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Raptor Wednesday
A parade of Falco species! Last Thursday afternoon and then again Monday morning, a Peregrine (F. peregrinus) was atop St. Michael’s eating what looked like pigeon. (This butcher’s block, the highest perch for blocks, is two avenue blocks and one street block away from our apartment, approximately 500 meters/1640 feet, so these through-the-scope views leave…
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American Woodcock Fallout
It must have rained timberdoodles Friday night, because Saturday morning I came across 25 of them in Green-Wood. This shattered my record. Another three were probably repeats, flushed from here to there. A cold front fall of American Woodcock. (Besides fall of woodcock, plump, cord, and rush are recored as collective nouns for them; I…
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Beech Nuts
The root of the word book is the same as that of the word beech. The late poet C. D. Wright’s posthumously published Casting Deep Shade is an “amble inscribed to beeches and co.” Appropriately, this book itself is a lovely thing. The unusual trifold cover makes it highly inappropriate for subway reading, but there…
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The Faces of Lichen
It wasn’t so long ago that I thought these memorials were just dirty, worn away with time and the elements, including acid rain. But I’ve been looking closer. At the lichens. Tireless, long- and slow-growing lichens, lovers of stone. Well, at least these species. Others favor wood. Some grow on both wood and stone. Some…
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Late Insecta
Not a single bee, wasp, or butterfly spotted yesterday in Green-Wood during lunch. There was a suggestion or two of fly, and at least one spider. The first real day of winter, then, bug-wise. Last weekend, though, these stragglers were spotted: Differential Grasshopper, a big one. One of the confusing Syrphid flies. Clouded Sulphur. Vinegar…
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Old Hickory
This was actually yellower to my eyes than this orange-ish reproduction via the camera, but either way it sure jumped out at me — from outside the cemetery, actually. Carya species native here include mockernut, bitternut, pignut, and shagbark, but of course Green-Wood is an arboretum originally planted with specimen trees. I think this might…
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Raptor Wednesday
A yew: evergreen, dense, low to the ground. Accipiters in Green-Wood love these trees the year-around. A bird I could not identify was making a very odd noise at the top of one of these yews recently. This is often a sign of warning or distress. I saw a squirrel shock-still under the neighboring tree,…
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It’s That Time of Year Again
Generally, American Woodcock see you before you see them. And then they bolt. They are so well-blended in with the leaf litter that their noisy take-offs, sometimes from quite close by, are very startling. Flushed four on Saturday, three on Sunday. Two of Sunday’s, pictured here, took shelter under beechwood, all crowded with shadow, leaves,…
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Backyard and Beyond 