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.”

Airborne

Bear with me…
American Kestrel male flying and then landing with grasshopper prey. Munch, crunch, etc.
About 10 minutes later, the bird was in the air.
And he was going up, after… something falling.
He missed or simply didn’t grab it, after all.

But what was it? In the last picture, it looks like a cigarette, but it doesn’t look like a cigarette at all in in the other images. Thing is, though, it doesn’t look like insect prey, either. So what’s tumbling through the air up there. This was above Governors Island. There are an infernal and infuriating number of helicopters around and over the island, ruining the experience of being there with their thunderous noise and raining lead-poisoning. Could something have come off one of these shitcopters or been tossed out of one?

***

Plate-passing.

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