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Raptor Wednesday
Anticlimactic: that’s what the post-fledgling scene was for the #BrooklynKestrels. Two months of cornice work, followed by two weeks of sightings of a trio of fledglings. Then nada. Well, not quite true. The male parent has been spotted sporadically on the large car service antenna one long avenue block from the nest site. This is…
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Brooklyn Botanic Axes Arborist
Two Monday’s ago, the management of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden cut down a quirky and beloved tree. Staff and community opposed the arborcide. The garden’s own staff didn’t think the gloriously stumpy “BBG Treehouse” needed to come down, so, like some capo di tutti capi, the institution got outside contractors to do the killing. Then,…
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Monday Prep
A selection of recent sightings in Brooklyn and the Bronx to rev up your Monday morningI don’t think I’ve ever gotten a good picture of a Gray Hairstreak with wings open before.
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Mockingbird Tales
Over the course of a couple of hours at a single vantage point, amidst many other sights and sounds, we watched Mockingbirds do their thing. Which is noisy territorial policing. In the distance, a Mockingbird chased a female Kestrel. (This also happened quite a bit with the local #BrooklynKestrels after fledging; a Mocker seemed to…
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Park-ing
Did you know the verb parking originally meant setting up strips of park, often with trees, in the center or the edges of roads? Then those trees along the road were roped into being used to tie up horses. The meaning of parking thus changed: it became what you did to your horse. From there…
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A Study in Sterna
*** “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth.” — Vaclav Havel
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Juglans cinerea?
This tree, which was filled with squirrels going after its obviously delicious nuts a couple of weeks ago, puzzled me. At first I thought it was walnut, but the leaflets seemed too big and the fruits were ovoid as opposed to round and they didn’t have that distinctive smell of walnut fruits. Pecan? Too many…
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Raptor Wednesday
A family of Osprey at Marine Park about three weeks ago. Parents on the posts. One youngster trying out those great big wing things, which can stretch to nearly six feet. The middle one squirting a squiggle of poop into the marsh. A tree grows in Brooklyn, too, or at least a bush grows on…
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Backyard and Beyond 