Fieldnotes

As the light hits this male Scarlet Tanager… Too much light in this case. That’s a ground Yellowjacket, one of the Vespula wasps. A female, hunting in the same area. Perching at eye-level or even below, looking all around. Zipping after Hymenoptera. The male virtually crash-landed getting his prey. Piranga olivacea is actually named for…

The baby squirrels are branching out.

This Great Egret came in for a landing, but there was another one on the shore. The two of them flew into a tussle. Not sure which one won. The other circled a few times and flew off.

A just visible broken eye-ring. Elsewhere, a yolk-filled egg on the ground, cracked open. Some tiny insects had drowned in the yoke. Yet again elsewhere, an inch of life that didn’t. Grubstake… worm and something else. “Terrifying are the attent sleek thrushes on the lawn” writes Ted Hughes from the invertebrate’s light-sensor view.

In the distance, the eagle is landing. Saturday morning, a young Bald Eagle was flying around Green-Wood again. Someone spotted two of them on Sunday. I heard one was spotted on Monday morning, chased by Red-tailed Hawks. But back to Saturday’s personal encounter. The left leg band is black, but I couldn’t read it. Here’s…

Black-and-white Warblers are quick-moving bark-foragers. They are one of our more common warblers, but they are hard to capture without a flash. The binomial: the genus means moss-plucking, since they may use moss (and horsehair and grasses) to line their nests. Species epithet varia means varied, for the plumage. Small bird, big tree. With a…

The Gray Catbirds have returned! I didn’t see a single one on Saturday, when I was scouting out species with a vengeance. On Wednesday, the next time I was in Green-Wood, I saw them in clumps of half a dozen each. Spring’s southern winds come raining catbirds. Dumetella carolinensis, a study in gray. Then, surprisingly,…