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Recent Birds
All the evidence pointed to nesting American Oystercatchers in here. Keep your dogs on leash!Brand new Starlings have been everywhere.A fledged Chipping Sparrow. Hardly looks it, but could fly.Quiet while the parent was foraging nearby, but loud when the parent was near.Here’s another, some days later.And another…Common Grackle fledgling. Yellow Warbler: one of the few…
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Diamondbacks
It’s hard to see through the intervening plants, but this terrapin is just starting to dig a hole for her eggs. We were on the path. This is an excellent example of why people need to stay on the path out at Jamaica Bay, as well as Salt Marsh Nature Center where Killdeer and Oystercatchers…
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Three Common Brooklyn Damselflies
In my experience, these are the three most common Brooklyn damselflies. Eastern Forktail male. Beware that Rambur’s Forktail and Furtive Forktail males also have variations on this green thorax/blue end segments coloring. Fragile Forktail male. The broken green lines on the thorax, upside down exclamation points in this case, are unique. Not sure where this…
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Sunset Park Chimneys
Chimney Swifts may be heard more than seen. Especially from the sidewalk, with its narrow view of the sky. But that chittering call of their’s is here, there, everywhere.They’re quite a challenge to photograph. Even more difficult is catching one entering or departing the chimney they are roosting/nesting in. Here’s the second Swift-active chimney within…
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More Insects
The Common Sootywing. The Kaufman guide says “flight is slow and close to the ground” but I beg to differ with the first characterization. This was about the tenth I’ve seen in various places before I could get a photo.Black Swallowtail, another mover, if not shaker.This is a Great Blue Skimmer, another case where the…
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Raptor Wednesday
The male of the local pair. One hell of an efficient bird-killer. These pictures were taken through the window at some distance, but you get the idea. This is the female kestrel going after a Red-tailed Hawk who made the mistake of cruising through the neighborhood. She chased the big buteo high above the park.…
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Red-wings
At least five male Red-wing Blackbirds were all over this Common Grackle at Jamaica Bay. In the last picture, one is quite literally riding the CG out of the town. Nobody says “get off my lawn” quite like a Red-winged Blackbird. Backyard and Beyond has a friend who was chased out of a swamp once…
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Cottonwood Air
There was so much Eastern Cotton fluff, it was easy to scoop up a handful off the ground. A single mature Populus deltoides can produce an estimated 40 million seeds in a season. The seed is inside the dried fruit or achene attached to cotton-like filaments that help transport it through the air.Here’s my attempt…
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Sheet Music
A bridge and a stream. What more could Organ Pipe Mud-dauber Wasps (Trypoxylon politum) need than shelter from the rain and a source of their building material? Well, spiders, of course. These wasps paralyze spiders to feed their young inside these mud-nests. Here’s an interesting observation: Tufted Titmouse and Downy Woodpeckers breaking into these to…
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Backyard and Beyond 