Fieldnotes
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Prospect Park Tour
Tree-maven and all-around naturalist Ken Chaya and I are teaming up to lead a nature walk in Prospect Park this Sunday. Ken’s the man who mapped the trees of Central Park and is now helping to census all the plant species in that park. Ken and I will be looking high and low for animal and…
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Douglas Squirrel
David Douglas did get the small, vocal Tamiasciurus douglasii named after him, both ways. We saw one at Ecola State Park and a few more at Hoyt Arboretum in Portland, where this one was photographed well enough to present to you, but mostly we heard them. They let you know whose woods these are… (Looks like…
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Raptor Wednesday
Merlins like to perch and don’t seem to be as jumpy as, say, the Accipiters, who are constantly on the move.This Falco columbarius had just returned to this perch, where I’d earlier seen it, from quite a too-do with several Blue Jays, which were mobbing it in a nearby tree. Green-Wood‘s a good place…
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Douglas-fir
Years ago I visited friends living just north of San Fransisco. My flight was delayed eight hours or so, so I arrived in Oakland at four in the morning, when there wasn’t much to do but watch dawn rise over the continent… After a short, unsuccessful nap, I was dropped off in Muir Woods National…
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Woodcock Season
American Woodcocks (Scolopax minor) are back in town! This one in Green-Wood was pointed out to us by a fellow birder on Saturday; also, a correspondent had one in her back yard in Park Slope the other day. If you were following this blog last year at this time, there were some up-close moments with…
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Some Northwestern Birds
Western Gull, Larus occidentalis. Similar looking to Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), but note that heavier, down-turned bill. (All the Larus gulls seem to be able to interbreed, resulting in hybrids of this and that and making a mockery of the old definition of species.)And speaking of taxonomy: the Western Scrub Jay was divided into two…
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Limbs Up
A dead street tree presents a wintery image on 9th Street. One of those cultivars that reaches high.
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Pacific Great Horned
I didn’t recognize this owl at first. Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) run rather darker in the shadowed forests of the Pacific northwest, under all those Douglas-firs and dripping epiphytes. They also don’t have orange faces, as our eastern birds do. This female is 16 years old and has lived at the Portland Audubon Nature Sanctuary’s wildlife rehab…
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You can see the slugs and the trees
A brief trip to some of the wet rainforests of the northwest was a revelation. There will be more to come, but shall we begin with an atypical sublimity?Banana slug, Ariolimax genus,perhaps A. columbianus, Pacific Banana Slug? There are two other species, and differentiating them sounds a bit gross. About 4″ long.These are named for…
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Raptor Wednesday
I have been sighting Peregrine(s) on St. Michael’s tower again regularly. Here at twilight.Another late afternoon instance. The church, two long avenue blocks away, is at the limit of my optics; I really need a good spotting scope for this scene.There are two large roof-top fancy pigeon coops in the area, one that frequently flies…
Backyard and Beyond 