One of the few flying insects seen at Morris Arboretum recently. The Brown-belted Bumble Bee. Probably a female, who has overwintered and is getting ready to start a new colony.
The second most common Bombus species in the mid-Atlantic but scarcer further north. Note that the animal is using two of its legs to scrape across her thorax. This is a a good way to comb pollen out.
ID on this beastie comes from a bee maven on iNaturalist. Note that citizen science data has gone into this new study of the sharp decline of another Bombus species in Canada.
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Both of my parents were children of the Great Depression. My mother was a refugee from Oklahoma. My father only went to college because of the GI Bill, some recompense for serving years in the Pacific during WWII. The New Deal was far from perfect, but it was a bold, multi-fronted attack on economic and environmental disaster. Its history tells us that a Green New Deal is nothing to be afraid of. Keven Baker’s essay in Harper‘s will make you wonder what all the fuss is about: “we have been here before.” Not that he doesn’t recognize the powers arrayed against us: the intensity of the attacks on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by both Republican and Democratic wings of the capitalist party are for all to see.
“In a country this wealthy, and with so much of its wealth being blatantly misappropriated or stolen, how we will pay for making our fellow citizens healthier, smarter, and richer is simply not a serious question.”
“[…] the simple underlying brilliance of the GND: the acknowledgement that we cannot go on as we have, not only in degrading the earth but also in degrading each other, through the existing economic system we have allowed to overrun us.”
American Kestrel male way up there looking for lunch.
Ditto this Merlin. Even higher, for this bird is near the top of the reputed tallest tree in Green-Wood, a tuliptree (yellow poplar). Same day as the kestrels above and below.
This is the local #BrooklynKestrels male.
He has prey.
The pair cache prey on this roof, under the solar panels.
Female is stretching. There were three food transfers this day: male to female.
In the last week, this pair has been very noisy. Up until Monday, the female was going off like an alarm. Last couple of days, not nearly as much. 
