The weather has been fluctuating. Days in the 50s aren’t very bug friendly, but once we start hitting the sunny 60s, they emerge.
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Archive Page 2
Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus). This is, or better say was, a common species, but the birds have “undergone one of the sharpest and most mystifying recent declines of any North American songbird.” Here’s more information from the Rusty Blackbird Working Group. I reported this sighting on eBird.
This male, forging on the edge of Green-Wood’s Sylvan Water, was taking advantage of the wind-blown pile-up of leaves and muck amid the rocky shore here. The closest thing to their “bottomland wooded-wetlands” habitat of choice. Most of the Water is ringed in a wall, as you can see to the left of the bird.
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Yes, two. Grazing on the grass. Wrestling. Running at the sound of approaching cars, but fairly blasé about bipeds nearby.
Uh-oh. Trouble. This Red-tailed Hawk cached the remains (Gray Squirrel, I think) in this Atlas cedar. I saw the bird fly in empty-taloned, clamber up a limb, and only then start in on the retrieved leftovers.
Backyard and Beyond is now accepting donations! If costs several hundred dollars a year to maintain this site, so I’ve put up a donations and tip “jar” feature for anyone who would like to help defray the tab. Thank you for your consideration and attention!
Lots of little Golden-crowned Kinglets.
A single Palm Warbler. The first warbler I’ve seen this spring.
And here’s my second. Pine Warbler.
Pair or Ring-necked Ducks.
Competitive nesting.
Not exactly camouflage.
This Eastern Phoebe had just eaten a cellophane bee.
This male Red-bellied Woodpecker would not stop chortling about the nesting hole he’d made.
Ah, well, when you’re a Carolina Wren, you just chortle, don’t you?
A trio of Tree Swallows and a Barn Swallow. Temperatures were below freezing yesterday.
And the swallows seemed very chill.
Grey Squirrel gnawing on a bone. You know, one of those bones you find downslope from the road where the garbage piles up…. I suspect this is like the recycling of deer antlers by mice and other mammals in the forest. Going for the calcium? This may well be the nesting female seen earlier this month.
Some raccoon remains incited this Margined Carrion Beetle (Oiceoptoma noveboracense). The females lay their eggs in rotting meat…
Same carcass: Waltzing Fly (Prochyliza xanthostoma). So named because when the males fight they supposedly look they’re dancing. The larvae will eat old meat, and stinking cheese. A name for the larvae is “cheese skipper” because they jump out of the cheese when startled. Pop! Reminds me of the tars knocking the weevils out of the hardtack in the Hornblower novels.
