mthew

This young Red-tailed Hawk just scooped up an American Woodcock off the ground. I caaught this iamge because I’d seen the Woodcock land down below and brought up my camera just as the bird flew again to land about 20 feet awy. That’s when the hawk swooped in, from I don’t know where. Then the…

A Varied Thrush/Ixoreus naevius last week in Prospect Park. A rarity here, but common on the West Coast, where they nest in coniferous forests. I last saw one in Central Park in 2010.

Clustered Midrib Gall Wasp/Andricus dimorphus on underside of Swamp Chestnut Oak/Quercus michauxii.

For the fifth straight year, I’ve spotted Merlins in this linden tree next to the Steinway Mausoleum in the fall, winter, and early spring. This was my first sighting for fall ’25, on October 26th. The Merlin flew away when this American Kestrel showed up. This tree is a great 360-degree lookout. The Kestrel flew…

Much of the coast of Brooklyn is inaccessible, but a whole new swath of public access has just opened to the north of Bush Terminal Park. This is the Make NYC complex. They’re going to restore this old pier as park, but already there’s a lot more bay-fronting territory there there has been. I was…

I’ve put a lot of Cynipid gall wasps, who create galls on oak trees, up recently. Something I haven’t given much attention to in recent years are the Caryomyia genus midges who create galls on hickories. In this case, it’s a Pignut Hickory/Carya glabra.