Fieldnotes
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#BrooklynKestrels
Female.Male. He lost one of his middle tail feathers. It was broken more than half way down and hanging at odd angles by a rachis thread for a whole day.Then he had a piece of head fluff coming off the top for most of another day. There have been almost daily Fish Crow/American Kestrel battles.…
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Birds, Flowers, Castle
Winding down with the reports from our trip to Sweden. Here’s Buskskvätta. Whinchat (Saxicola rubetra).These white flowers were everywhere.Anemone. It was a very good year for them, people said.My first ever cranes in the wild! Here’s Grus grus, the European Crane, known as Trana in Swedish. There was a pair nesting in the distance. One…
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Butorides virescens
An adult Green Heron. There were two. So let’s hope for some offspring, which have not been unknown in Brooklyn’s green heart. You are wondering, Mr. Bond, why this bird is named the Green Heron? Well, there’s kinda-sorta some green there on the back-ish. The species was formerly called the Green-backed Heron (this category including…
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Raptor Wednesday
Red tail feathers coming in! This Buteo jamaicensis looks like it was one of last year’s fledglings. They don’t get their brick-red tails until they’re a year old. Also a good view of the cummerbund-like belly-band that most of our best-dressed eastern Red-tailed Hawks sport.
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Whose Woods?
In Sweden, the woods belong to the red wood ants (Formica). They build large mounds, are essential forest managers, and aren’t afraid of taking on bigger critters.A young Kopparödla or Slowworm (Anguis fragilis) is being taken down. (Movie) Duncan takes a closer look at one of the mounds. This was the last we saw of…
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Swedish Snapshots
Such beauty in the world! And such baseness! There was good news from Ireland this week, when one of the misogynist whips of what was once the state church was tossed aside, yet the U.S. still suffers under the brute nastiness of the Orange Demagogue. The American gestapo is wrenching children from their parents…
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Tree Swallows
Tachycineta bicolor. The problem is staying on. Remember how the male American Kestrel bunched up his claws so not to dig into his partner’s back? Here, the male bites some head feathers. Ouch!
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Even More Swedish Birds
Ladusvala. (Barn) Swallow (Hirundo rustica).This is most common species of swallow in the world. The European subspecies H. rustica rustica is very much less rufus underneath than the New World H. rustica rythrogaster and has a longer tail.Here’s another profile that should look familiar.The Eurasian Nuthatch (Sitta europaea).Nötväcka.Whooper Swans at distance, through a window just…
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Raptor Wednesday
The male of the #BrooklynKestrels pair is stashing prey in a rotted-out knot in his favorite perching tree. This photo is through the screen, rain, and foliage. But with those two little songbird feet sticking up like an amateur gangland corpse disposal, you get the drift. Have seen a few bodies cached here since discovering…
Backyard and Beyond 