple in Bristol, Rhode Island, just 30 yards or so from the East Bay bike path, which runs from Providence to Bristol.

The nest had young birds in it who were not visible. But in the pictures below you can see the father to the right and the mother in the nest. In the first picture you just see the back of the mother. I think that she was feeding her young. In the next two pictures if you look carefully you’ll see the mother’s head.