Field Notes: Dead Horse Bay

For a motley collection of unnatural history, Dead Horse Bay at the southern end of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn is the place to go. It’s the city’s old refuse heap, and it is eroding into Jamaica Bay, providing archeologists studying the ruined civilization of the 20th century with many a wondrous artifact. . My ode to it is here.

But wherever you go in the city, nature sneaks in. On Sunday, in a spectacular preview of spring, with temperatures hitting the mid 50s for the first time in many a moon, we went to the edge of the old Barren Island. We were not the only mammals in evidence. The big prints above I think to be raccoon, the smaller ones to the right… are they rat? I’ve certainly seen a rat or two out there skirting the crumbling bank.

A beautiful feather, one of several spread along the beach. At first I thought perhaps something had been killed and eaten. But these didn’t show any damage. They were probably just lost in moulting. They look like the flank contour feathers of something water-worthy, like the northern pintail and the red merganser, both of which are found in Bird Tracks and Signs. Neither of these species is a stranger to the area. But, given the thousands of greater scaup…

…massing in a great raft right offshore, it could very well be from them. The Feather Atlas only shows primaries/secondaries and tail feathers of both the lesser and greater scaup. What do you think?

As a beginning birder, I had a heck of a time with raptors. Back then I would have been lost over a sighting yesterday: an immature red-tailed hawk that was being buzzed by some American crows. Immature red-tails don’t have the distinctive red tail feathers, and this one was rather intriguingly dark on top. Could it have been some other kind of large hawk? But I got a good view of the underside and saw the tell-tale field mark. Red-tails come in a variety of forms across the continent, but all (except for Harlan’s population, which we don’t have to worry much about here) have dark markings on the leading edge of the wings. These patagial marks, as they are formally known, stretch from the neck to a bit less than half of the length of the wing. None of our other raptors have this marking. Here are a couple of pictures and more description of these marks.