Central Park

On Tuesday, I babysat all day long.  The boy I babysit (I’ll just call him “B” for the sake of privacy) and I went bird watching in Central Park.  His class is doing a unit on birds and he is obsessed with bird watching.  He is seven years old and extremely intelligent.  Animals are his area of expertise (along with chess, guitar playing, and The Beatles) and he is filled with bird trivia.  He always tells me animal facts that I doubt are true…and then I google them and find out that he is always right.  The other day he informed me that Peregrine Falcons are the fastest animal on the planet, reaching speeds above 200 mph when dive bombing their prey.  I mean, that sounds totally made up, right?  I argued with him, saying everyone knows that cheetahs are the fastest animals.  Long story short, he’s correct again.  I googled it, and in 2005, a man named Ken Franklin recorded a Peregrine Falcon diving at a top speed of 242 mph.

Anyway, we decided to head to Central Park to try and see some birds.  He wanted to go to the Ramble, a part of Central Park famous for bird watching, but it was closed.  So we settled on visiting Belvedere Castle, the Alice in Wonderland statue (we just watched the movie), and the sailboat pond.

Belvedere Castle
(image taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvedere_Castle)

Belvedere Castle is cool and everything, but the statue and the boat pond were the highlight of my Tuesday. 

Alice in Wonderland statue
(image taken from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthanddave/42257595/)

The Alice in Wonderland statue is located at East 74^th street, just inside the park, and it’s so cool!  It’s a must see if you have kids in the city.  It  includes many of the characters from the book; Alice, of course, along with Dinah, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the dormouse, the Cheshire cat, and the caterpillar.  It’s huge and more like a playground than a statue.  Kids are allowed to climb all over it, and B had a lot of fun doing just that.

Sailboat Pond
Just to tie it back to bird watching, see the smaller building with three windows in between the two taller buildings?  There is a tiny dark spot on the arch of the top, middle window.  It's a Peregrine Falcon nest!

The sailboat pond is right beside the statue and it’s awesome too!  People of all ages come here to sail their toy boats through the pond.  We were sitting on the edge of the water, watching the sailboats, ducks, and falling leaves, when it happened.  I had one of those amazing New York moments, where I look around and realize how completely happy I am to live in such an interesting and beautiful place.