Tansy madness continued on November 1st.

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Recently, I’ve seen this male American Kestrel with songbird, dragonfly, and mantis prey. Here he has a lizard, picked off the ground along with some grasses. These introduced lizards have become a major source of food for our local Kestrels. *** Tuesday’s disaster will be a disaster for the environment and biodiversity like it will…

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There has been a big shake-up in raptor taxonomy. American Goshawk (Astur atricapillus) and Coopers Hawk (Astur cooperii) have been removed from genus Accipiter. These two are closely-related; there has even been evidence that they can hybridize. They are not, however, closely related to the Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipter striatus), which remains an Accipiter. Convergent evolution…

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October 31st: about the only thing in bloom is this Tansy/Tanacentum vulgare. It’s kinda stinky. And a pollinator magnet: These bees, wasps, and flies were attracting Vespula wasps as well. The activity was intense. I came back the next day…

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Barring late Common Green Darners, the Autumn Meadowhawk/Sympetrum vicinum is usually the last dragonfly of the season. These photos from October 29th, when they were a lot of them around Sylvan Water and, to a lesser degree, Valley Water in Green-Wood. Two days later, an even warmer day, there was much less activity at both…

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Willow Oak/Quercus phellos.

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This was sweet. Two Red-breasted Nuthatches, so damn small up close. First some shots of the one on the upper right: And now the other one: This second one actually perched in the same spot as the first after the first flew further up in the tree.

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On the theory that the back door is in the shade, here’s the front door to this European Paperwasp nest site:

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This young Red-tailed Hawk may have been one of the four I’d seen in the air just a short while earlier. This pose usually means business…

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