Fieldnotes
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Grosbeak, Beechnut
Red-breasted Grosbeak foraging for beech nuts. This is a female. The yellow underwings underline that. Males are pinkish-red under there. This one and several others are scarfing up dogwood fruits. *** New Yorkers have until October 9th to register to vote. Other states.
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Day-flying Nighthawks
On Wednesday morning around a quarter to eleven, I happened to look outside and saw a small herd of Common Nighthawks passing by. There were nine of them! This was after I’d seen a Broad-winged Hawk overhead, the first time I’ve seen one of these long-distance migrants in Brooklyn. Good birds to see from the…
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Some Wasps
Have you noticed all the parts of a wasp’s mouth? That’s the tongue in the center there, reaching into the nectar, but that’s not the half of it. This is Ammophila pictipennis, I think, one of the thread-waisted wasps. Here’s a European Hornet, hanging from at least one foot, devouring a Western Honey Bee. These…
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Raptor Wednesday
An Osprey passes overhead, carrying a fish head-forward. Location: Green-Wood, approximately a mile from the bay. (I don’t think that’s a Sylvan Water fresh-water fish.) Some forty minutes later, I heard the mewling call of one of these fish-hawks. Going to investigate, I was surprised to find it perched up in a tree with a…
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Mushroom/Mammal Mashup Monday
Watched this one eat two small gilled mushrooms that it rooted out of the sward.Discarded the woodsy stems…
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Shaken, in Black and White
The Republican cult is disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters and working to suppress voting and create chaos in battleground states. A familiar crew of corrupt fascist oligarchs are funding this assault. And now the Republican plan, forthrightly announced in the 1970s, to return the federal courts to their traditional role as reactionary redoubt of…
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Warblers, Etc.
A great front of birds flying south on a chill wind swept into Brooklyn on Tuesday morning to be greeted by an orange-red sun rising in the smoke haze wafted here from the west’s conflagrations. Mature male American Redstart. Female and juvenile male Redstarts out-numbered the old males by far and were simply falling out…
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Raptor Wednesday
Osprey over the water… the Valley Water in Green-Wood. These birds will be abandoning us soon, some heading as far as South America. On Monday, I had simultaneous Peregrines on St. Michael’s and, for the first time since the spring, on the Industry City smokestack. Consistently over the last five years, they abandon the high…
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Witch Hazel Trifecta
A busy picture of American witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) and associated gall-makers. Witch Hazel Cone Gall, created by a aphid (Hormaphis hamamelidis). Spiny Witch Hazel Gall, created by another aphid (Hamamelistes spinosus). Interesting that the spiny galls run larger than the plant’s actual fruit capsules. Ant near the fruit, and that could be a winged-form…
Backyard and Beyond 