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Field Notes: B&W Warbler
Warbler-mania continues. This is a black and white warbler, Mniotilta varia, one of the most common and easiest to see (and hence photograph). By ear, it’s the omnipresent “weesa weesa weesa weesa weetee weetee wettee” (Sibley’s transliteration) of the woods today. The lack of a black cheek tells me this a female. She has a…
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Life Goatsucker!
My first ever goatsucker, so called because of the wackily mistaken belief that the nighthawks and nightjars suckled goats. Actually, they are efficient nocturnal insect eaters. This handsome scamp was in the Midwood in Prospect Park, midway between Rick’s Place & the Boulder Bridge. I believe it is one of the nightjars, a whip-poor-will, Caprimulgus…
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Field Notes: Chipmunk
The eastern chipmunk, Tamias striatus. They are now fully emerged from their winter torpor and found all over Prospect Park (another good reason to obey the city’s leash laws). I’ve always been partial to them and I love the “racing stripes” along their sides. This one was not meeting me eye-to-eye in the Vale of…
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Field Trip: Staten Island
Staten Island was the last of the city’s five borough’s to develop. Most of that development came after the Verrazano Bridge opened in 1964, so it was late “post-war” but it was definitely suburban (some of it god-awful). It remains the least populated part of the city; hence, it is the greenest of the boroughs.…
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Warblering
Shhh, I’m out “hunting” warblers… Before I started birding, I wasn’t aware of the wood-warblers. Like many things, like natural history things in particularly, if you aren’t looking for them, you probably won’t see them. Fast-moving, small, and seasonal, they usually don’t show up in backyards. They are high in leafy trees (some species), and…
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Field Notes: Galls
Happy Arbor Day. Love the trees…like a gall… Galls are abnormal growths of plant material caused by the invasion of an alien entity, typically insects and mites. The gall wasps may be the most famous of the gall-forcing insects. Some galls are balls, some are nut-like, some are leaf-spiky — like the ones above, found…
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Field Notes: Prospect
I don’t have a telephoto lens, so my shots here on the blog are usually macro and non-avian. But I captured some not terribly bad shots of birds recently while walking around Prospect Park Lake. There is usually a cohort of feral domesticated ducks to be found around Prospect Park Lake. Ducks are birds that…
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Worms
Last year, on a night walk in Inwood Park, our guide said that earthworms were slowly transforming, indeed, destroying, our northern hardwood forests. Whoa! I’d never heard that before and wanted to look into it. After all, earthworms are the gardener’s and the composter’s friend, right? Hasn’t that been drummed into our heads for years?…
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Turtles
On Saturday, a day of glorious spring, the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden at the BBG was thick with turtles soaking up the heat of the sun. Being cold blooded, they really need that heat. On the other hand, they can usually survive the winter, and freezing water, quite nicely. Some bury themselves in the…
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In the woods
Mayapples, Podophyllum peltatum, not yet in bloom, in Prospect Park. “He loved the woods for their freshness, their sublime solitudes, their vastness, and the impress they everywhere bore of the divine hand of their Creator. He seldom moved through them without pausing to dwell on some peculiar beauty that gave him pleasure […]” James Fenimore…
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Backyard and Beyond 