mthew

Well, energy makes the world go ’round. The transmutation of duckling into hawk… this mature Red-tailed Hawk made two passes over the edge of the Sylvan Water recently, to the accompaniment of loud duck squawking. The second pass was successful. This was the other Red-tailed that showed up soon afterwards. No duckling on the menu…

Not an atypical look at a Brown Trasher. Luckily, this bird was showing itself nicely just a few moments before. And since I had to backtrack, I came upon two of them in the same spot, one with what certainly looked like nesting material in bill. Wood Thrushes are out and about, too. Ovenbird. The…

A front-end loader stopped so this one could cross the road. Very fresh. Two more at another nest site.

This is the work Contarinia racemi, a midge that forces these swellings on black cherry racemes. You really have to immerse yourself in the foliage this time of year. There are a lot of these out there. So far I’ve found some 9 species of gall mites; 20 species of gall midges, and 33 species…

For World Migratory Bird Day.

The enormous flowers of big leaf magnolia smell… extraordinarily good. (This is evidently a quick way of telling Magnolia macrophylla from the similar large-flowered Magnolia tripetala, which stinks.) I smelled a very refreshing citrus, a nostalgic cola, and summertime. And I smelled it yards and yards away.

It’s so nosy on around the bridge, what with construction, traffic, more construction at Fulton Ferry, the harbor, etc., that I could barely hear the Raven calling from up on the wires. This one, on a near by building, was more audible. There were nests all around. Pigeons are probably also nesting on the bridge.…

Female American Kestrel on the car service antenna. I’ve now seen Starlings enter the cornice hole I’d seen her fly into twice, so that doesn’t look like the nest site after all. Yet she’s still here in the neighborhood. Male American Kestrel by the Monk Parakeet nest at Green-Wood’s main entrance. I’ve now seen these…

On the fresh young leaves of a pin oak (Quercus palustris), the globular galls of the Succulent Oak Gall Wasp (Dryocosmus quercuspalustris). Also on the catkins. The binomial alludes to their being found on this species of oak, but this gall ID database notes that they can be found on other oak species as well. I’ve…