mthew

Not Cruella de Ville or Susan Sontag.A Striped Skunk. Unfortunately not in good shape: canine distemper is riling the local population, just as they’re out and about mating. Bit a theme going here… this is a skull of a Common Raccoon. Rodent teeth in Great Horned Owl pellet.

She sees something down there. Something with a wing and bit of gristle: looks like some previous prey was cached and then retrieved. Not atypical behavior this time of year, when the female is eating like crazy to build up the energy to create eggs. Across the street was this male. Later both birds were…

Meanwhile, looking for them anywhere I can find them: in this case, in a couple of Samurai movies from the late 1960s. Above, the scale seems off, since the knife in the hand of the thrower looked to be about 8″. And here the kids seem to be using poles smeared with a birdlime-like substance…

Seven Sandhill Cranes, the first I’ve ever seen. In the wild, that is. The wilds, as it were, of Brooklyn! Overhead of me in Green-Wood on Tuesday. I was between two American Kestrels and a Merlin, so I rather perfunctorily took a few shots, thinking they were Great Blue Herons, and then wondered about the…

Love in a Tuliptree: Red-tailed Hawk copulation. The male then brought a couple of fresh sticks to the nest. The thing is, though, this nest is not in a good place. Last time around, the young were killed off by very territorial Great Horned Owls. They say only the nestlings’ talons were found.

Common Raven in the foreground with Fish Crows in the background. The “Romane nose” of the Raven’s bill is visible even from a distance. These great wedged or diamond-shaped tails also distinguish these from our two crow species. Sure, Ravens are as large as Red-tailed Hawks, but size can be hard to judge. Pair is…

Two Merlins no more than 75 yards apart. This is the second time this winter I’ve seen two at the same time. The first time was in Green-Wood; this time was in Prospect Park. I hung around for a bit to see if they would deign to notice each other, but there were no interactions.…

A couple of weeks ago, there was one Bufflehead on Sylvan Water. Now there are two. These Bald-faced Hornet nests usually don’t survive this far into winter. (There are no wasps in here; the community dies off in the fall, except for pregnant females, who burrow themselves elsewhere for the winter months.) Here’s what one…

After a winter of chasing each other and everything else, are these Mockingbirds thinking of the spring?