NYC Locations Inspire the 2019-2020 NYBG Train Show and my Three Volume Book Series* (*Words In Our Beak)

New York Botanical Gardens's ((NYGB) annual train show opened on November 23rd 2019 and it will be closing before the end of the month on January 26th 2020, which is four weeks from tomorrow.

NYGB's video of the event (posted above) is good but it does not — in my humble opinion — give justice to just how phenomenal their 2019-2020 show truly is.

Saw a Great Egret in Central Park Again! (Friday Follow-Up)

A few days ago, in the late evening of Wednesday, June 26, I took a walk to the landing alongside the Delacorte Theatre (in Central Park) with the hopes of observing tortoises in the Turtle Pond which the  landing overlooks. As usual there were numerous turtles swimming in the pond but there were a few teenaged boys standing near the railing so it was hard to get a close view of these reptiles.

The boys were there with fishing gear and speculating on the possibility of their being able to catch catfish.

In very close proximity to the landing a Great Egret was slowly making his/her away along one of the pond's edges. She/he can be seen doing this in the photographs atop this entry.

Certain Squirrels in NYC's Central Park (Tuesday's Truths WK 122)

There is a special looking squirrel (at least to me) who seems to be a loner spending time on the grassy area on the northwest side of Oak Bridge in Central Park; as seen in the photo atop this entry and in the pictures directly below.

As of this entry, I have not learned the exact ID for him/her but here is what the Squirrel Census Commander has to say about it:

"Most likely this specimen is an eastern gray who's color phase is between a cinnamon and black. While I've never seen one exactly like this I'm sure it's possible."

If I find out more re this creature, I will put an addendum in this entry. Meanwhile, a few yards north of this area, near The Shakespeare Gardens (which are in the vicinity of the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre)...

Yesterday wasn't a good one for a fish in CP!

As I was crossing Oak Bridge in Central Park in the early evening yesterday, it was especially peaceful because the guy who normally disrupts the sound of birds singing by playing show tunes on his loud instrument (while sitting on this bridge) was not there. I was blessed to spot a lone Great Egret (who can be seen in the image directly above) making his/her way in a seemingly methodical manner as he/she walked across the lake.

Another View From The Bridge (Oak Bridge): Tuesday's Truths Wk 91

Welcome to the ninety-first segment of my Tuesday's Truths series! As you can see, I'm featuring a picture of a raccoon atop this entry. I came across this creature when I was crossing Oak Bridge (a bridge that I've featured in a prior post here on Blogger), which is located in NYC's magnificent Central Park.  A web-page has this to say re Oak Bridge:

"Back in 1860 when Calvert Vaux and Frederic Law Olmstead gave the world Central Park, one key element at the northern end of the Lake was Oak Bridge, a span constructed of white oak and cast iron leading into the Ramble. That bridge has since been replaced twice, first with another fancy one in the 1870s (when it was renamed the Bank Rock Bridge), and then again in the lean years of the Great Depression by a utilitarian model in tubular steel with a wood plank floor. Now the original Vaux design, re-imagined by Jan Herd Pokorny Associates, is being reconstructed. Again we get carved white oak and cast iron, but now it all sits atop a very substantial base that should last for generations..."

I've also read (in a variety of of newspapers and on the web) that "if you're lucky you might catch a glimpse of the baby raccoons or the giant snapping turtle."

So, I guess you could say I was lucky in encountering this raccoon, who was one among many swimming amongst turtles (one can be seen in the image directly below where he/she is taking a swim near the lower right of a raccoon) in this body of water.

And although some might consider me lucky to come upon these raccoons, these creatures have not been so lucky in this summer of 2018.

Thursday's Tale: Yet another walk in the park. (A View From OAK Bridge)

This past Monday, even though temperatures were only in the twenty-degree range, with "real feel" temperatures much colder, I took a walk in Central Park; to see how our wildlife was faring in the bitter cold.

After all, beyond-frigid temperatures haven't stopped me from going to the park before. As you may recall, from a previous post here on Blogger, I took a walk in Central Park earlier in the month when temperatures were far below what they were this past Monday.

The first photograph atop this entry was featured in the aforementioned blog entry, and I'm including it in this posting as I have a correction to make, for I stated that the view being featured in the image was a view from Bow Bridge, but I had a senior moment in stating this, the view is actually from the Oak Bridge, which I returned to Monday afternoon and took the following picture of the same subject from that vantage point.

The only difference is I zoomed in quite a bit (so a view of one of NYC's sky-lines is not included here as it was in the image I took earlier in January). I zoomed so that I could capture a bird type whom I've never seen in Central Park, or anywhere else for that matter.

I've indicated this bird by affixing an orange square to the second photo below (which is a duplicate of the first one that's there).

A passerby indicated that the bird who was new to me was a type of Egret. However, I did not take her at her word before writing this post, as I don't want to be accused of reporting fake news, which I inadvertently did when I referred to the view from this bridge as being from the Bow Bridge; and not the Oak Bridge, as I've just stated.

Upon my realizing that I'd confused the Bow Bridge with the Oak Bridge, I thought of a passage from Joan Didion's, Goodbye to All That, an essay on Didion's decision to leave NYC (which she ultimately moved back to years later):

".... All I could do during those years was talk long-distance to the boy I already knew I would never marry in the spring. I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.
—-
     In retrospect it seems to me that those days before I knew the names of all the bridges were happier than the ones that came later..."

Meanwhile, in terms of the bird who was new to me, I thought that I was ultimately able to find out his/her correct type from someone in my Twitter feed. Susan M. Thom, Esq solved my mystery, after I tweeted images of this bird and asked for an identification (since I could not find it in my own research).