The Week in Review part 3

Ok, so now the birdy stuff is out of the way (for now), I'll talk about some of the other things we did in New York. In between my brushes with nature I had some brushes with culture. The Natural History Museum I've already spoken about, but I also visited the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim, both famous for their art collections.

The Met is an art museum in grand style. It consists not just of paintings and sculptures, but also of history and culture (read: plundered treasures of proud ancient civilisations) in the style of the British Museum. I won't get into the curatorial debate about allowing the world to see vs returning to the country of origin, mostly because I'm not sure where I stand on the whole thing. Regardless, it is amazing to walk through the museum and see so much of human history on display. In the Egyptian section, for example, there is a whole tomb complete with carvings, painted walls (mostly intact) and statues. Last time I visited I spent most of my time in the Arms and Armour section so this time I resolved to try some of the other parts of the museum collection. Our family friends from Jacksonville, Florida (with whom I am now staying) were visiting us in New York, and Janice and I went through the Egyptian, Roman, Celtic, Byzantine and Mediaeval sections. The collections of religious (gold) artefacts from the Byzantine collections were particularly impressive, and cast a most informative light on possible motives for the Crusades back in the Middle Ages. The artistry of most of the items, and similarly the Roman and Mediaeval objects in the museum was amazing. I often feel this need for useful items to also be beautiful has been lost in modern times (though not always, think Apple). I think maybe one reason is that people often equate beautiful with expensive, so to convince a lot of people to buy a product you have to make it *look* like they can afford it. I'm not sure, I'm not into marketing. Anyway back to the museum. The Mediaeval section was surprisingly boring - mostly tapestries and religious statuary. The craftsmanship on them was amazing, but there's only so much of that I can take before I want to move on. The Egyptian and Roman sections were, of course, great. However, having spent a lot of time in the British Museum has probably jaded me on this a bit. No one really does either Egyptian or Roman quite as well as the Brits (though I hear the Cairo Museum is starting to come close) so while I can appreciate the collections at the Met are fantastic, there just isn't that wow factor there anymore. All in all an afternoon at the Met is a great way to pass time in New York and I highly recommend it for anyone coming here. Incidentally, the Arms and Armour section from memory was spectacular so make sure you get there if you can.

The Guggenheim is a very different animal to the Met. It isn't a museum, not really. It is very strongly an art gallery. It appears to specialise in Modern art. They have two main permanent exhibitions of very famous artists, and a series of spaces for current exhibitions to be put on. When we were there the main visiting exhibition was actually a series of photographic exhibitions by a single photographer. I was impressed that a photographer could get their work into the Guggenheim, but her style and subject matter (life in suburbia in the USA and sexuality) weren't really my cup of tea. I was far more interested in the permanent collections of work. Walking past works by Picasso, Van Gough, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Kandinsky etc is a kind of electric experience. Even if you don't always appreciate the craftsmanship of the works (some look like a child painted them), you have to appreciate that every single work in there is probably worth more than your house. And having criticised some of the artistry, I must say most of those pieces on display are well made, thought provoking and beautiful, all things I look for in art.

As well as the museums, we had one last brush with Broadway while I was there, to see a play called Alfred Hitchcock's 39 Steps. It was a short, comedic work based on a Hitchcock movie called the 39 Steps. The movie is a spy thriller full of rich characters and tense moments. The play is utterly ridiculous, but in a good way. Four actors (three men and a woman) play the entire cast of the movie. The scripting is frantic - in some cases a single actor is playing two or three people on stage. In fact a good deal of the humour in the play is based around these switches, and also in the many dropped references to Hitchcock's other movies. I think it was the actor playing Man #2 who impressed me most - his rendition of a rural scotsman innkeeper was so hilarious my family are still imitating him a week on.

So there you have it. Add in the Natural History Museum and the Lion King and we had a very rich cultural experience in the city that never sleeps. In short, a good time was had by all.

