It is the breeding time of year, when smaller birds dare to go after the much bigger, sometimes in teams, other times solo as in this case.

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Opening wide before partially submerging, this Double-crested Cormorant snagged breakfast as a swallow zoomed by in the foreground. On the second of two plunges into Prospect Park Lake, this Osprey came up with prey Within one minute along Sylvan Water in Green-Wood, this Great Egret caught one two Bluegills.

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Quite a bit of garbage going into this Robin’s nest. Maybe too much? Six days later I walked by again and saw no further evidence of construction. Here’s a more traditional nest, very grassy. We can’t see the mud lining.

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*** A reminder that I also write for JSTOR Daily, where recent topics have included possums, rocket sex cults, anointing of kings named Charles, and the strange posthumous career of Albert Einstein’s brain.

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The cutting down of this mature Sycamore Maple resulted in a plethora of sap, which in turn feeds a slime flux of incredible colors. This is a fungus, or rather several fungi, including yeasts, and probably some bacterias. (Deer Vomit is the common name for Fusicolla merismoides, which may be a species complex, but there…

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All at once, two high-soaring Buteos… …good ol’ 10-A… …and the nest-keeper.

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Brown-belted in Blueberry. One of the numerous Nomada bees. Dark red with dandelion yellow markings are distinctive looking, but members of this genus are quite hard to identity. There are at least 288 species on the genus in North America north of Mexico. Speaking of things hard to ID. Less than 20% of sawfly larvae…

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While scouting for my first Bugging Out insect walk at Green-Wood Cemetery this year yesterday, I tried to photograph these tiny encased caterpillars dangling from silk lines from a Japanese Larch. When I brought the group by, there weren’t as many visible, and a couple of the attendees spotted them before me. They’re about 5-6mm…

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The first of two flies this female Hooded Warbler caught and ate under a Yew while I watched. The second. Impressive catch. Unlike, say, a larval something like a caterpillar, an adult fly can, well, fly. Behind-the-scenes making-of documentaries of documentaries are popular nowadays. Here’s a look behind the magic of Backyard & Beyond: A…

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If you, like me, have been on tenterhooks (I hope they’re tender) since we last checked in on the Great Horned Owl nest… That’s the parent on the right. (April 23rd from a long way away.) An arrival of another sort. Yesterday, May 6th, was our first day of Chimney Swifts for the year.

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