Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

Rusty

Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus). This is, or better say was, a common species, but the birds have “undergone one of the sharpest and most mystifying recent declines of any North American songbird.” Here’s more information from the Rusty Blackbird Working Group. I reported this sighting on eBird.

This male, forging on the edge of Green-Wood’s Sylvan Water, was taking advantage of the wind-blown pile-up of leaves and muck amid the rocky shore here. The closest thing to their “bottomland wooded-wetlands” habitat of choice. Most of the Water is ringed in a wall, as you can see to the left of the bird.

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