Fieldnotes
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Parkman’s Unending Buffalo
“The country before us was now thronged with buffalo,” wrote the young Bostonian Francis Parkman at the beginning of “The Chase” in The Oregon Trail, his book about his adventures out in the west in 1846. (I was immediately reminded of the similarly titled chapters in Moby-Dick, published five year later; turns out Melville read…
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Saw-whet
Eleven owls, from five species, were tallied during the Kings County Christmas Bird Count a week ago. Pretty impressive! Here’s one of the two Northern Saw-whets (Aegolius acadicus).This is the smallest (8″ length, 17″ wingspan), and probably the most common, owl in the northeast. The bird’s common name is a real throwback: the tooting call…
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Wintering Hawk
I usually see immature Cooper’s Hawks (Accipiter cooperii) around the borough. Over the weekend, though, I saw this nice specimen of an adult in Brooklyn Heights. The russet-lined front is a give-away for a mature bird from a distance. In truth, I barely saw the bird, since it was so high up in a tree…
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Aphrodite
Sea foam lapping along a bayside. This froth is created the agitation of dissolved salts, proteins, fats, dead algae, and other organic matter churning around in every ounce of sea water.Here it’s along a sheltered bay, which is probably full of organic (and, sadly, non-organic) run-off from the land and not subject to annihilating wave…
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Pro Tip
Don’t walk underneath perching Red-Tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis). I narrowly missed being spritzed with one of these birds’s ribbons of excreta. You will notice, when you watch raptors with any regularity, that they tend to squirt just before launching into flight.
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Winter Sounds
Over all, the wind in the trees, like an overtone. Cardinals chipping. Blue Jays screeching. Two trees, or perhaps trunks of the same, rubbing together. The tapping of a woodpecker. White-thoated Sparrows scratching in the leaves. The gnawing of a squirrel on a nut.
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Little, Big
A Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) looks somewhat like the Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia), but with a shorter tail. There is also usually a yellow cast to the lores. A couple were atop the old landfill at Croton Point recently. I went looking for Bald Eagles. There was a dearth of them for over an hour.…
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Insistent Kinglet(s)
I have had two run-ins with Ruby-crowned Kinglets recently in Brooklyn Bridge Park. These birds are called kinglets because they are little kings, fearless creatures. They are the birds I’ve always gotten closest too; or, put another way, they are birds that have always gotten closest to me. Easily within hand’s reach. They have other…
Backyard and Beyond 