mthew

Sassafras makes a handsome natural border. Note the melt pattern.

When I walked around and across Dartmoor some years ago, I heard wrens every day, often more than once. Yet I rarely saw one. These small, subtle (at least to the eye!) creatures, one of the most common bird species in England, are awfully good at keeping to close to the earth. Their name comes…

*** *** An all Red-tailed Hawks edition, because… they’re the closest thing we have in Brooklyn to the size to a turkey? A trio of encounters with different birds seen in Green-Wood over the last few weeks.

Best I could find to stand in for a dove with an olive branch. Merry Christmas, to everybody except for Trump voters and the alleged “Christians” who follow him.

Did I mention that one windy day this fall, I saw four Red-tailed Hawks at the same time from the windows? They do love to face the wind and float. Here’s a Red-tail on the Twitter-famous car service antenna, the highest perch for blocks. Here’s a Peregrine. Cooper’s hawk. Red-tailed, Peregrines, and Cooper’s hawks are…

More Merlin! This was in the ailanthus behind the solar building… the day before the tree was cut down. the falcon has prey in the third image. Perhaps a House Sparrow, ubiquitous around here. This tree, which peeked up a few feet above the four-story high solar building — so called because its roof is…

A couple times recently, I’ve seen two male American Kestrels loudly contesting the air space above a section of Green-Wood. On this occasion they were in the same tall tuliptree. Another day, a Merlin was involved in the aerial fracas. And back on November 15, there were two Merlins perched within 150 yards of each…