mthew
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Wood Duck
Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) hanging out with the Northern Shovelers (Anas clypeata).
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Books
It’s never too late to get some books for Christmas. Here are two excellent choices for gifts: Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural History, by Carol Gracie. Gracie, a reader of this blog, profiles 30 species of wildflowers (with variations) that herald the spring in our woodlands. The lovely (Spring Beauty, Lady’s Slipper) and…
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Snowy Snowies
The 114th Annual Xmas Bird Count is underway. Brooklyn’s survey was on Saturday. It was a stormy day: any reasonable animal should have been hunkered down at home. Consequently, borough totals were the lowest since 1981: 110 species, with generally low numbers of individual birds. This is continuing to be the Year of the Snowy…
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Fall
I cropped Lower Xanadu out of this image so that you could enjoy the honey-wheat color of this Spartina in the morning sunlight without any distractions.
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Golden Frog
Found dangling in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The helpful tag led me to @seemetellme, an artist who gifts small objects around the city, and, indeed, other parts of world. A sucker for animal art, I took this but left another, non-animal, elsewhere in the park. For someone else’s accidental discovery. (Through the magic of the interwebs,…
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Downy, Honeylocust
The sound was like typist behind a closed door, in an office with thick carpets. It was subtle. In the clamor of the city, we must strive to hear the subtle sounds, and Green-Wood, wind-swept atop the moraine, is a fine place for the subtleties. This Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) was pecking away at Honeylocust…
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Snowy Owls Here, There, Everywhere
In the last week I’ve heard about half a dozen Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus) on the edges of Jamaica Bay, all within the bounds of NYC. Elsewhere, bird watchers in New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern states are reporting unusually large numbers of these tundra natives. This is a major irruption year, perhaps the largest in…
Backyard and Beyond 