New York, Last Day

When I scheduled our flight home from Rochester to LAX, I chose a flight leaving in the evening so that we could spend most of the day in New York. Unfortunately, it basically rained that whole day. It would come and go in intensity, but we were socked in and everything was sopping wet.

With nothing much to do that would be in doors in the Rochester area, we decided that, what the heck, we'd go birding anyway. So Bill, Libby and I all went to Mendon Ponds, a park on the edge of Rochester. We zipped up our rain shells, and wandered off down a squishy trail. At first, the birds were quiet and we just trundled along in the wet gazing around, but soon the rain slowed a little, and the birds came out.

The biggest highlight of the walk was an opportunity to get very close looks at a pair of Blue-winged Warblers bringing food to their nest in the grass right off of the trail. This was a lifer that I had expected to see easily, and so it was a relief to finally get it on the last day of the trip. They were quite lovely, and we got to see both sexes quite well.

The other really big highlight was hand-feeding Black-capped Chickadees along the trail. Bill had brought food for the purpose, and they came right in, despite the fact that it was summer! The Chickadees in the Sierras will eat out of your hands in the winter when food is scarce, but these birds were so tame they'd eat from your hands any time. It's fun to have birds land on your hands - Chickadees are incredibly light, you can hardly feel their weight at all, just the light rasping of their tiny claws.

The rest of the walk was pretty quiet, with glimpses of Veeries, which were singing all around us, and Red-bellied Woodpeckers being the highlights. We had lunch at Wegmans, frozen custard at Abbott's, and then went home to shower and pack. The rest of the afternoon was pretty relaxing, and then when Becca got off work we went into the city to get dinner at a trendy little sandwich joint in South Wedge.

And then we were off! It wasn't easy to say goodbye, though it was nice knowing we'd see them again, soon. And it was a long trip back, via Washington D.C. Dulles, and we didn't sleep well on the flight to LAX, like we'd hoped. Compounding that, our carry-on luggage got packed, which made us wait half-an-hour to get it back (grr), and by the time we got our car out of the parking garage and everything else, it was quite late when we got home.

Pictures are up on Flickr - none from our walk at Mendon Ponds, I didn't want to get the camera wet, but Bill and Becca's pictures are there from in front of their apartment. You can view all of our pictures from the trip in the new "Visiting Bill and Becca" collection, too.