March 2012
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Wind-blown
These Eastern Redcedars bear the brunt of the wind. But it’s not just some of the highest wind velocities on the east coast, it’s all that deadly salt, too.
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Woven Nests
Probably the most common bird nest come across is the American Robin’s, which is big for a song bird’s, and characteristically made with a mud base and a lining of grasses. Of course, birds don’t want you, or any other predator, to find their nests, so the leafless season is best for discovering them. Of…
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Prospect Park
Came across this recently. The thing that struck me on the list was the 300-year old Black Oak on Elephant Hill. That must have been a hell of a tree. I assume it’s the black oak noted as kaput in 1990 by Carsten Glaeser when he updated M.M. Graff’s Notable Tree list of 1972. I’d…
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A Cooper’s Strikes
Most of the time, hawks miss. In my years of birding, I’ve never seen an accipiter or falcon successfully take bird prey in the air. Until today. And from the passenger seat of a moving car, no less. Earlier, while walking, I saw a Cooper’s hawk zooming around in the strong winds we’re having here…
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A Neighborhood Giant
One of my favorite local trees is on Warren Street. It is growing out of a yard instead of the sidewalk. Usually, when they do host trees, these little front yards of brownstone row houses have smaller ornamental fruit trees or understory specialists like dogwood that can thrive under the taller sidewalk trees. This one,…
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Anniversary
This blog was launched on this day in 2010. To celebrate, I thought I would revisit two of the most wildly popular posts of the last two years: I spot a rare visitor to Prospect Park.A boatload of us watch a humpback whale within sight of NYC’s skyscrapers. One of my personal favorites among my…
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Scale
In my experience, the internet shrinks the world, whittling our sense of scale. Everything is on a screen now, and so many of us have very small screens indeed in our hands. I’m curious to see where this leads us. I know that when I look at thumbnails on screen, I often don’t have any…
Backyard and Beyond 