"We're in a Drippy world!"

--C.Z., one day years ago while we were taking a walk in the rain.

Worm-eating Warbler (image from Wikipedia Commons)

Cute bird despite the name, isn't it?

The past week has been so rainy that it's gotten to be sort of a joke among New Yorkers.  It's been cold and rainy, warm and rainy.  It's drizzled.  It's misted.  It's poured.  It's thundered.  Every now and then the weather clears up just enough to tease people into going outside, but at this point we've all wised up, and we take umbrellas.  And we aren't sorry!

It was during one of these short breaks yesterday that C.Z. and I made a dash for the Drip.  After all, it is the height of warbler migration. In this weather it's harder to find one favored spot for birds because all Riverside Park is one big Drip.  But we walked along the park wall in that general direction anyway.  

Once we arrived we found park birding expert Jeff Nulle keeping an eye out at the fence. Sometimes on nice days, the Riverside Park birders will even bring out chairs and watch for a couple of hours.  I'm starting to recognize people and learn their names, although birders are by and large not a chatty group--they're all about spotting passerines, and you might miss the birds if you talk too much.

Jeff was watching a Swainson's Thrush which was so red that I would have taken it for a Hermit Thrush if he hadn't told me otherwise.  He told me that a woman had accosted him that morning, alarmed that a pair of Mallards had taken up residence in a large puddle nearby. She seemed to be afraid that, like fish, they wouldn't be able to breathe once the water dried up.  New Yorkers are very concerned about nature--in theory.  But their experience is a bit limited sometimes!

Hermit Thrush (from Wikipedia)

The Drip being a bit slow due to the rain, C.Z. and I did a circuit of the bird sanctuary and spotted a Worm-eating Warbler gleaning from a tree.  It was the first one we'd ever seen (birders call them "life birds"), so we watched it for several minutes, which is an eternity in wiggly warbler world.  Finally it disappeared into the trees, and we went on to watch some of the usual Yellow-Rumped Warblers, a Black-and-white Warbler, a female Common Yellowthroat, a Goldfinch, and a Redstart.  

The migrating warblers were about as shy and soggy as our fellow Upper West Siders, so we didn't see as many as we'd have liked, but we enjoyed the walk immensely.  During this week of rain, a lovely green canopy of leaves has emerged on all the trees, their fresh light green contrasting with the wet charcoal gray trunks.  In the bird sanctuary, which is purposely not trimmed like the rest of the Park, giant weeds have sprouted up, giving the woods an almost prehistoric look.  It was 70 and humid, so we could really smell the soil, too. I love this weather! It reminds me of Georgia.

C.Z. and I spent about ten minutes watching a squirrel systematically strip the leaves from an entire branch of a young tree.  It was making a nest in the trunk of a larger tree a couple of feet away.  With admirable efficiency, it would bite off a twig at its base for maximum leaf harvest, jump into the nearby hole, pat down the new find, test it out for softness (or perhaps dryness), peek back out with both arms clinging to the side of the hole, and perform an amazing backwards leap with a twist to land on the dizzily swaying branch once again. Since the hole was at eye level and the squirrel wasn't shy (New York squirrels are extroverts), we could easily have taken a photo if we'd had our camera. I wonder whether he'll still be there the next time we go to the park?

We paid the Mallards a visit, too.  They looked quite happy upending themselves in a puddle which was the size of a small pond and deep enough to swim in.

Anyway, as might be predicted (at a 60% probability, in fact), we felt large drops of rain as we neared our own street again.  Within five minutes of our arrival back home, the bottom dropped out of the sky, complete with a few delighted shrieks from children caught out in the rain.  But by that time, we'd whipped up a couple of chocolate kefir shakes, pulled up some chairs, and were starting up a Teaching Company DVD on rock formations.  

Watching geology lectures always makes us wish we were going hiking in the Pacific Northwest, but for this summer, the glacier-scarred rocks of Central Park will be our mountains.  The weather, however, seems just about right for Portland, Oregon.