mthew
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Kestrels Re-Nest
Saturday afternoon, painters gentrified the cornice that American Kestrels have used as a nest since 2018. As part of that very rapid work, they closed off the rotted-out old hole up there. On Sunday, we still saw both birds from the window. But Monday morning, ominously, we didn’t have wee colorful falcons perched in the…
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Raptor Wednesday: The End of An Era
From this angle, you can’t see the hole in this cornice very well. You sure can see the whitewash, though. American Kestrel point their tails out and squirt away. Falco sparverius is an unusual North American raptor species in that they nest inside cavities. They usurped some Starlings, no mean usurpers of nesting sites themselves,…
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Birds
How un-red-breasted this Red-breasted Nuthatch is. A female. Yellow-throated Vireo. I don’t see these every year. Thought it was an another Pine Warbler at first glance with the yellow eye-ring and two white wing bars way up in an oak.
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Sunday Extra
I saw my first Evening Grosbeak in 2012 in Prospect Park. That was a female. This might possibly be the first male I’ve seen. Seen in Green-Wood today. Coccothraustes vespertinus: this binomial could be translated as “kernel-shatterer of the west/evening.” That big beak crushes the opposition (seeds/nuts/kernels). The Latin vespertina means both evening and west.
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Claytonia & Co.
Carol Gracie’s Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast is such a delight to read. Here we learn, for instance, why there can be such color variation in populations of spring beauties (Claytonia virginica), the role of ants in transporting the seeds, and the hundred-plus insects that visit the flowers. “Selective pressures are working at cross-purposes: in…
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Toes
Through the winter, a few White-throated Sparrows can be found foraging in the 4th Avenue extension of Green-Wood. Most of the local White-throats who visit us in the winter are found deeper in the cemetery. The 4th Avenue section, which has streets on four sides (there’s a tunnel under 5th Avenue that I bet most…
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Status
Got our second does of Pfizer vaccine yesterday. Grackle says, “Get vaccinated!” The more, the merrier.
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Raptor Wednesday
The sheer intensity of a raptor’s gaze. This Red-tailed Hawk was hunting… lizards. I have seen American Kestrels successfully capture and eat the local lizards. This big buteo didn’t have any such luck. I think this is the same heavily marked bird, seen here a day later nearby. Kestrel reception is good, with some interference…
Backyard and Beyond 