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Raptor Wednesday
One of the local feral cats was passing by below. Cooper’s hawk at Bush Terminal. I’d say a male because it wasn’t so big. (Females are substantially larger.) *** It all seems so tenuous sometimes. Here is awful news on the American Kestrel front. The Montreal population is in free-fall, mirroring downward trends across North…
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American Coot
Those toes, though. Looks like some serration in the upper jaw… And is this a tongue? This bird, and a few others, were on terra firms because somebody was feeding them. And it looks like the feeders were not spreading bread, which is actually quite bad for waterfowl. Yes, the time-honored tradition of throwing bread…
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Kingfisher!
A male Belted Kingfisher patrolling the bays at Bush Terminal. Yesterday I saw one in Green-Wood. I wonder if this is the same bird moving between fresh and salt water? The Green-Wood bird, which I’ve seen twice now, is very vocal, calling between flights and while rattling away while perched. N.B. All the strings and…
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Dinosaurs Past and Present
What do we know about dinosaurs now and, perhaps more interestingly, how do we know these things? Michael J. Benton lays it out in Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology . Origins, taxonomy, intelligence, reproduction, diet, locomotion, and, of course, the cause(s) of extinction are topics covered here. Surely the most notable and surprising…
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Goldeneye
We surprised each other. I think this Common Goldeneye had just come up from a dive when I reached the end of the pier. It shot off. I shot off a few pictures. The eyes are really something, aren’t they? Even from some distance, they jump out as gold on the black and white face.
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Bracket Fungus
Cracked Cap Polyphore is so intimately associated with black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) that the fungus’s binomial memorializes it: Phellinus robiniae. Hard to find the tree without the fungus. Right next to this black locust is another, and it also sprouts some of these shelf-like fungal growths. N.B.: both of these locusts are still alive.
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More of That Kestrel
This male was on a familiar kestrel-tree. From 2018. From 2017. Different tree, but same hunting grounds. This is a gentle slope leading to a corner of the cemetery fenced off from the streets. It’s filled with modest headstones. Trees along the edges provide great perches. This one perched in four different trees while I…
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Raptor Wednesday
Happy New Year! Ready… setgo!
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Reach
Whoa! Make sure the five foot long branches of poison ivy coming off the vine twirled up this old pine don’t get ya! This is one of the best examples of the vine form of Toxicodendron radicans I’ve ever seen. It’s wild and wooly and has a hell of a wingspan. It would be easy…
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Out with the Year…
Not infrequently, a wanderer in Green-Wood will find piles gingko nuts at the base of trees. Or higher up trees, as in this example. Raccoons have been at work. Here’s another pile out on a big limb. And where there is poop, there are flies. I’ve really noticed the flies this fall: they can take…
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Backyard and Beyond 