Back to NYC for Spring and part of the City Nature Challenge 2022
So... we got back to NYC very late on Saturday April 30th. I was expecting NYC to be noticeably more green after four weeks away in the tropics (the West Indies), and it does look a lot more like mid to late spring now than it did before we left NYC on April 2nd. Apparently the weather here in NYC was mostly cold and dry during the four weeks we were gone.
The two days after I got back, Sunday May 1st and Monday May 2nd, were the last two days of the global City Nature Challenge (CNC). I had decided to do my part by going iNatting the Freshwater Wetlands area of Randall's Island on the Sunday, and inatting in John Jay Park and Carl Schurz Park on the Monday. Steven Bodzin came with me on the Sunday outing. It was very nice, warm and sunny, although I don't think I found anything new, and there were not a lot of insects out yet.
Monday was on and off rain, mostly drizzle, so not great for iNatting, but not terrible. However, my foot was hurting a fair bit, so I could not walk all around in Carl Schurz Park, but I covered two areas.
I did OK in terms of getting a decent number of observations for CNC, and adding quite a few species to the Personal Bioblitz 2022 project.
On May 5th I went to the 106th Street area of Central Park with my old friend Pat Redding. It was nice to see her and the weather that day was also sunny and warm.
At home while I was away I entirely lost "my" usual flock of twenty Mourning Doves, but gradually they are coming back to the bird feeder, and now I have six of them.
The best organism I have found since I have been back is the spectacular "Tongues of Fire" rust fungus, Gymnosporangium clavariiforme, which I found lost of on a garden Juniper on my block of 77th Street on May 4th. My image of that species was featured on the front page of the New York Mycological Society email newsletter for Saturday May 7th.