Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

  • Superb Owl

    This may be a rat claw. One of several found in this pellet. Pellets are regurgitated hair/feathers/bones/etc. that get spit up by predatory birds. More claws in this pellet, found a day earlier elsewhere. Also full of claws. Again, possibly rat. Owls tend to gulp their prey whole-hog, but I’ve seen American Kestrels and Cooper’s…

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  • Orange Something Or Other

    Orange Hobnail Canker is having some taxonomic issues. It’s been known as Endothia gyrosa but Melogramma gyrosum seems to be the current name. The genus Cryphonectria seems to be quite similar.* Some fungi are benign, but this particular one is a pathogen. It’s associated with pin oak blight. See comments below for reason for deleting…

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  • A Few More Gulls?

    Immature Herring. Great Black-backed Gull with female Red-breasted Merganser in the background.Great Black-backed is the largest gull species in the world. The Herring Gull is pretty good sized, too, and here one dominates the surround Ring-billed Gulls. Ring-billed are the most common gull species here. *** CVE (countering violent extremism) programs have tended to center…

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  • Clams Away!

    The Northern Quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria) is damn good eating, although I’m not sure the radioactive etc. toxins of Dead Horse Bay are the best sauce. Dropped onto the exposed bricks, glass, and pottery shards of the mid-century midden so they crack open, the clams are then feasted upon, if they’re not stolen by other gulls.

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    A young Bald Eagle over Floyd Bennett Field recently. Red-tailed Hawks over Green-Wood. Here are three of the four seen at the same time. Cooper’s on the solar building. American Kestrel tuning in.

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  • Periscoping

    A female Red-breasted Merganser in shallow water eyeballing the undersea. She wasn’t the only one.

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  • Hatched and Hunched

    Somebody has wedged these seeds into the defiles of a shagbark hickory and whacked into them. I suspect the White-breasted Nuthatch, a species in ample evidence here this winter. They’re seen and heard on every walk. Anyone care to venture the identity of these seeds? They aren’t hickory. Both the White-breasted and Red-breasted will often…

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  • Oxyura jamaicensis

    A lot of Canada geese on and around Sylvan Water. But just one female Ruddy Duck.

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  • At the Dance

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  • Off-shore

    White-winged Scoter. Long-tailed Duck (male). Long-tailed Duck (female), a bit further out. Common Eider (young male). Red-breasted Merganser (male). Red-breasted Merganser (female). Gadwall (duck and drake).

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