Fieldnotes
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Green Heron
How many Green Heron (Butorides virescens) nests are there in Prospect Park? I saw one, heard about another, and suspect a third.
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Barn Swallow
It’s always dark under this bridge. This Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) nest, made of mud and muck-matter, is a year old and being used again. Nearby is a two-year-old nest that is being re-used again after a vacancy last year. Here are some gathering mud like the masons they are.
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An Inordinate Fondness
J.B.S. Haldane is supposed to have said that the creator must have a special fondness for stars and beetles, because there are so many of them. And some of them — the beetles, not the stars — are awfully small. There are 350,000-400,000 species of beetle — the exact number is probably impossible to know…
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Non-compliance, no enforcement
Fishing garbage found in the Lullwater. No hooks on this mess, luckily, but we’ve all seen the damage this shit does to birds and mammals right here in Prospect Park. We gathered it up and canned it, since the fish-torturer was too much of an asshole to do so. Signs are a joke without enforcement:…
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Raptor Wednesday
An all-Peregrine edition: a Working Harbor tour leaving from Manhattan’s Pier 11 gave me an opportunity to walk by 55 Water Street, where four little falcons continue to get their wings. Sitting on the cam was one of the scrape’s adults. Then, as we waited for the Hamilton Avenue drawbridge to open up and let…
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Strange Cries in the Night
The other day, I woke up at 4:44 a.m. to a weird sound in the backyard. It was just about time for the local Northern Cardinal to start up with his “what-cheers,” the regular crack-of-dawn soundtrack around here since way back in late winter, but this was nothing I’ve ever heard before and if it…
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Squirrel in the Garbage
Some may find this a textbook case of cute, not to mention the adaptability of some animals to live off of our garbage, but all this processed fat and sugar can’t be very good for the animal. After all, just because you like to eat something doesn’t mean it’s good for you, as many of…
Backyard and Beyond 