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Flies
They get no respect, the two-winged insects known as flies. The biters, bloodsuckers, shit-eaters, in-flesh laying parasites, maggot-spawners. Ooooog, you say, why are you doing this to me on a Sunday morning? Well, at least they’re not Republicans. There are an estimated 17 million flies for each and every human. We’d be drowning in excrement…
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Song Again
It wasn’t the mother lode of American Robins that made me think that spring couldn’t be far off now. Most of our local Robins do head south for winter, but some stick around in wide-ranging flocks to eat fruits instead of invertebrates. Above are a few of the fifty or so I came across in…
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Sap Fall
A great frozen waterfall of beech sap stalactiting from a massive specimen. The hang here is two plus feet!Gorgeous, but a sign of distress for the tree.
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Raptor Wednesday
A Red-tailed Hawk flew by with a Gray Squirrel hanging from its talons, the long bushy tail a banner of mammalian defeat. The hawk landed in a tree and spent maybe a minuted pulling at the mammal with its beak, no doubt ending its life. But the bird then moved to another part of the…
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Songbirds
Finally, some songbirds! I’ve spent a lot of time in Green-Wood this winter and it has been barren of some of the usual winter bird suspects. So it was good to run into Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Golden-crowned Kinglet (rather unexpectedly) and a small flock of American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) all hanging close together on…
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Mammal Monday
Deer tracks on the continent. Found on the grounds of the Bartow-Pell Mansion, in Pelham Bay Park. (FYI for you out-of-towners: the Bronx is the only part of New York City that is not an island.) On nearby Hunter’s Island, part of the same park, but no longer an island. Last time we were here…
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Superb Owl
Bubo virginianusA Great Horned Owl on a recent winter day. (For completists, there actually is a Lesser Horned Owl, found in southern South America.) Click here for more superb owls. Faux superb owl… and friends.
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Democracy
Abraham Lincoln, who left copious scraps of paper with jotted thoughts instead of a diary, wrote upon one of them: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” When I…
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Nests
You might not think this is a good time of year to be talking about nests, but we found two interesting examples of the more than a few you can see in trees now that the leaves are gone. This was upside-down on the grass recently in Green-Wood near a conifer. How did it survive…
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Jawbones
Rodent. Which one? Found amid an owl (and other?) pellet bonanza recently.Jaws a-plenty, in fact, but no skulls. The last time I found a good patch of pellets, there were lots of skulls. Some owls will eat the head first, then the body later. Inch scale here.And this one with the long incisor. When I…
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Backyard and Beyond 