By Vladimir Brezina
It’s heartwarming to see how much the Coast Guard loves and cherishes its birds! It spares no effort to erect, along every waterway, ingenious structures calculated to be ideal for gulls, cormorants, even ospreys to rest on and, now that it’s spring, to build their nests and raise their young, safe from predators and from human intrusion… well, except for some kayakers ;-)
Posted in Nature
Tagged Animals, Birds, Coast Guard, Cormorants, Gulls, Hudson River, Navigational Aids, New York Harbor, Ospreys
By Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson
After more than 15 (Johna) and 20 (Vlad) years living in New York City (in Vlad’s case, just one block away from Central Park), we finally managed to visit the Central Park Zoo.
The Central Park Zoo was New York City’s first zoo, starting in 1859 as a menagerie of exotic animals given to the Park. (Nowadays, owners of exotic animals that have grown uncomfortably large for small New York City apartments are too impatient for donation: they simply dump the animals in the Park—that’s how we get alligators in the sewers…) The zoo is small (6.5 acres) but manages to house a surprisingly large number of animals—we didn’t get to see even half of them—in “natural” enclosures, some of them walk-through, that do not feel at all cramped.
As it turns out, the Zoo’s inhabitants are some of the most quintessential New Yorkers: The birds and beasts embody all the characteristic New York attitudes, from vanity to boredom to slit-eyed suspicion.
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Animals, Birds, Central Park Zoo, Leopard, New York City, Panda, Photography, Polar Bear, Sea Lion
By Vladimir Brezina
Loveliest of trees, the cherry nowIs hung with bloom along the bough,And stands about the woodland rideWearing white for Eastertide.
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Central Park, New York City, Photography, Spring, Spring Blossoms
By Vladimir Brezina
This week’s Photo Challenge is Journey.
At dawn, some leave on their journey…
… just as others arrive from theirs
More photos from that day are here.
________________________________________________________
Other nice Journeys:
Posted in Nature, New York City, Photography
Tagged Dawn, Journey, New York City, New York Harbor, Photography, postaday, postaweek, postaweek2012, Weekly Photo Challenge
By Vladimir Brezina
In New York City’s Central Park last Saturday. A cold, gray spring day. The cherry tree blossoms are already falling…
Posted in Nature, Photography
Tagged Central Park, New York City, Photography, Puddle, Spring Blossoms
By Vladimir Brezina
On Sunday, Johna and I paddled once more to Swinburne Island to see seals.
Swinburne Island, a small island in New York Harbor just south of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, hosts a healthy population of seals every winter. We’ve already visited them once this winter. But now in April, especially with spring arriving so early this year, we were wondering if the seals would still be there.
We were not disappointed!
Posted in Kayaking, Nature, New York City, Photography
Tagged Kayaking, Marine Mammals, New York Harbor, Photography, Seal, Swinburne Island
By Vladimir Brezina
The Spring Equinox occurred early this morning. We are now officially—although it’s felt like it already for weeks—into Spring!
Here’s a preview of coming attractions. These photos were taken in New York’s Central Park in 2007… in late April. This year we’ll probably see these fruit trees bloom in a week or two—almost a month earlier!
More photos from Spring 2007 are here.
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Central Park, Fruit Trees, New York City, Photography, Spring, Spring Blossoms, Vernal Equinox
By Vladimir Brezina
Contrary to the Groundhog’s prediction (he is right only 39% of the time, after all), the season seem to be well advanced into Spring.
In New York City, temperatures are reaching into the 60s or even 70s each day. Crocuses and daffodils are out, two or three weeks earlier than usual. Even some fruit trees are beginning to flower in Central Park. Nobody expects Winter to come back any more.
Posted in Nature, New York City
Tagged Central Park, Crocuses, Flowers, Insects, New York City, Photography, Spring
By Vladimir Brezina
Fierce eagles on top of poles are a grand imperial convention
but in Florida every pole has on it a bird
that is not an eagle, but (usually) a pelican.
They perform, preen
or just sleep.
By Vladimir Brezina
Performers: Two Brown Pelicans, Pelecanus occidentalis
(It’s nice to think that they were a male and a female. But it’s very hard to tell male and female pelicans apart by external appearance alone.)
Venue: A piling just off John’s Pass Boardwalk, Madeira Beach, Florida (near St. Petersburg, on the Gulf coast)
Date: February 23, 2012, as the sun set…
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.
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Wind Against Current 