Raptor Wednesday Outtakes

I am of course pleased when I can present a fine photograph of a living creature, but this blog has never been about photography per se. I think of my photos as illustrative and educational tools. I’d like people to think they too could take such pictures, right outside their door or not too far away. No need to go to distant places — or depend on others to go for you or watch it on TV — for startling hits of nature itself.

Above is a Merlin at the extreme of my camera’s lens. Identification was made easy because the bird had been much closer earlier, perching on that raptor-favored tree above Terrace Bridge, and then harried from pillar to post by an ever-growing number of Blue Jays.This is the other end of the lens. The Merlin is on the top right of the tree in the center distance here.Here’s another quick-moving raptor. I’d just bubbled out the Chip Shop on Atlantic Avenue and a swirling of pigeons over the intersection perked up my hawk-sense. (I really must be careful to not be bumped into by a pedestrian or run-over by a bicyclist or car on the sidewalk, wot?) A silhouette atop LICH caught my eye, but only through the lens could I get any sense of what it was. The talons are suggestive, the just visible bars on the tail, too. Another shot showed a bit of the russet breast. One of the local Cooper’s. A phone picture. One day recently I heard a Crow cawing just before descending into the Bergen St. subway and then, when I emerged at the end of my trip underground/underwater at West 4th St., I heard another. I glanced around and up and saw a little falcon swoop over 6th Avenue. Three days earlier about two blocks to the north I’d also seen a little falcon overhead. Both days were these overcast winter gray days, meaning there wasn’t much more than a silhouette to see, but I feel pretty confident that the second instance was a Kestrel. Then I saw a Crow flying over Father Demo Square, but the cawing continued to come from elsewhere. All this, of course, with mid-day traffic howling up Sixth Ave. There it was, in the trees of the corner park at Bleecker & Downing. And it was yelling at a Red-tailed Hawk who perched below it. A Blue Jay further up added some vocal alert to the mix, but it’s hard to beat a Crow when it comes to the alarm department. Or all the people who didn’t seem to hear any of this as they walked by.