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A Cooper’s Strikes
Most of the time, hawks miss. In my years of birding, I’ve never seen an accipiter or falcon successfully take bird prey in the air. Until today. And from the passenger seat of a moving car, no less. Earlier, while walking, I saw a Cooper’s hawk zooming around in the strong winds we’re having here…
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A Neighborhood Giant
One of my favorite local trees is on Warren Street. It is growing out of a yard instead of the sidewalk. Usually, when they do host trees, these little front yards of brownstone row houses have smaller ornamental fruit trees or understory specialists like dogwood that can thrive under the taller sidewalk trees. This one,…
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Anniversary
This blog was launched on this day in 2010. To celebrate, I thought I would revisit two of the most wildly popular posts of the last two years: I spot a rare visitor to Prospect Park.A boatload of us watch a humpback whale within sight of NYC’s skyscrapers. One of my personal favorites among my…
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Scale
In my experience, the internet shrinks the world, whittling our sense of scale. Everything is on a screen now, and so many of us have very small screens indeed in our hands. I’m curious to see where this leads us. I know that when I look at thumbnails on screen, I often don’t have any…
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Threatened and Endangered
The news that the Red Knot has been put on New Jersey’s Endangered list got me wondering what else was on the list, which of course got me thinking about the region. Here then are the tri-state area’s separate lists: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Fish & Wildlife’s Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.…
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Raccoon
Road kill, Flatbush Avenue and Floyd Bennett Field. This raccoon’s jaw shows you the teeth that lets this omnivore eat practically anything, from your garbage to turtle eggs. In our region, cars are the animal’s only “predator.”
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Prospect Park
It’s warm enough for turtles to be basking on the Lake, Lullwater, and Pools. Not many, but a smattering were to be seen soaking in the sun along the water course.On a birch, this cocoon is more seasonally appropriate, weathering the not very weathery winter. While I’ve been seeing flies all month already, this was…
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Pink, Yellow
Another flowering quince in the ‘hood. This one is on the north-facing side of the street, so it doesn’t get nearly as much sun as this south-facing one I photographed at the beginning of the month. And the crocuses are popping up. This patch was on Union Street.
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I Like Lichens
It being such a mizzling day, I needed some color. Luckily, this kind of weather brings out the vibrancy of the lichens on our street trees.Air pollution is generally bad news for lichens, as is ozone depletion. Walking through City Hall Park in Manhattan just before I took these shots on Union Street in Brooklyn,…
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Sweetgum Fruit
The spiky, dried fruits of the Sweetgum tree, Liquidamber styraciflua, often persist on the tree through winter. A strong wind can bring them down to the sidewalk, where the jagged orbs look otherworldly. Each fruit is composed of 40-60 capsules, which are now long since emptied of their seeds. A native tree, and a regular…
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Backyard and Beyond 