Fieldnotes
-
Oops
Insert your action painting jokes here, my friends. This is a dolled-up image of a Red-tailed Hawk poop strike across the hood of a car. …and the original. Big bird, big drop. Probably much more than you want to know about raptor mutes.
-
Yes, It’s Actually This Orange
This sure jumps out at you, doesn’t it? Orange Peel Fungus (Aleuria aurantia). A couple of patches had been recorded in Green-Wood by others on iNaturalist and I just had to see it in person. I was not disappointed. With the library, my main source of books, shut down for months and now hard to…
-
More Cooper’s Hawks
An Accipter presents a distinctive silhouette. With a longer tail and a narrower body than a Buteo (like a Red-tailed Hawk), they jump out at you. This one allowed me to get on the right side of the sun. Like yesterday’s specimen, this is an adult Cooper’s. (See here and here for a recent immature…
-
Raptor Wednesday
Blue Jays and Nuthatches are a reliable source of alarm when a Cooper’s is in the hood. This one was out in the open with prey when I followed the shrieks, but soon retreated to the foliage of a beech. The raptor was plucking. A few of the prey’s feathers fell down to the road…
-
-
Just Batty
A Green-Wood gardener called my attention to two Eastern Red Bats hanging from maple leaves in the cemetery last week. These were at eye level. Who knows what was further up…. Looking like old leaves or rotten fruit/cones, this is their day camouflage. I’ve seen the occasional bat in flight in Brooklyn over the years.…
-
Late Pollination
There is very little pollination real estate available out there now. It being past middle November and all. This dandelion flower, the only blooming flower visible, was crowded with two Margined Calligrapher flies and a Common Drone Fly the other day. *** It seems as if capitalism no longer needs democracy. China’s ample proof of…
-
Flocking Fall Birds
Red-winged Blackbirds. Dark-eyed Juncos. Cedar Waxwings. American Goldfinches. Ok, these are mostly solo shots, but each of these birds was part of a flock…. This male Red-wing, however, was on the todd.
-
Raptor Wednesday
Red-tailed Hawks are commonly seen here in Brooklyn. It’s notable when I don’t see one on a walk in Green-Wood. They not even uncommon sights from the apartment window. A couple of weeks ago, on a very windy morning, I watched four of them simultaneously riding the wind. But this is something different. All these…
-
Solar Powered
A 73-degree November day early this month kept the lizards slithery. Have we seen the last of them until the spring? I saw my first years ago in a Queens cemetery where Harry Houdini is supposedly buried. (Well, he got out of a lot of things, right?) Podarcis siculus. iNaturalist’s lizard crew marks them as…
Backyard and Beyond 