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Nuts
These two Dark-eyed Juncos were underneath a hickory tree that was absolutely littered with pieces of nut. A couple of Black-capped Chickadees were doing the same. Elsewhere: a similar hickory smorgasbord. I supposed squirrels make these messes. There’s still a lot of nut meat here. Not sure what this one is working on. Wing of…
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Mammal Monday
Dead raccoon’s back foot. Exterior wanted in. Interior didn’t want the exterior inside. Exterior got in. Lots of squabbling in the trees now, two three four five squirrels racing up and down, leaping between trees. I saw two squirrels fall recently, one from about eight feet in a squirrel-tussle and one from even higher as…
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A Visitation of Grackles, Part II
This one landed in a sidewalk tree and then came down to the sidewalk in front of us. And went for a snack! Too fast and too close to get focused on. Something flavored with orange cheese product, perhaps? Junk food is junk food, whoever eats it.
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A Visitation of Grackles, Part I
A flock suddenly appeared the other day right outside the apartment. They stuck around for a couple of hours. Here are various members of the group. Yes, snacks were had. A malfunctioning gutter is a standby bathing and drinking spot for the local Starlings, House Sparrows, and Mourning Doves. The Grackles put it to use,…
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Scars, Buds, Etc.
What Core and Ammons in their handy Woody Plants in Winter call the “downy line across the top” of the leaf scar of a butternut (Juglans cinerea). The tawny suede-looking thing up there. Mustache-like, but at the top, or outer edge of the scar. Now, here’s the genus-mate eastern black walnut (Juglans nigra) for comparison.…
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Watering Hole in the Ice
Beckett says somewhere that we spend our life “trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench.” For birds in winter, it’s an open bit of water. The sunshine is gravy. Back in October I spied on the birds bathing under the little weeping variety of bald cypress…
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The Threats to the Insects
A special feature in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a series of articles on the global decline of insects in the Anthropocene. “Nature is under siege,” begins the introduction to the gathered paper of a symposium sponsored by the Entomological Society of America in November, 2019. The threats, short-handed as…
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Raptor Wednesday
Three days of pair-bonding for the American Kestrels. No copulation seen; it’s a bit early for that. One morning a Cooper’s Hawk chased them from this chimney pot. I was alerted because of the kestrel screaming. The big orange boat is one the Staten Island Ferry fleet.
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Mallards
*** Here’s a year-long time-line of Trump’s incitement of his fascist base, leading up to the putsch attempt. A year seems hardly enough for a man who began his presidential campaign with a racist onslaught and quickly took up the America First Nazi-lovers label; signaled his approval of the murderers in Charlottesville; and ordered his…
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Sounds
There is no silence in Brooklyn. Human noise is constant. Even late at night the nearby highway is a drone of grey noise, and the D train screeches as it rounds the corner. And that’s the quietest time of all. Inside Green-Wood, things are notably improved, buffered, dampened. Even there, though, the sounds of near…
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Backyard and Beyond 