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City Life
A scene from Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens, NY. My friend Traci Paris has launched a beginner’s guide to noticing and exploring nature in the five boroughs of New York City called Slow Nature Fast City. You should check it out. (It’s inspiring me to shake up the design of this blog, now in its…
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Raven Family Over Sunset Park
The sound of Fish Crows made me look out the window late this morning. This was my view (well, with a little help from my camera) from up here on the Harbor Hill Moraine. And those are the crows on top of each of the neighboring water towers.Which makes these huge midnight figures on the…
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House Wren
Troglodytes aedon, the House Wren. Don’t think I’ve so noticed or appreciated the yellow of the lower part of the bill before.Hard to miss when they’re singing, characteristically from an open, exposed spot above their territory. This year, I’ve seen/heard them in Jamaica Bay, Native Flora Garden, and Prospect Park. Last year a pair…
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A Perfect Day for Night Heron Fishing
Black-crowned Night Heron, Nycticorax nycticorax, the world’s most wide-spread heron species.Of course we have them in Brooklyn. This was a morning low tide at Bush Terminal Park.They tend to be most active at night, as per their namesake, but if the foraging is good… A greenish tinge in the lores on this one? Have never…
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Sturnus vulgaris
Third day in a row of young’uns, because it is the season. Starlings. Eating leftover school lunches with that wonderfully prying bill. This one was having trouble keep a grip on the plastic bag, toes sliding out from under…
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Eyas of the Gowanus
A correspondent let me know that there was a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) nest on a fire-escape in Gowanus. I headed over as soon as I could. When I lived in Cobble Hill, I often crossed the Valley of the Shadow of the Gowanus by foot and sometimes saw RTH soaring overhead or on top…
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Naval Cemetery Landscape
A prairie grows in Brooklyn, atop the decommissioned naval hospital cemetery at the Brooklyn Naval Yard. The Naval Cemetery Landscape is part of the Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. It is small, compact, and very grass-green.The day we visited last week was hot as global-warming-damned August, but the flowers will still mostly not yet in bloom.Some of…
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Sunset Park Elm
The intensity of summer green is settling in on our elm tree. A man was whacking his martial arts stick against the low-slung branch. I suppose I would eventually call 911 if it fell on him.
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Owlet
A Barn Owl (Tyto alba) toddler, looking rather alien, can just be glimpsed inside this nest box via long focus. Rather unique looking, Barn Owls are found all over the world, with some 46 recognized subspecies (!), including one on the Galapagos that is half the size of the North American version. Island dwarfism in…
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Solar Power
Great Heron (Ardea alba) and Green Heron (Butorides virescens) on the Crescent Water rotator-thingie (I think it churns up the water to get oxygen in there). The egret has just swallowed a golden fish. Check out those toes.A salute to solar energy, the basis of all life.
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Backyard and Beyond 