The week in Review part 2

So on Sunday I had a fairly unusual opportunity - I was able to meet up with a friend who I have shown around Kakadu and Cape York (and met in Broome), to finally give them a chance to show me around their own stomping ground. I took a train out to Scarsdale and we drove from their into Connecticut to a place called Greenwich Point Park. It turns out my friend had organised our outing to conicide with a local Audubon group's field trip. I had a blast. It was great to catch up with Livia, but it was also an amazing opportunity to learn identification of the local birds, particularly gulls and sparrows. The morning had several highlights - the feeders in the park produced a number of woodland birds including a few new ones for me - Black-capped Chickadee and Hairy Woodpecker. As I said before, I'm really enjoying seeing the woodpeckers, and it was great to get a chance to see Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers side-by-side to see the subtle but definite differences in the two species. We had a few kinds of sparrows in the area too. I saw Song Sparrow and White-throated Sparrow well enough to identify, and saw a Savannah Sparrow duck into rocks but couldn't see the ID features (my companions identified the bird on features I couldn't see in time). The chickadee was a thrill for a whole different reason. Those of you who know me well enough might remember a t-shirt I wear occasionally that has a pair of birds on the front. Those birds are Black-capped Chickadees, and it was special to finally see some in real life. Of course I joke that they look like Great Tits (a bird found in England), so it looks like....eh, I'm sure you get it. Bird jokes, yeah...




Moving on. After our trip to the feeders (cut short by a dog illegally off its leash in the bird sanctuary) we headed out to the coastline. This is where things started to get very interesting. A Great Cormorant caused a bit of excitement among our hosts, so I gather it must be unusual for the area, or at least for the time of year. Horned Grebe were mucking around in the ocean nearby, and way out to sea we saw Red-fronted Mergansers and a single Common Loon. Further around the beach we started seeing a lot of gulls - mostly Herring Gull initially, but then many Ring-billed Gulls as well. Probably the most exciting bird of the day was a brief fly-by from a Bonaparte's Gull. I didn't get long to see it, but I clearly saw the white panels in the wings that are apparently diagnostic. Add in the Greater Black-Backed Gull and we had four gulls in a day, a feat which is nearly impossible in Australia, but evidently not too difficult over here. In amongst the gulls were around 30 Ruddy Turnstones, something which surprised me - I thought the waders would all be gone by now, but I'm assured some Turnstones and Purple Sandpipers (which we didn't see) overwinter in the area. Hooded and Common Merganser, Long-tailed Duck and Buffleheads rounded out our sea-going waterfowl for the morning, all of w hich were new bird for me. I missed a Belted Kingfisher that passed by (I saw a silhouette in flight so I can't really count it), but did see a Great Blue Heron and a Great Egret which really shouldn't have been there anymore but obviously hadn't yet migrated.



We rounded out the day chasing a vagrant Yellow-throated Warbler that was allegedly visiting someone's feeder nearby. I say allegedly because although the bird was seen at 7am the day we were there, by the afternoon it was nowhere to be found. We did have a nice chat with the owner of the house whose feeder it was, but eventually cold and the realisation that a Cooper's Hawk was hanging around the area drove us away.

Livia and I finished the day out having lunch in a hole-in-the-wall place in Scarsdale that was so busy people were standing waiting for tables for over half an hour. We sat at the counter and the food was definitely worth the inconvenience. All in all it was a great day.

For those interested, I saw the following birds in Connecticut on this trip:
Canada Goose
Brant Goose
Mallard
American Black Duck
Ruddy Duck
Long-tailed Duck
Bufflehead
Common Goldeneye
Hooded Merganser
Red-breasted Merganser
Common Merganser
Common Loon
Horned Grebe
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Cooper's Hawk
Red-tailed Hawk
Ruddy Turnstone
Bonaparte's Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Greater Black-Backed Gull
Town Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Monk Parakeet
Belted Kingfisher (silhouette only)
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
American Crow
Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch
American Robin
Northern Mockingbird
Common Starling
Savannah Sparrow (too fast to ID)
Song Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
House Finch
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow

The week in review

Ok, ok, so I missed a few days. I'm in Jacksonville, Florida now, but I'll get to that in due course. First I need to tell you about the days in between. I'll lay it out in several posts (some bird-themed, some not). I've been sick as a dog the last four days or so, which isn't so much fun when the daily maximum is below freezing. However, I didn't let that stop me from getting out and about. I spent some time in Central Park with family and birding. At this time of year the park is a mix of green and brown, mostly brown. The trees have nearly all lost their leaves. On the cold days the puddles of water on the pavement turn to ice, which can be dangerous if you aren't watching where you put your feet. We were very lucky and had bright sunny mornings, though there was still ice on the paths despite the sun. Sorry Bonnie, this is going to get birdy for a while.

