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Raptor Wednesday
It snowed on Saturday. Twice. In between, I happened to be watching several squirrels capering across the park from my window. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught something fly at a bush and then away, turning up to a tree limb. Several squirrels made a racket up there before retreating. It was…
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Sylvan Raptor
Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday I spotted raptors at the gory work of eating. First up is a mature Red-tailed Hawk in Green-Wood at the Sylvan Water. The unfortunate meal is a Grey Squirrel. I used a very large tree as a blind to get close as the weather went from cloudy to breaking sunny to…
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Sassier!
There’s a suggestion that this is the oldest sassafras in NYC. The tree is still going strong. Now we come to an issue of tense. There are two trees here, just a few feet apart. Are these two actually, essentially, the same tree, a clonal pair, the last of a sassafras colony? There seems a…
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Sassy!
A venerable sassafras (Sassafras albidum) in Green-Wood. May be the state record holder for tallest: 69′ in 2016. 138″ in diameter at 4.5′ height. More interestingly, at least to me, is the question of age. Does this pre-date the establishment of the cemetery in 1838? If not it must come close. Sprouting adjacent. Sassafras is…
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Good Bones
A couple of red oaks. Gates of tuliptree, or… Ents, yes, there are definitely Ent possibilities in these two. An uncharacteristic tuliptree. Usually they are quite straight and single-boled.
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Cocoons
Over the weekend I found four large silkworm cocoons. This one was hanging in an oak. This one was on the ground. I turned it over to see the other side. Coin is just over an inch in diameter. There was an oak overhead…. Another in a willow oak (at perhaps half a mile’s distance…
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Cactus Pose
So, while a nation slept… the Opuntia genus of cactuses expanded. Somewhere back in the day, I learned that the only native cactus found this far north (and east) was the eastern prickly pear, Opuntia humifusa. (Some pictures of them in flower from summers past at Jamaica Bay.) The taxonomists now say there is another…
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Raptor Wednesday
Cooper’s Hawk! This bird was still up here two hours later. I think it was digesting breakfast. *** Uncivil disobedience: a new paradigm in Hong Kong, or how do you fight the awful might of the state?
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American Wigeon
Male. Female. Choate says wigeon is from the French vigeon, for a whistling duck. Possibly from the Latin vipeo for small crane.
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Mammal Monday
Directly above this very cautious squirrel was a A Red-tailed Hawk (and some obstreperous Blue Jays). The hawk had a very full crop. So digesting and chillaxing. In the same tree as the hawk, another squirrel.
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Backyard and Beyond 