For those of you who were chiming in the other day about the new waterbirds that have recently appeared on the lagoon at our local park, Ella and I took some pictures yesterday. The photos aren't great, but can you identify this bird?

Walking the dog in the park this morning, we heard a woodpecker in the distance. We followed the sound into a grove where Laura spotted the little thing drilling away about fifteen feet the trunk of tall tree. We watched in amazement for several minutes.

There are new birds on the lagoon as well, swimming with the mallards and the Canada goose. I've been trying to identify them in waterfowl galleries on line, but with no success so far. They look like ducks but are about half the size of mallards. The bodies seem to be all black, the head is smaller and the neck shorter relative to the body, and the bill looks bright white.

The red-wing blackbirds have been ubiquitous for the past few weeks, but we didn't see very many of them this morning. Migrating away?

A big cookie lies pulverized in a tight accretion disc in the bus lane of Madison Avenue. Two black (soot-stained?) pigeons peck away at the unbelievable bonanza. Peck peck hop peck.

Cars are coming. A gray sedan bears down. Fly, pigeons! Get out of the way! Pigeons, why can't you hear my telepathic command! CAR!

Black wheels chew up the meters. With an annoyed flutter the pigoens hop aside at the last possible instant, wings a finger's width from rubber mayhem.

Hop hop peck peck peck.

A bus is coming. One-way telepathic communication to pigeons is too stressful. I must turn away.

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Ah, so that's why no one is in line at the Starbucks registers. Everyone in the world is waiting in a crowd at the coffee bar.

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If we remain at our present level of technology, Future Man will need to evolve a second pair of eyes in the top of his head so as to avoid sidewalk collisions whilst hunched over his BlackBerry. Sonar, at the least.

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And how is your Spider-man Week in NYC going? Mine is going just swell, thanks. I wish Spidey would come clean up all his banners, though.

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Also spied on the walk around midtown, some Lyndon LaRouche activists manning a table on 34th Street. The best of their posters depicted George Bush as Alfred E. Neuman and read:

LIKE A ROCK
BUT DUMBER

It's not been exactly a relaxing day at the office, but something I just witnessed down on Park Avenue sure amped the stress. As I stood at the corner, waiting to cross, I looked left and saw a big SUV pulling to a stop at the curb just up from me. Just ahead of the front right tire, as the vehicle rolled forward, a pigeon was waddling as fast as its leg would carry it, looking for all the world like Harrison Ford running from a tumbling boulder. The gap between bird and rubber narrowed, and my heart leaped into my throat as suddenly the tire brushed the pigeon's tailfeathers.

The pigeon fell forward, wings spread, and I was sure I was about to see it crushed. But the wings fluttered and the pigeon jumped to the side, strutting away beneath the SUV as if trying to prove that nothing could ruffle its feathers. The only thing that would have made the moment more harrowing is if the pigeon had reached back under the tire for its hat.