For those who know the park, the best birding was in two main areas. The Ramble, which is about level with 72nd St, was really great for woodland birds. The highlights for me were seeing woodpeckers (we don't get any in Australia). The Red-bellied Woodpecker and the amusingly named Yellow-bellied Sapsucker were obliging on the first day and I got some nice photographs. It's fun watching woodpeckers work up, down and around the branches of the trees - the pecking motion and the tapping noises on the tree when they "drill" for insects is somewhat surreal. It's hard to imagine headbutting a tree to get your food, but I suppose they must be used to it. I was also very happy to see a White-breasted Nuthatch - the first bird I managed to track down by call (not that I knew what was calling!). Nuthatches seem to be a lot like our Sitella - in both behaviour and shape. As I mentioned they have crazy sounding calls too - as famously mentioned in Charlie's Angels the movie (10 points if you remember the species mentioned without having to look it up). Bluejays and Northern Cardinals provided a splash of colour to the otherwise drab forest. For such a pretty bird, Bluejays have a horrible-sounding call. I visited the Ramble twice and can say that early morning is considerably better for birds, despite the cold.



A bit further north of the Ramble there were some trees with ripe berries that birds were going nuts over. We had many American Robins and Common Grackles foraging in the area, and a Downy Woodpecker a nd more Nuthatches scouring the tree trunks. There were lots of Tufted Titmouse (titmice?) in the area, which despite the name are actually a very cute bird, not a kind of rodent. Speaking of rodents there are thousands of Grey Squirrel in the park. While they are commonplace or even annoying for the locals, it was a real thrill to see them scurrying around, burying or digging up acorns and generally being playful.

The other spot that was great for birds was the large lake up near the Metropolitan Museum. There were many kinds of ducks, with my favourites being the Hooded Merganser and the Bufflehead. There was also a female American Wood Duck which probably should have migrated by now. My big day out birding involved a lot of waterbirds too, so I'll save some pictures for that post. More to follow.

For those who are interested, the list of birds I saw in Central Park was as follows:
Canada Goose
Gadwell
Northern Shoveler
Mallard
Bufflehead
Hooded Merganser
American Wood Duck
Ruddy Duck
American Black Duck
Pied-billed Grebe
American Coot
Mourning Dove
Town Pigeon
American Kestrel
Red-tailed Hawk
Hawk sp (Probably Cooper's)
Herring Gull
Greater Black-Backed Gull
Bluejay
Northern Cardinal
Northern Mockingbird
American Robin
Hermit Thrush
Common Grackle
Downy Woodpecker
Red-bellied Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
White-breasted Nuthatch
House Sparrow
White-throated Sparrow
Tufted Titmouse
Common Starling
American Goldfinch

Long Day

So I'm throwing in some Matchbox 20 for variety. If this ends up being a soundtrack for my trip slideshow (and it may), its shaping up to be pretty eclectic. Friday was a pretty darn good day, but it was long. I started early, but delays getting everyone ready meant we didn't leave the apartment until nearly 10am. We headed down to the Marriott to meet the friends I'm staying with in Florida, and spent the morning looking at shop window displays. It's not a huge thing in Brisbane these days, but it used to be that the Myer Centre in the city would put up a special window display each Christmas and people would travel from a long way out of town to come see it. As I understand it, the window diplays here are similarly traditional and special. We ended up looking at a number of stores (you'd have to ask my sister which ones, the names mean very little to me), and I was impressed with the artistry behind them. We also made a pass by the Rockerfeller Center and saw their very impressive Christmas tree. They apparently have 30,000 lights on the tree, and the star at the top is made by Swarovski crystal and has emeralds and diamonds in it.

We stopped for lunch at a pub and Jacelyn's friend Emma joined us briefly. Emma lives here but is from Brisbane, so she has given us some hot tips for places to visit while we are here. Today we are trying drinks at the Boathouse in Central Park, I'll let you know how it goes...

In the afternoon I met up with a friend of mine who I know from online. Suzanne is an opera singer and she's in town for the audition season. We walked through the Christmas markets in Central Park, and then through the part itself down to some of the lakes. It was nice meeting someone face to face who I've spoken with so much online. She says her auditions weren't going so great (her audience looked bored - he's been doing this for 5 days), so I hope that improves for her before she leaves. On our walk we saw my first real American birds (Town Pigeons don't count!). Eastern Bluejay, Mallard and Titmouse were fairly easy to identify, but there were some strange sparrows in the mix of House Sparrows that have given me problems. I'll take my camera with me today and hopefully get some reference shots! There were also what I think were probably Ring-billed Gulls, but again photos will help. And finally, there were a couple of flocks of Canada Geese migrating south overhead. Migrating birds is something we really don't get to see much in Australia, so it was pretty cool to observe.

