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Limbs Up
A dead street tree presents a wintery image on 9th Street. One of those cultivars that reaches high.
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Pacific Great Horned
I didn’t recognize this owl at first. Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus) run rather darker in the shadowed forests of the Pacific northwest, under all those Douglas-firs and dripping epiphytes. They also don’t have orange faces, as our eastern birds do. This female is 16 years old and has lived at the Portland Audubon Nature Sanctuary’s wildlife rehab…
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You can see the slugs and the trees
A brief trip to some of the wet rainforests of the northwest was a revelation. There will be more to come, but shall we begin with an atypical sublimity?Banana slug, Ariolimax genus,perhaps A. columbianus, Pacific Banana Slug? There are two other species, and differentiating them sounds a bit gross. About 4″ long.These are named for…
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Raptor Wednesday
I have been sighting Peregrine(s) on St. Michael’s tower again regularly. Here at twilight.Another late afternoon instance. The church, two long avenue blocks away, is at the limit of my optics; I really need a good spotting scope for this scene.There are two large roof-top fancy pigeon coops in the area, one that frequently flies…
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Flickering
If you’re going to hide in the ornamental cherry, don’t be screeching. But then, nobody ever accused the Northern Flickers (Colaptes auratus) of being subtle, with their loud calls, white rumps, and flickering yellow underwings (red in the West). Not to mention this palate of plumage…
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LBJs & CFWs
Or, in birding parlance, the “little brown jobs” and “confusing fall warblers.” The little brown jobs aren’t necessarily all that brown once you get a good look at them, but they are small and flighty. The confusing fall warblers are now in their regular plumage, not their distinctive spring breeding feathers. These are not the…
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Nyssa Shine
These shiny red leaves are Nyssa sylvatica, Black Tupelo or Black Gum. One of the great fall color trees. Have you been bathing in fall colors?
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Newtown Creek
This is the design on the back of Newtown Creek Alliance business cards. What the…? Ah, of course. It’s the creek, coming off the East River to divide Queens, on top and to the right, and Brooklyn. The Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint is essentially a peninsula. To be more specific, it was a marshy creek,…
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Butorides virescens
An inside source tells me that there was indeed a Green Heron nest in Green-Wood this season.Behold a juvenile; there are at least two. This one caught two fish as it walked around the edge of the pond towards me. These pics are from earlier this month. They will fly south any… minute now. After…
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Backyard and Beyond 