There’s nothing like a fresh blanket of snow to enhance the drabness of New York in winter. With cold temps helping the snow to stay put, I thought today would be a good day to play with my old telephoto that I attached to my new camera. Here are the results.

Winterscapes

These pictures are around The Lake in Central Park, which is on the west side of the park in the mid 70s. This first photograph is looking west with some high-rise cat-tails swaying in the foreground.

Slightly north of the first shot, here you can see the lake in a partially frozen state. Nobody was skating on thin ice today.

This is looking south, towards the Bethesda Fountain. This rustic bench is reminiscent of the benches that Frederic Church designed, although this one might be nominally more comfortable.

Here’s the bench again with Bow Bridge as the backdrop. The patterns in the shadows are quite something.

This looks down to the lake near the Ramble Stone Arch. I particularly like this picture as the lens flare and diffuse light really captures the blinding glare that actually blurred the view a bit.

Here’s one final shot looking southeast from the Bank Rock Bay.

Critters

Plenty of birds were enjoying the sunshine, although some proved to be rather elusive. I usually see robins pecking away at the ground hunting worms. In this weather they seemed resigned to nibbling on berries in the trees. I wonder if Robins start craving worms this time of year?

Most people were looking to spot cardinals, which admittedly are always a joy to find. However, the ratio of sparrows to cardinals is easily 15 to 1. It wasn’t until I tracked them for a bit that I found their hideout near the water. I stood still for way too long and was able to capture some nice close-ups.

I like this cardinal’s face, because it looks like he’s Lucha Libre.

It turns out that the squirrels were enjoying the sun just as much as the birds (and the humans). I actually saw three squirrels come out and go back into this knot in the tree.

I imagine that during a snow storm it must be nice and toasty inside the trunk. A fellow photographer informed me that the ones less fortunate have to settle for shantys made of leaves on the branches of the trees. Hopefully they don’t have to go around looking for spare nuts.

The most elusive bird today was the blue jay. The nice thing about jays is that once you hear one, it’s pretty easy to spot it. I guess that’s the silver lining to them being territorial bullies. Oddly enough this fella was awfully quiet and basically sat still, surveying the landscape.

I’ll round out the lot with some more pictures of cardinals. It turns out that they seem to be friends with or at least tolerate sparrows quite a bit.

This last one is of a lady cardinal on the bank of the lake. My guess is that they were looking for fallen berries. Presumably it’s easier to forage on the rock rather than in the snow.