Raptor Week III

This big antenna a long block away from my apartment is a regular perch for a male American Kestrel. (This is what it looks like without much optical enhancement, btw.) He’ll park on either the taller or the shorter portion (the shorter is bent back towards us), sometimes on the cross-bars. Sometimes just for a minute or two, sometimes a little longer. What is he hunting in the winter? And what kind of antenna is this (there are three more I know of in the ‘hood.)Another time, another borough. I noticed something atop a watertower on West 18th Street in Manhattan. Luckily, I had my camera at hand. This is also a male — note the blue wing. He has caught a small bird. (Curse these overcast days, not to mention my less-than-long lens.)

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You can’t ever read Orwell on politics and language too much. Or his “Notes on Nationalism.”