Fieldnotes
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Kestrel Week In Review
Saturday. The female had some prey, a small bird, probably House Sparrow. There aren’t many other options around here, yet. She flew down to the roof with her prey, then soon after flew up to another pipe without it. Too soon to have plucked, eaten the prey. Did she cache it?Wednesday.Walking up the hill after…
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Spring Purples
Look how purple these Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) start out!And flowers, ready to open. * Still, spring is having a hard time soothing us. A year+ into Trumpism: a sizable percentage of the American population is militantly ignorant, authoritarian-minded, anti-rational, resentful, racist to the bone, and eagerly yearning for the alleged renewal that fascism promises.…
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Ring-necked Duck?
Aythya collaris does have a chestnut collar. But you usually can’t see it in the field.What sticks out, of course, is the white ring around the bill. Yet nobody calls it a Ring-billed Duck, except perhaps me in my bird-name dyslexia. Why is this?Rick Wright was speaking at NYC Audubon recently. One of the things…
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Raptor Wednesday
Merlins (Falco columbarius) like the high points.Where they will sometimes perch for quite a while on the look-out for birds to pursue.Slightly larger than American Kestrels, Merlins are much rarer in the city.
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Mud Castles
Wasp nests, provisioned with spiders and other delicacies for larvae to eat. Vintage ’17, awaiting the warmth of ’18. I had a Black & Yellow Mud-dauber Wasp under the balcony at my Cobble Hill apartment. The brand new adult wasps emerged in June.
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Mammal Monday
In abstentia.Just to reiterate, not to say regurgitate: owl gobbles up critter, digests all the good bits, and then throws up the bones and fur. Pellets are wet gooey masses when they’re yawped up, but still, whole skulls through the throat?! Of course, they went in that way, too.
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Kestrels Update
A favored perch. For a few days. We thought it was too crowded up there for sex, but it wasn’t.When you see a bird doing a series of wide-open yawn-like movements, they’re probably yawping up a pellet of undigested remains of yesterday’s meal. Two of these pellets are visible on this platform, there’s another behind…
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Beeching Out
All the same Fagus.Galls, burls, one and the same? Did they dig out or dig in?
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Yellowbelly
On a 40F day, a single turtle is observed on the edge of the Sylvan Water. What’s this, though? Not a Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), by far the most common turtle across the city. I once counted 70 basking along the Lullwater in Prospect Park. This is a Yellow-bellied Slider (Trachemys scripta scripta). As…
Backyard and Beyond 