mthew
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Raptor Wednesday
More than a week after spotting three nestlings bursting at the rusty seams of their cornice nest, and then, later that same day, a female at close range on 5th Avenue, I was only seeing a total of three American Kestrels in the ‘hood. Two males and one female. I presumed it was the parents…
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Red-winged
Circling a cat-tail ringed water-body to the sounds of aggrieved Red-wing Blackbirds. Whole families up in wings. I know someone who was chased by a RWBB at the point of a bill. They are not fooling when it comes to the defense of their territory.
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American Chestnut
Being an arboretum as well as a cemetery, Green-Wood hosts a few American Chestnuts. This gives one the opportunity of glimpsing what was once one of the great trees of eastern North America. Castanea dentata was wiped out by the chestnut blight starting a little over a century ago. You can still find stumps that…
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Orange Bluet
Hard to get damselflies in focus at this scale and angle. I usually get the face and thorax crisply focused. But here, the distinctive 9th segment, all orange, comes through the sharpest. There are ten abdominal segments on a damselfly, and patterning on them can be key to identification.
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Raptor Wednesday
Saturday morning, there was movement inside the American Kestrel cavity. I could see two nestlings. On Sunday morning, they could see me. Two females and a male. Very possibly more in this spacious rust-bucket of a cornice. To re-cap: for three seasons, American Kestrels bred on the corner above the Valentina bodega. This spring, that…
Backyard and Beyond 