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The Grossly Ironic Visitor Center
A post in honor of Le quatorze juillet: One might think that conservation and conservatism have much in common, but not in this country, where conservatism is a perverse amalgam of the defense of privilege, corporate oligarchy, talibany fundamentalism, racism, and misplaced class resentment. A U.S. Congressman, with no public input, is attempting to change…
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Banding Osprey, Part I
Last year, there was one fledged Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) chick on the east end of Nantucket. Numbers had been dwindling in previous years and last year was pretty much bottom; there just weren’t any fish to be had, so the adult Osprey were traveling to hunt at the other end of the island, but that…
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Happy Birthday, Henry
To my mind, the exemplar of America is Henry David Thoreau, who was born on this day in 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. Christened “David Henry,” he changed the order of his given names when he was twenty. He was closely associated with Concord and didn’t sell many books in his lifetime, but his influence as…
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Midge
This landed on my sunglasses recently. I’d never seen anything like it before. A single pair of wings meant it should be in the order Diptera, beyond that I give thanks to Bug Guide for narrowing it down to the non-biting midges of the tribe Chironomini. Note how the forelegs are unsually long, almost like…
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Patriotism
The very red eye of an adult Eastern Towhee feeding its noisy, grey fledgling, well into a thicket but visible through binoculars, a caterpillar meal. A Cormorant sanding on the beach with its lower bill wedged into a hardshell clam. Who had who there? A Buckeye, keeping low, but unmistakable with that eyespot pattern.Low to…
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Small Milkweed Bug
Yes, there’s a Large Milkweed Bug, too. This is Lygaeus kalmii. The bright colors are warning you, o bug-eating one, that this critter is a bitter pill to swallow: sucking on milkweed juice — as a true bug of the Hemiptera order, it’s a sucker not a chewer — makes it so.
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Common Tern
“Comintern”? It’s a wonder these things weren’t exterminated during the Cold War. Sterna hirundo. This one was fishing from the pier, leaning over and examining the water for several moments before dropping down to capture a small fry. A couple of days later, I saw another, or perhaps the same bird, perching on the pier,…
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On Jamaica Bay
Aboard the Golden Sunset out of Sheepshead Bay with the American Littoral Society’s Jamaica Bay Ecology Cruise. Looking across Jo Co’s Marsh towards You Know Where, which is about nine miles away as the crow flies. Speaking of flying, JFK is immediately to the right, launching planes one after the other, including the somewhat terrifying…
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Fledgling
Northern Mockingbird in Brooklyn Bridge Park about an hour ago. This may be the very bird noted by a fellow BBP scout.
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Backyard and Beyond 