Fieldnotes
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Raptor Wednesday
About to ascend the steps of the City Hall subway station, I heard a Peregrine. Or thought I did, anyway: the subterranean is generally not good habitat for falcons. Emerging in the plaza besides the old Tweed Courthouse, I looked all around, raptor-senses tingling. I didn’t hear it again. My eyes did fall on a…
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A Tree for Tuesday
I was circling around St. Michael’s tower in search of the Kestrels that have been frequenting the raptor anvil, as I like to call it, atop the cross up there. These local falcons will be a subject of a future week’s worth of posts. Yes, they have been active! This excursion gave me an opportunity…
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Mammal Monday: Wait, How Many?
Judging from the poop, Green-Wood is over-run with Raccoons (Procyon lotor). They need some coyotes. During the day, you can occasionally see a few way up in a pine or other conifer, sleeping, scratching. Less frequently, you can see a whole family in their swank condo wondering who the hell you are.
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Song Again
It wasn’t the mother lode of American Robins that made me think that spring couldn’t be far off now. Most of our local Robins do head south for winter, but some stick around in wide-ranging flocks to eat fruits instead of invertebrates. Above are a few of the fifty or so I came across in…
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Sap Fall
A great frozen waterfall of beech sap stalactiting from a massive specimen. The hang here is two plus feet!Gorgeous, but a sign of distress for the tree.
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Raptor Wednesday
A Red-tailed Hawk flew by with a Gray Squirrel hanging from its talons, the long bushy tail a banner of mammalian defeat. The hawk landed in a tree and spent maybe a minuted pulling at the mammal with its beak, no doubt ending its life. But the bird then moved to another part of the…
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Songbirds
Finally, some songbirds! I’ve spent a lot of time in Green-Wood this winter and it has been barren of some of the usual winter bird suspects. So it was good to run into Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Golden-crowned Kinglet (rather unexpectedly) and a small flock of American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) all hanging close together on…
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Mammal Monday
Deer tracks on the continent. Found on the grounds of the Bartow-Pell Mansion, in Pelham Bay Park. (FYI for you out-of-towners: the Bronx is the only part of New York City that is not an island.) On nearby Hunter’s Island, part of the same park, but no longer an island. Last time we were here…
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Superb Owl
Bubo virginianusA Great Horned Owl on a recent winter day. (For completists, there actually is a Lesser Horned Owl, found in southern South America.) Click here for more superb owls. Faux superb owl… and friends.
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Nests
You might not think this is a good time of year to be talking about nests, but we found two interesting examples of the more than a few you can see in trees now that the leaves are gone. This was upside-down on the grass recently in Green-Wood near a conifer. How did it survive…
Backyard and Beyond 