It started getting quite cold so I headed back to the room to get ready for dinner. We went to the Tavern on the Green, which is a very fancy restaurant (read: hard to get vegetarian food). It was a pretty nice atmosphere and the food I had was extremely nice. My cold was messing with my head though (hot room, cold alcoholic drinks) so by the end of the night I was very glad to head home and get to bed. It was definitely a very long day.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Ok, so I lied. I did go outside yesterday, despite the cold (max of 4 degrees celsius) and rain (that was nearly sleet/snow). For anyone interested, we are staying at a place called the Phillips Club, which is very nice and pretty centrally located in Manhattan.

I chilled for most of the morning, but headed out after lunch to go see the American Museum of Natural History, where we took a lot of pictures. So there's your title-song link. Tenuous, I know. The museum isn't all about rare animals being shot (though there was a fair bit of that). We actually spent most of our time in the fossil collections. I had a ball. It was like my Vertebrate Evolution course all over again, but this time I had actual examples (or at least well made copies) right there in front of me. Archaeopteryx, a fossil lizard with wings and feathers found in Germany, was particularly special for me to see. In a way its what started the whole evolution debate - it was the first major "missing link" found back in the 1800s after Darwin published his theories of natural selection and evolution. Similarly, the fossil Pterodactyls were very interesting. Some were only 10cm across, while there was an articulated wing hanging from the ceiling that was about 5 metres across. Apparently the largest Pterodactyls ever found were 12 metres in wingspan! Who knows how they took off, or flew? It was also pretty cool to see the other dinosaurs. Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Allosaurs, Duck-billed Dinosaurs, etc.. all things I read about in my childhood but didn't get to see in real life (ok so they had/have a T-Rex skull at the Brisbane Museum but the rests were firsts). The next room was in some ways even more exciting. It had the stages of vertebrate evolution, backed up by fossil records. I won't go into the details here, but for me the highlights were a Lissamphibian skeleton (one of the very first animals to walk on land), various stages of fishes (from jawless through placoderms etc.) and reptiles. These are the kinds of fossils we definitely don't have easy access to back home, and I really appreciated being able to see first-hand so much evidence for evolution up close and personal.

As well as the fossil collections there were taxidermied specimens, mostly birds, and some exhibitions of American Indian artefacts. The bird displays from the New York area were interesting and informative (though sad for me, I hate seeing birds shot for science). The Passenger Pigeons were particularly poingnant. For those who don't know the story, the Passenger Pigeon used to be one of the most populous birds in the world. There was a single flock of over 2 billion birds living in the USA. There were so many that it took days for the flock to fly past a given point. That is until the Americans decided that this flock was a resource to be exploited. They made them into pies, they fed them to livestock. It took less than one generation to kill enough that the birds stopped breeding (it turns out they needed a critical mass in a flock before breeding would occur). Before too long they were extinct in the wild, and then finally completely extinct. For me this is the ultimate example of the impact of mans greed on the environment, and a good metaphor for what is happening with fossil fuels today.

There was also a large display on space/the universe, which was quite interesting. They had some meteorite cross-sections that were pretty cool, and a replica of the Mars lander which was interesting to see. All in all, it was a great way to spend an afternoon and I'm glad I went.

Hazy Shade of Winter

I'm thinking the Bodyjar cover, but that's just personal taste. It's an apt song given the weather at the moment. Yesterday was unseasonally warm in New York, but grey and raining all day. Today is cold, grey and raining. I'm not complaining, just pointing out the relevance of the title track. So I've had some good news and some bad news since the last post. Or perhaps good/bad experiences. The good was getting out and doing some shopping around Manhattan yesterday. I picked up a North American bird book, and went to photography heaven on earth, also known as B&H Photo. I picked up some new memory cards, a spare battery, and a lens filter (since the hood that came with the lens is now resting at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean somewhere off QLD). All things I should have bought months ago, but I'm glad I waited because the prices here are somewhat better, even with the exchange rate. I could have spent hours in that store. We also went early to pick up our tickets to the Lion King (booked online), because you don't want to have to wait in line once the show is starting.

After our bout of shopping we headed back and this is where the bad news came in. I've come down with a nasty cold. Probably not unexpected given the lack of sleep and extreme change in temperature/weather I've put myself through in the last few days, however still a miserable thing to happen on a holiday. I medicated myself to get through the Lion King in the afternoon. Had I been well I think it would have been a highlight of the trip. As it is I really enjoyed it, but its hard to get into something when your head is packed full of cotton wool and splitting open. I will say this - the show is very well crafted. The music is a combination of the familiar songs from the movie and original compositions adding to the score. There are some minor alterations to the plot - some blatant, others subtle, but the story remains faithful overall. The costumes and dancing are amazing. All in all it's a great musical and I'm very glad I went. As I said though, I would have enjoyed it more had circumstances allowed.

