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Christmas with The Raptors
*** *** An all Red-tailed Hawks edition, because… they’re the closest thing we have in Brooklyn to the size to a turkey? A trio of encounters with different birds seen in Green-Wood over the last few weeks.
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Parrot, Twig
Best I could find to stand in for a dove with an olive branch. Merry Christmas, to everybody except for Trump voters and the alleged “Christians” who follow him.
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Christmas with the Raptors IV
Did I mention that one windy day this fall, I saw four Red-tailed Hawks at the same time from the windows? They do love to face the wind and float. Here’s a Red-tail on the Twitter-famous car service antenna, the highest perch for blocks. Here’s a Peregrine. Cooper’s hawk. Red-tailed, Peregrines, and Cooper’s hawks are…
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Christmas with the Raptors III
More Merlin! This was in the ailanthus behind the solar building… the day before the tree was cut down. the falcon has prey in the third image. Perhaps a House Sparrow, ubiquitous around here. This tree, which peeked up a few feet above the four-story high solar building — so called because its roof is…
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Christmas with The Raptors II
A couple times recently, I’ve seen two male American Kestrels loudly contesting the air space above a section of Green-Wood. On this occasion they were in the same tall tuliptree. Another day, a Merlin was involved in the aerial fracas. And back on November 15, there were two Merlins perched within 150 yards of each…
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Christmas with the Raptors I
The slope of the public lot in Green-Wood is sprinkled with trees. Cornered by two roads beyond the fence, it’s a cut-de-sac that has been favored for years by American Kestrels as a hunting ground.
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On Yeast
Apples don’t make true. That is, a seed of a Newtown Pippin—one of my favorite varieties, developed in nearby Queens in colonial days—won’t grow into a tree that produces Newtown Pippins. The resulting tree might produce Newtown Pippins, but it will also produce all sorts of other kinds of apples. The ur-apples way out in…
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RBN
A conifer is a good place to find Red-breasted Nuthatches now. This fall’s big migratory wave of Red-breasted has long since passed through, and now White-breasted are more noticeable, but if you look and listen hard enough at the evergreen clumps, you may be rewarded with these little pointy birds. This was a merged together…
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Under Trees
A pellet expelled by…? Something that eats insects. You can just see the chevron-like markings of a Differential Grasshopper’s hind leg here. These are our biggest grasshoppers. American Kestrels eat them. Another pellet, larger and without large chitin or bone parts. Found under another pine. This time of year, conifers provide cover for raptors. These…
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Backyard and Beyond 