Backyard and Beyond

Male Falco sparverius at Floyd Bennett Field, where the grasslands, currently mown, can often be a good place to see this most common of NYC raptors. This one is particularly painterly with those spots (and the cloudy day).Here is a female, farther away from the camera. Her wings don’t have the blue of the male birds. A different male at the other end of the runway. Note the very worn edges of this bird’s tail feathers. Time for a molt? That black band at the near-edge is a good way to distinguish males from females, who don’t have it, up in the air when you can’t see their topsides.

These pictures are a week old. More recently, on Saturday, we saw a Kestrel plucking what looked like a sparrow of some kind in Green-Wood. And on Sunday, another Kestrel was hovering over the mown grasslands at the Salt Marsh Nature Center.