Fieldnotes
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Snowy Snowies
The 114th Annual Xmas Bird Count is underway. Brooklyn’s survey was on Saturday. It was a stormy day: any reasonable animal should have been hunkered down at home. Consequently, borough totals were the lowest since 1981: 110 species, with generally low numbers of individual birds. This is continuing to be the Year of the Snowy…
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Fall
I cropped Lower Xanadu out of this image so that you could enjoy the honey-wheat color of this Spartina in the morning sunlight without any distractions.
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Downy, Honeylocust
The sound was like typist behind a closed door, in an office with thick carpets. It was subtle. In the clamor of the city, we must strive to hear the subtle sounds, and Green-Wood, wind-swept atop the moraine, is a fine place for the subtleties. This Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) was pecking away at Honeylocust…
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Snowy Owls Here, There, Everywhere
In the last week I’ve heard about half a dozen Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus) on the edges of Jamaica Bay, all within the bounds of NYC. Elsewhere, bird watchers in New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern states are reporting unusually large numbers of these tundra natives. This is a major irruption year, perhaps the largest in…
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On the Old Croton Aqueduct
The city’s tendrils reach deep into the countryside, but so too do its arteries. When Croton water arrived in New York City in 1842, there was much rejoicing. What was already the largest city in the country hadn’t had a reliable water supply before this, dependent as it was on often contaminated wells. The lack…
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Solvitur Ambulando
“And all the leaves on the trees are falling,” this time of year, some of them enormous. My friend and fellow nature blogger Melissa of Out Walking the Dog sent me a photo the other day of a very large face-covering leaf I thought might be American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis). The very next day I…
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Ruddy
A female Ruddy Duck (Oxyura jamaicensis). Preening here, and rather successfully keeping her usually upright tail, a helpful field mark for this small duck, submerged.
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Where have all the Monarchs gone?
Did you notice that there were fewer Monarch Butterflies this year? I only saw a few here and there. They were notable for their rarity. Others I know reported the same situation. The word spread. Of course, this was all anecdotal, as the publicists and lawyers, who one supposes have to feed their children with…
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The Surveyor
Perched on an obelisk. Wind-ruffled.Unruffled by us.And the namesake of an adult Red-Tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis. First year birds will not yet have red-colored tail feathers. But the tell-tale speckled V shape on the back (actually the wings) is another good field mark for the species. The same bird, or just as easily another, since…
Backyard and Beyond 