Fieldnotes
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Gadwalling About
Gadwall (Anas strepera) are a sort of stealth duck, present throughout the winter months but often not noticed with their subdued plumage. This is a long shot photo, but closer views show this plumage is quite spectacular, if not colorful. These three males are some of the handful usually floating between the piers at Brooklyn…
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A Month of Raptors
I didn’t begin the month thinking I would end up paying rigorous attention to the raptors I’d see, but the New Year’s Day appearance of a Peregrine Falcon zooming down 39th Street became, in retrospect, auspicious. Below are the month’s raptor sightings, meaning individual birds may have been counted more than once, for instance the…
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Vertical Canyonlands
The distinctive basin and range topography of Northern Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) bark. Layers of the bark’s growth can be seen, looking like layers of sediment, to continue the geological analogy. Hackberries were once classified in the Ulmaceae, or elm, family but are now considered to be a member of the Cannabaceae, or hemp family. Yes,…
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Raptor Wednesday
St. Agnes towers over the northern end the Gowanus. There must be a grand view from up there. This is a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) ~ but you knew that.
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Ice-dozer
The buck stopped here in what is now Brooklyn; indeed, the buck of glacial ice made Brooklyn and the rest of Long Island, depositing the rubble of rock and soil it had scraped forward until it stopped and retreated and left the jumble behind. Two pulses of glacial activity formed Long Island, leaving ridges that…
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White-headed Sea Eagle
Yesterday in Green-Wood I was enjoying the sun in a section of the cemetery I’d never been in before when a Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) flew overhead. Whoa! The bird was a mature adult; it takes about four years for those white feathers to come in completely on the head and tail. The look is…
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Feral Brooklyn
I spend a fair amount of time exploring Brooklyn’s edges. These border zones are absolutely agog with feral cats. Here a few recent sightings.The standard wild city feline is a black and white job. Tiger-striped numbers probably come second. But there are all types, including the long-hair below, who looked like a slumming debutant.A street-side…
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Yellow-bellied
The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) is one of the rarer woodpeckers in our city woods. It was harder to see by eye than it looks here in the camera, the feather pattern blending nicely into the bark and the shadow.So let’s get closer… and the first thing that I see is that face! Is this…
Backyard and Beyond 