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The Kestrel Week in Review
One of the female fledglings perched on The Perch made famous by her parents.Male fledging sitting. Have never seen the adults do this.Kneeling. Perching on one foot.Walking (a hulking hopping to be more exact).Speaking of perching: when thinking about American Kestrel habitat, always be sure to include plenty of places to perch. These are the…
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The Big Lie
The headline, one of many examples now, reads “Trump blames rising German crime rate on immigrants.” Yes, that’s what he said, so in that sense that is the “news.” Now his legions of the night will repeat it ad infinitum. But the facts are quite different, as is so often the case with the President…
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Go Forth This Fourth
There have been, on occasion, squawks of outrage in the comments here by people upset that I bring politics into the mix along with pretty pictures of nature. How anyone can separate the two is beyond my understanding. This is the Anthropocene: humans are geosystem engineers on an unprecedented level, transforming the planet as we…
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The Perch List
This bare knob of an upright branch at the top of an otherwise leafy London Plane has been the #BrooklynKestrels’ spot for months now. Both male and female have perched here half the year.On occasions, other birds have been spotted on it, too. Starlings and Mourning Doves are somewhat regular. A Sharp-shinned Hawk was quite…
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Mammal Monday
Ondatra zibethicus: muskrat! As busy as the proverbial beaver.Thoreau reveled in calling them “musquash.” (See Geoff Wisner’s collection of HDT on animals.) Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Senator Susan Collins says the President has assured her he won’t be asking his Supreme Court candidates about Roe v. Wade. Two things: 1) Trump’s record…
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Olof Rudbeck
Some plates from den svenska ornitologins fader. Olof Rudbeck the Younger (1660-1740), sometimes Latinized as Olaus Rudbeckius junior, is considered the father of Swedish ornithology. He was also one of Linnaeus’s teachers (whence Rudbeckia). While visiting Sverige recently, I was gifted a sumptuous reprint of Rudbeck d.y.’s Svenska fâglar. It’s a wondrous tome; I’m struggling…
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Manhattan Kestrels
The Wild Bird Fund animal rescue center in Manhattan tweeted out a picture this week of the eight fledgling American Kestrels they have in-house (!). Most were evidently found on the little island itself. I can’t say whether or not any came from the three nests I’m aware of, one which is in Manhattan. Our…
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Train
Ardea alba, the Great Egret.These long breeding plumes, known as aigrettes, were one prized by the fashion industry. (An industry as ugly in the 1890s as it is now.) Great Egrets were slaughtered wantonly for their feathers; since these feathers are breeding plumage, the birds would be shot during breeding season, condemning the next generation…
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Asclepias
Butterfly weed (A. tuberosa). My favorite.Purple (A. purpurascens). Other people’s favorite. “It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order…
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