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Blooms and Pods
Smooth Aster Goldenrod. Honeylocust.
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Monarchs
The air above Fort Tilden’s narrow reach was full of Tree Swallows and, to a lesser extent, Monarch Butterflies. The Monarchs were being pushed hard towards the east in the breeze. We saw about a dozen of them. One was quite high, noticed as we watched a Peregrine on patrol way up there.Danaus plexippus. Some…
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Merlin Hunting
A plump silhouette on a dead pine. The first rule of birding is to always look at the anomalies. And hope the sun comes out! Because that, and an old concrete gun platform to lean on, makes for a better photograph.This bird was hunting around these dead pines at Fort Tilden. It perched on several…
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Man Ray’s Sea Horse
After enjoying immensely the Sargent exhibit at the Met, I ran into this Man Ray gelatin silver print of 1930, “Histoire naturelle.” The text panel describes it as a petrified sea horse, at rather larger-than-life scale, supposedly as part of a Surrealist effort to defamiliarize ordinary objects. Simpler times.
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Bombus/Solidago
The cold snap combined with the rain took the bees by storm. They were clustered to various late summer blossoms Friday and Saturday, stunned if not lost. But yesterday, the air warmed, and by afternoon the sun was out. The goldenrods at Fort Tilden were alight with a few of these hardy little beasts. Note…
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The Way of All Flesh
The other day I wondered what our Common Ravens are eating. They are greatly attracted to carrion; but how much carrion is found in New York City? This young Raccoon was gone the next day: presumably staff cleaned it away. The natural process of decomposition had already begun. Scavenger wasps and flies that lay their…
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Unsaddled
The remains of a Black Saddlebags (Tramea lacerata), narrowly missed on the sidewalk.
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Straight to the Fish
The design on the sidewalk drains, reminding us that our garbage goes straight to the sea.
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Ravens Again
A pair of Ravens (Corvus corax) sailed on the stiff breeze along the shore of Bush Terminal the other day. This is where I and others have seen and heard them off and on since New Year’s Day. They have an almost floppy wing action, exacerbated by their long finger-like primary feathers. Several hours later…
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Backyard and Beyond 