Mall to home

I need to walk more, and I succeeded in getting 14.5k steps. I'm down about a thousand steps from last year.

I walked along Queens Boulevard, looking at the places I used to go when I lived in Rego Park and the new buildings. In Forest Hills, I took the route through Willow Lake. I'm usually on the other side, so this is a fun photo for me. 

I ran into 4 people from the Flushing Bay Conservancy group Guardians of Flushing Bay. They were testing the water. This is the source in Willow Creek, not sure where it starts, but there were minnows in the water. 

Felt a bit tired so only did a 5 minute lake meditation. It's gotten colder, and for some reason the cold is getting to me this year, I'm getting older. 

It's a beaver supermoon tonight, it coincides with the moon's closest approach to Earth in its orbit, known as perigee. As a result, the moon will appear larger and up to 30% brighter than usual, creating a captivating visual spectacle.

Columnar sweetgum

Asked on plant identification of trees Reddit.

My phone said it was a pear tree, but the wise people of Reddit said it was Columnar Sweetgum, which Google redirects to this post. 

House Sparrow and Fish Crows

I was meditating, but I heard a weird bird I'd never heard before, so I downloaded BirdNET. It didn't pick up the bird I was hearing, but it did identify House Sparrow: "It is extensively, and usually unsuccessfully, persecuted as an agricultural pest. It has also often been kept as a pet, as well as being a food item and a symbol of lust, sexual potency, commonness, and vulgarity."

Reading a comparison query on Reddit, and it turns out BirdNet and Merlin Bird ID were both developed at Cornell. 

I've seen crows and pigeons, even saw a hawk flying around with another bird in its talons while it waited for the bird to quit trying to get away. 

Just googled whether a grackle was a crow, and it's not and both are found in NYC. 

I hear the chirp chirp chirp of house sparrows, and the caw caw caw of Fish Crows, according to Merlin Bird ID.

Penelope

I don't want to give it away, just watch the show on Netflix.

Composting

I've been fooled a couple times about composting, here's another article stating that "outreach" will begin in October in Queens. 

CBS News

Equinox

Yesterday September 22nd was the autumnal equinox. 

Sept 20th

The weaker trees and branches are beginning to turn color. 

I saw by the lake for a nature meditation. Maybe just sitting with my eyes open to look at the lake. You can see the branches a fisherman put in to hold his rods. Henry wasn't there. Looked like it would be too difficult to get past all the stuff.

There weren't birds on the lake. I wondered about fall migration. My friend in Portland went to watch Vaux Swifts go down a chimney as a planned stop on their migration, passing through. 

"We’ve been watching the Vaux Swifts most nights roost in a chimney at a high school a few blocks away. They are tiny birds which are in the process of migration from Canada down to Venezuela and hit Portland annually throughout the month of September. This year there have been fewer than most years for reasons unclear. Some years there have been up to 35,000 in a single evening all trying to roost for the night in the chimney. This year the numbers have so far maxed out at 5,430 for a single night. Hundreds of people show up each night at sunset with blankets and bottles of wine to watch and there is usually a fair amount of drama as Cooper’s Hawks hang out on the chimney ledge and nab the first Swifts that try to slip by. 

It’s pretty cool watching the massive swarm of birds that all fly in unison making really interesting patterns in the sky before deciding all at one to funnel into the chimney reminiscent of iwater going down a drain. Being stoned enhances the spectacle in my experience. The birds would normally roost in hollowed out trees, and the chimney apparently seems like an acceptable substitute. 

One year a long time ago the school custodian turned on the boiler by mistake and there was a massive tragedy. The school then decommissioned the chimney and installed a whole separate heating system so that the incident would never happen again. The school mascot is of course the Swift."

Good friends share nature experiences with you. 

I skipped a meditation online with friends in Iran to take my daughter to school this morning. They stopped by to drop something off and I hopped in the car to join in the short journey a few blocks, then walked down to the lake. 

I get nervous a critter will come up to me, there are racoons who seemed kind of ill who lurk around sometimes, and there are hobos who live under the bridge, but most likely is the Filipino fisherman. Haven't seen him in a while because I haven't been down there much lately. There's also a birder who walks around with his binoculars and guide. I've run into park rangers a few times and students doing some nature project. There was supposed to be construction of a run off pipe, but I don't see evidence of that anymore. 

I saw a posting that at 10 on Sunday they'll form a group to pick up the garbage. There are two spots where a garbage bag has broken and people just left it. Most likely the hobos or the people who go down there to smoke. Now that it's legal, I smell it in my apartment on the second floor quite often, but honestly when it was illegal, I smelled is just about as much. My upstairs neighbor his retired and smokes a lot. He has advanced stage COPD, so he doesn't smoke as much these days. 

Say what you want about the narcissism of blogging but I thought I had to get active and get down to the lake to update the blog.