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Friday’s Feet
“The angels wanna wear my red shoes,” sings Elvis Costello. Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) don’t often swim, but they can.
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Swift Dispatch
This Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) gobbled his fly prey up with startling swiftness.
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Incoming!
A Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) was raising vocal hell. Then it started to fly straight at me, arrow-like. I instinctively flinched as it passed over head. No fool I. The bird spun around, and returned for another strafing. I’ve been here before. This kind of dive-bombing is classic nest protection strategy for terns; that little…
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Osprey Appeal
Did you know you can help fund the satellite tracking of a Jamaica Bay osprey on his return trip to Latin America later this year? And, come next spring, if all goes well, the bird’s return trip up the coast back to Jamaica Bay? The Osprey’s Journey Project is fundraising to keep that uplink going.…
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Gnawy
Bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) cutting away at the black locust hand-rails at the Native Plant Garden at NYBG.Look at those mandibles! Several hundred workers in a colony will build up those football-sized nests so beloved by nature bloggers from wood pulp and saliva; it looks like a lot of work, because it doesn’t seem like…
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Killdeer
A Killdeer blends in nicely with these beach pebbles along the southwest shore of Staten Island.But note this binomial: Charadrius vociferus. I heard three of them long before I ever saw them.
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Three Books
Sometimes I find the perfect description about what I’m up to here: “In an age when the ecological integrity of our planet is threatened on so many levels, anything that strengthens those connections, or makes meaningful our daily arrangements with the world around us, is a form of resistance, a kind of love forged with…
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Pollen Bumble Rumble
Flying between these absurdly large flowers of hybrid rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), this bumblebee was practically glowing yellow from all the pollen.But note how the wings remain mostly clean. Bees are hairy, the hairs statically charged to help pollen stick to them. Of course, you wouldn’t want your wings to be laden with pollen or…
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Twenty-Spotted
On the veldt of my arm, a tiny lady beetle that turned out to be the 20-spotted, Psyllobora vigintimaculata. Found throughout most of the US, barring FL and the SE coast, and into Canada. Unlike most lady bugs, carnivorous-chompers if there ever were any, the Pysllobora genus ladies are fungus-eaters. The “Latin” name of the…
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Shaggy
Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata) is one of the great trees of the eastern forests. This distinctive peely bark makes them easy to distinguish from most of the other species of native North American hickories. However, the Shellbark (C. laciniosa) is also known as Bigleaf Shagbark; its uncommon in rich bottom lands in the arteries of…
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Backyard and Beyond 