Fieldnotes
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Kingfisher!
A male Belted Kingfisher patrolling the bays at Bush Terminal. Yesterday I saw one in Green-Wood. I wonder if this is the same bird moving between fresh and salt water? The Green-Wood bird, which I’ve seen twice now, is very vocal, calling between flights and while rattling away while perched. N.B. All the strings and…
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Goldeneye
We surprised each other. I think this Common Goldeneye had just come up from a dive when I reached the end of the pier. It shot off. I shot off a few pictures. The eyes are really something, aren’t they? Even from some distance, they jump out as gold on the black and white face.
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Bracket Fungus
Cracked Cap Polyphore is so intimately associated with black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) that the fungus’s binomial memorializes it: Phellinus robiniae. Hard to find the tree without the fungus. Right next to this black locust is another, and it also sprouts some of these shelf-like fungal growths. N.B.: both of these locusts are still alive.
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More of That Kestrel
This male was on a familiar kestrel-tree. From 2018. From 2017. Different tree, but same hunting grounds. This is a gentle slope leading to a corner of the cemetery fenced off from the streets. It’s filled with modest headstones. Trees along the edges provide great perches. This one perched in four different trees while I…
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Raptor Wednesday
Happy New Year! Ready… setgo!
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Reach
Whoa! Make sure the five foot long branches of poison ivy coming off the vine twirled up this old pine don’t get ya! This is one of the best examples of the vine form of Toxicodendron radicans I’ve ever seen. It’s wild and wooly and has a hell of a wingspan. It would be easy…
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Out with the Year…
Not infrequently, a wanderer in Green-Wood will find piles gingko nuts at the base of trees. Or higher up trees, as in this example. Raccoons have been at work. Here’s another pile out on a big limb. And where there is poop, there are flies. I’ve really noticed the flies this fall: they can take…
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Iced Out
The other day, this young Great Blue Heron landed close to me by the Valley Water. I guess it was on the other side, but I hadn’t noticed it. Some people walking over there must have spooked it. I had just seen something small and dark run into the plants by the side of the…
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Trees in Winter
Look at this diabolical face! The downy upper portion of the leaf scar points to Butternut (Juglans cinerea). This one, on the other hand, baffled me. I couldn’t find it in Core and Ammons’ Woody Plants in Winter. (It is in there, though.) iNaturalist people provided the identification: this is the incredibly common Ailanthus (Ailanthus…
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Raptor Wednesday Holiday Delay
An American Kestrel male in Green-Wood. Same American Kestrel and a Northern Mockingbird. .Aerial Boxing Day?
Backyard and Beyond 