I'd say chances are there won't be much to report for the next couple of days. I'll be laying low trying to give myself a chance to recover as much as possible. I have some great plans later in the week, including ice skating in Central Park, seeing an off-Broadway play, and birdwatching in the Westchester area with one of the local Audubon groups and a friend I met in Broome.

One last thing. A friend pointed out I'd very cleverly blocked commenting on my blog. That's been remedied, so please leave a comment when you read this, I'd love to hear from you.

New York New York!

Hmm, my post titles seem to be taking on a distinctly musical theme. John Denver, Billy Joel, Frank... I'm really not that old, I swear! So after a fairly smooth transition from LAX to our connecting flight to NYC, we arrived at JFK airport. I managed to sleep most of the way here due to the fact that our flight was nearly empty, so I had a whole row to myself. A little traveler's tip. If you're vegetarian, make sure you're awake during the meal. They couldn't find my meal when I asked so they must have given it away. Fortunately they managed to grab something from Business class (which was very nice). Another tick for Qantas customer service!

Even with the sleep I was pretty exhausted when we reached JFK. We knew that a friend of the family had arranged a car to meet us at the airport, which was pretty exciting. You know, you always walk past the people at airports holding signs for other people and think how cool that would be. That was us last night. But it got better. What our friends hadn't told us was that the car they had arranged was a stretch limousine! Talk about luxury. The place we are staying at is called the Phillips Club, which is in Manhattan. It's a very nice apartment in a very nice place just west of Central Park. I'm looking forward to exploring the area. I woke up at 5:30am and had a bit of a walk around, but at that time of day there's not really much I can report. We're seeing the Lion King on Broadway this afternoon, so no doubt my next post will be a whole lot more interesting.

Say Hello/Goodbye to Hollywood

Well, I've touched down in LA. Hello from yesterday Australia. I have about ten minutes here before I have to get on my connecting flight to New York. The flight went pretty smoothly apart from not getting any sleep (ok, maybe 1 hour tops). So you're not going to get a whole lot of coherent thought out of me right now. Hmm, actually they've just announced boarding for my flight, so I guess you'll hear from me today (tomorrow). Hehe, isn't the International Dateline fun?

Leaving on a Jetplane

Well, like the John Denver song, shortly I'll be leaving on a Jetplane, though I do know when I'll be back. A month from now will hopefully see a much more relaxed me with a recharged enthusiasm for life. I'm sitting at the airport in Brisbane waiting for our connecting flight to Sydney. For many people this is the least favourite part of a trip. Me, even with all the travel I've done in the last couple of years, I still love the anticipation. The holiday will be great, I'm sure, but right now it has infinite potential. Once I'm actually there it will be cold, wet, and at times unpleasant, but right now its exciting, different.

I also love the view from planes. Clouds are amazing from above. Landscapes unfold below you, giving a unique perspective on how everything fits together, and how we interact with it. Mountains look tiny, but at the same time you can finally get a sense of just how big they really are. Storms are exciting, unpredictable (but hopefully not too rough!). I will admit I'm not looking forward to 23 hours in the air. I don't sleep well on planes, so I will have a lot of time to catch up on reading all those books I left at home...um. Bugger. Ok, so I'm off to buy something from the airport newsagent. Next time you hear from me, hopefully I'll be in New York City.

Change of plan

Ok, so I'm hijacking my own blog. This was initially an experiment for me that I ran out of time and patience to continue. Birdsearch was going to chronicle my adventures around Australia while birding. Turns out you don't have a lot to write about when your binoculars break and you're too busy with a Masters degree anyway. So for the next month, I'll be hijacking this blog for my trip to the USA. I can't promise a post a day - though I will try. I can't promise lots of pretty pictures on the blog - I may not even have a way of downloading my shots til I get back. I can however promise my semi-literate, probably highly boring prose will keep you informed of my progress across the country. The general running order of the trip (without giving too much away) is:

New York (New York!),
Jacksonville (Florida),
Park City (Utah - come for the skiing stay for the polygamy!),
Phoenix (Arizona),
and Las Vegas (Nevada).

You'll probably all tune out til Las Vegas to see if I do something stupid, I'm sure. I'm not really sure what format this will take. I'm a bit rusty on the whole writing thing, particularly for travel. I'm thinking of tackling it from the point of a travel guide kinda thing - who knows, if I make myself pay attention enough I might even be able to polish it up a bit and shop it to a magazine at the end? Regardless, my time will be pretty crazy, and I will do my best to chronicle my travels, but no promises. If I get distracted by something shiny, you'll just have to do without my scintillating wit til I get back. I bet you miss me already!