mthew

On the nest, 2-1-23.

Small pellet, small prey. I wonder if this could be a Saw-whet’s pellet? Another, fresher. And another. Separated this one in the wind. Some incisors. Some molars.

Too big for pinecones: a pair of Great Horned Owls. A Great Horned’s pellet. Something Rodenta was a meal, probably Brown Rat. Another pellet, under the same owl-less tree, found the same time as the larger pellet. Looked fresher, was smaller. More GHO, or something else?

Special B&B Agent Traci reported this Northern Saw-whet snoozing away next to a busy throughway and I was on my way. This is the most common and smallest owl species on the eastern half of the U.S. The 1980-85 NY state breeding bird survey had them in Queens and Nassau counties, but the second edition…

The Stupor Bowl is on this weekend for fans of four hours of commercials and ten minutes of play, so I hope you find some owls.

For a while, I thought these were the best shots I was going to get of this Calcarius lapponicus foraging with Horned Lark at Floyd Bennett Field. (The bird was first reported Sunday). These shots were much better than the earlier ones I took, the birds being further away, but then I walked a big…

Red-tails galore. A trio of them were cavorting in the wind. All looked like last year’s models, without their red-tails yet. And all were frisky. Hither-and-yoning, they never all lined up as a trio for the lens. Simultaneously, a fourth was perched some blocks away on the taller of the two Industry City smokestacks.

The loons are usually further out, but here in Coney Island Creek with the low morning sun behind me, this Common was looking good. Further around the bend of Sea Gate, this Red-throated turned out to the only one I saw on my scramble around the far western “private beach” end of Coney Island. This…

Sometimes the claw is the only evidence. This is from one of the rock crab family, I think. Asian Shore Crab (Hemigrapsus sanguineus). Another tentative ID. Atlantic Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus). Flat-clawed Hermit (Pagurus pollicaris). (Gave this one its own post.)