Fieldnotes
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International Bird Migration Day
In Ruth Padel’s On Migration: Dangerous Journeys and the Living World, the Aeneid is offered as the great story of the present century: “the displaced man who has seen his city burn and has lost one identity forever must make a new home and new identity in an unknown land.” Padel’s book is a modern…
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Patterns
On a clear day, you can see Labrador from about 38,000 feet. On Monday, the place was still frozen. Our plane was somewhere near the Quebec border; of course, it may even have been Quebec. It’s hard to see most borders on the face of the earth. A meandering river, thawed in parts, with…
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No. Ro. Wi.
Rare to see a swallow perched. Yet Northern Rough-winged Swallows, they of the long name, seem to do it more than the Barn and Tree Swallows they were sharing the Sylvan Water’s insects with. Stelgidopteryx serripennis, scraper wing saw feather.
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Raptor Wednesday
We had to be away from the #BrooklynKestrels Lookout for a week. All the trees leafed out in our absence. Except for this bare branch sticking upright across the street. Yes! The wee falcons are still going strong. Yesterday morning around 8:30 the male announced his presence with swirling call. He had prey. The female…
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The Mossy Bits
A primer on moss reproduction to go with this photo of a sporophyte.
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House
Whose nest is this?Why, it’s Passer domesticus, of course. The House Sparrow. Usually stuffed into a hole in a building, or, better yet, a stop light pole, this tornado of dried grasses is generally invisible. House Sparrows are unrelated to the New World sparrows; sometimes they are called weaver finches, and looking at the woven…
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More Raven, Please
Rated R for Raven. These are from the day of the Great Duck Egg Caper. Another, more recent evening. I was down in the Sunset Park flatlands. Two Ravens were taking eggs from the street corner, one after another. These were supermarket eggs, and there were a lot of them. Probably a case of 18,…
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Raptor Wednesday
When I spotted this male American Kestrel on the ground and some of the smaller tombstones, I thought, whoa, a way of hunting I’ve never seen before! But look at that left wing. It’s damaged. I followed. This, of course, made the bird move away from me. I formulated a make-shift falcon-catching situation out of…
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Backyard and Beyond 