May 2017
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Wood Thrush
If the rich fluty yodeling of a Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) hadn’t alerted me, I probably wouldn’t have noticed their nest.You can just see the top of the bird’s head here, rusty orange, with white eye-ring.And the heavy spotting on the breast. Tis the season. Clutch size for this species is 3-4. The eggs are…
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Bipunctata in Sunset Park
Two-spotted Ladybug (Adalia bipunctata). Back in 2012, I reported to the Lost Ladybug Project that I found some of these critters in catalpa trees in Brooklyn Bridge Park. From the LLP, I learned that mine was the third New York State record for this species, and the only one in NYC. There was much rejoicing.Yesterday,…
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Other Rooftops
Atop Kingsland Wildflowers recently, I couldn’t help notice that it wasn’t the only rooftop garden in the area. These neighbors seem to be volunteers, blown in by the wind, deposited by birds, etc. I saw some mosses, perhaps they showed up first? I don’t know what any of these plants are. I’ll take a better eye…
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Vigilance Against Poachers
Yesterday, some bird poachers were interrupted in Prospect Park by Park Rangers and park staff. Earlier, one of the poachers actually walked through a group of birders with a caged American Goldfinch in one hand and a glue stick (used to trap birds, a variation on bird lime; very nasty stuff) in the other. It’s…
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Cyanocitta cristata
Blue Jay. Called by Linnaeus Corvus cristatus. Still a Corvidae. In his five volume Ornithological Biography,* written to accompany The Birds of America, Audubon begins the Blue Jay section with “Reader, look at the plate in which are presented three individuals of this beautiful species, — rogues though they be, and thieves, as I would…
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Rusty Blackbird
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: A male Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) was working its way through a goopy edge of the Lower Pool in Prospect Park.It was tossing wet leaves around like a stevedore and plucking the goodness out of half-drowned Sweetgum balls.Gorgeous patterning here in the non-breeding plumage. Bright shadow seems to favor…
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Raptor Wednesday
This Red-tailed Hawk remained perched as four of us walked underneath it on the path.We’re probably too big to eat.And from the other side. That’s an Osprey on the upper right in the distance. * Timothy Snyder’s pamphlet On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century should be distributed to motel rooms. Or posted on the…
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Trilliums and Trilliums
These were some of the native trilliums in the New York Botanic Garden earlier this month. The seeds of these plants are distributed by ants, who are attracted to the lipid- and protein-packed elaiosomes (“oily body”) on the seeds. Like all wildflowers, these beauties are best left alone. Picking the flower can kill the whole…
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Not Just The Legs
It’s a long stretch from the edge to the water.Yet this Green Heron (Butorides virescens) not only got this frog but dipped it back into the water over and over again until a car flushed the heron and it flew off with its hominid-looking prey. That’s a long neck. And the dipping? Making lunch easier…
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Butterflies So Far
Duskywing. Horace’s, I think. Erynnis horatius. Spotted in Doodletown.American Lady, Vanessa virginiensis, NYBG. Have also seen: Mourning Cloak (harbinger of the thaw); lots of Cabbage Whites; and, just Friday, my first Tiger Swallowtail of the year. * In the President’s commission to investigate nonexistent voter fraud, packed with professional vote suppressors, the essentially strategy of…
Backyard and Beyond 