mthew
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Sharp-shinned Monday
I still find the Accipiter Dilemma (or is it a Conundrum?) tricky. Cooper’s Hawks (Accipiter cooperii) are larger than Sharp-shinned Hawks (Accipiter striatus), but, with the extreme sexual dimorphism of these species, a male Cooper’s is about the size of a female Sharp-shinned. This bird, however, was tiny. Blue Jay sized. A male Sharp-shinned Hawk.…
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Red-tails on Sunday
Two different Red-tailed Hawks eye-balling each other. The one on the ground has a couple of red feathers in its tail, on the way to full adult plumage. This one, seen about 15 minutes later, is showing a lot more, if not all, red. Ok, so that’s three distinctive birds… I had a dozen Red-tailed…
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The Years Go Marching By
It’s harder and harder to age in this savage republic. Even as a long-in-the-tooth perpetual adolescent, I’m not in much of a celebratory mood this year, but here are some birthday posts of yore: 2020: bathing beauty. Wait, I did another birthday Red-tailed Hawk in 2019? It fell during Kestrel Week in 2018. 2017: tree…
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More Winter Birds
Yes, please! There was that winter bird count several years ago that tallied only a single Black-capped Chickadee in Kings County, a.k.a. Brooklyn. This winter has been much more chickadee-ee-ee. White-breasted Nuthatches, too, have been plentiful. I love the noises they make. A couple of them quietly chipping with each other; a lone making a…
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Corvid ’21
Days of rain since I took these photos on the weekend. Time’s running out for a haiku about the crows in the snow.
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Raptor Wednesday
Red-tailed Hawk with captured Mourning Dove. It’s hard to imagine these big Buteo‘s catching birds, but they certainly do. Squirrel is also Red-tailed Hawk-able. This particular squirrel lived to chide us all again, but not before dropping a good 15 feet from this tree when the hawk scrambled up after it. The rodent dashed for…
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Winter Work
Water, water everywhere, but most of it frozen solid. The snow under the bird feeders is littered with food. The bare patches, under trees or cleared by the cemetery crew, are scoured. There’s always the road, too, especially under sweet gums. Ground-huggers are suddenly found in the branches, gleaning.
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Parrots
I spotted twenty-nine Monk Parrots yesterday, several blocks from their colony. They were eating the buds of callery pear trees. A lot of the buds were clipped off and fell. The birds descended to the road to eat them.
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Tongue, Fur, Ivy
This Red-tailed Hawk was rubbing its bill on this trunk when this photo captured a bit of hawk-tongue hanging out. Nearby, a squirrel was being very quite in a thicket of poison ivy that extends off this pine like so much witchy hair.
Backyard and Beyond 