Backyard and Beyond

Two Coopers Hawks, one with a pigeon. The bird with the prey brought it down to the solar panels and feasted for an hour.

The feasting bird can just be glimpsed through the parapet fire-escape cut. There was a third accipiter in the air (to the left) in the background while this was going on.

A couple of crows showed up.

They rather boldly grabbed scraps of pigeon with both hawks around.

The False Milkweed Bug is so named because it once confused with the Small Milkweed Bug/Lygaeus kalmii, but it turned out to not feed on Milkweeds. False Sunflowers/Heliopsis helianthoides are their food of choice. Saw several a week ago at Brooklyn Bridge Park where False Sunflowers are planted, but… what are they feeding on this time of year??

Mating already on March 6th.

A touch of memoir on Medium.

Spring’s onslaught means I’m inevitably behind in these posts. These Trembling Aspen/Populus tremuloides catkins were popping a week ago and…

…being dropped from above.

Black-capped Chickadees and Tufted Titmouses were eating them (and/or insects within?).

Same bird; photos taken over a minute and a half.

(As always, clicking a photograph here will enlarge it.)

Two frisky young Red-tails. A few minutes later, there were six hawks in the air above me over Green-Wood. All seemed to be Red-tails.

There was also a Turkey Vulture. It was actually chased away by one of the RTs.

Some pigeon-plucking sights.

As a large adult female (presumably, because it seemed larger) Red-tailed Hawk perched above the Dell Water…

A bird about half a year old flew back and forth stalking the various bird feeders set up there.

Well, yes, the hawk did lumber-dive the short distance towards the American Goldfinch, who flicked away effortlessly.

The coast of Brooklyn is mostly inaccessible. But here and there…

You can’t actually see the telling details in my pictures, but this is, by all accounts (dozens now on ebird), a Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta). At Bush Terminal Park.

Walking northwards on 2nd Avenue, as close as a civilian can get to the bay in this part of Sunset Park, this giant smokestack often has a perching raptor. This Red-tail had just excreted.

Quite the murmuration (for Brooklyn) at the Sims recycling facility, where gulls and crows also congregate over the garbage.

This, too, is where the vagrant Swainson’s Hawk is generally found, harried by crows, and growing fat on rats.

From further back up the moraine. I’m pretty sure the light object at the right of the light tower in the center of the image is our Swainson’s.

Ah, the winter orange! (Probably put out by bird-feeders.)

Sciurus carolinensis/orange joins the rogue’s gallery:

Sciurus carolinensis/nutella

Sciurus vulgaris/ice-cream (Sweden)