Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

  • Frozen

    See more

  • Surprising Teal

    I couldn’t determine what this was from a distance, where it was dwarfed by a herd of Canada Geese.Even close by, I was running through the names of the ducks in a bird ID app.That moire pattern! The stripe! That head!Of course, “wigeon” and “gadwall,” among others, don’t come up if you type in “duck”….…

    See more

    , , ,

  • Branta bernicla

    Or, just plain Brant. A winter visitor to our waters. This one was spotted off the coast of Brooklyn recently. (Those on the west coast have black bellies and are known as Black Brant. They were once considered a separate species from these east coasters.)

    See more

  • More Cooper

    Of late, the Cooper Hawks I’ve seen have been in the air, as yesterday’s post, or huddling in the yews and arbor vitae. But this one was perching as bold as brass… or is that rusty iron? With nary a Blue Jay in sight… The Jays have been abundant in Green-Wood this winter. They let…

    See more

    , , ,

  • Raptor Wednesday

    Cooper Hawk amidst the Rock Doves!A dangerous ballet in the sky for the flock, which has the confusion of numbers on their communal side.There was no killing in this swirl, nor in the one seen the very next day in the same general area.Nor in the hawk/pigeon flurry yesterday before the snow flurries.In fact, when…

    See more

  • Winter Killdeer

    Rocks, Ring-billed Gulls, and hey, a Killdeer! (You can’t see the rats inside the rocks, but when they scurry around in broad daylight, you know the tubular rodents are all over; suckers have always loved waterfronts.) Bush Terminal Park had breeding Killdeer last year.

    See more

    , , ,

  • Pollination Reminder

    This Sierra Club lecture on Wednesday looks great: *SIERRA CLUB NEW YORK CITY GROUP SUSTAINABILITY SERIES 2019* *WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13: BIRDS, BEES AND BUGS KEEP OUR GARDENS HEALTHY* Michael Hagen – Curator of the Rock Garden & Native Plant Garden, NY Botanical Garden Timothy Leslie – Associate Professor, Department of Biology, LIU Brooklyn Heather Liljengren…

    See more

    ,

  • Captive Gyr

    The largest falcon, Gyrfalcon (Falco rusticolus).* Birds of the tundra and elsewhere northwards. Occasionally they drift down into the U.S.I’ve never seen one in the wild in North America. I have seen a dark morph in Iceland. (They come dramatically white like this, gray, and dark.)This one is all jessed up and has no place…

    See more

  • Dawn Corvids

    One morning recently, a great parliament of crows flew over the apartment heading towards the bay. I estimated fifty at least. They boiled around the air column over the empty parking lot of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, before turning right to head northish along the coast of Brooklyn. They must have been roosting inland.…

    See more

    , , , ,

  • Are We Getting the Blue Jays All Wrong?

    These boldly colored birds are usually described in negative, highly moralistic terms. Cue up J.J. Audubon: “Who could imagine that a form so graceful, arrayed by nature in a garb so resplendent, should harbour so much mischief;–that selfishness, duplicity, and malice should form the moral accompaniments of so much physical perfection!”In my experience, they’re actually…

    See more