Robin with a Berry

A robin red-breast with a red berry :)  Just down West 97th Street from our apartment building, above the squash birds from yesterday.  The bird hatched this spring--faint breast patterns from its youthful plumage betray that. 

Two wonderful outings to museums today--first much of the day at the New York Historical Society, which gets better and better--it's truly marvelous. A huge toy train collection has taken over much of the large ground floor for the holidays--see the extras.  (One of the displays permits kid to crawl underneath and look around from the center.  For other exhibitions follow this link.)  We spent late afternoon and evening at the Metropolitan Museum, mainly for a superb show of paintings by the French artist    Valentin de Boulogne (1571–1610), entitled "Beyond Caravaggio"--totally appropriate, since he was perhaps the best follower of Caravaggio. It was jointly organized by the Louvre in Paris, which lent all seven of its Valentin paintings; 45 of his surviving 60 works are included; they range from large to very large, so it extends through several galleries--quite stunning!


(Posted next morning)