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Cellophane Nests
A south-facing slope with open patches of dirt. Look closer… Here’s somebody’s nest. I had to come back another day to see her in there. Unequal Cellophane Bee/Colletes inaequalis. Looks like another. And another. Like most of our wild bee species, Cellophane bees are solitary nesters. They may aggregate their nests in suitable terrain. There…
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Raptor Wednesday
The female. The nest? Sure looks like it, after all. Within a minute of her entry into the hole, the pigeons were back. These showed up across the street during the two days I didn’t pass by. These will provide quite the smorgasbord for a growing Kestrel family.
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Kestrels, Pt. II
Walking by the kestrel copulation building looking for little falcons and holes and cornices. Nothing from across the street. But from a block away… I see the male perched above a rather small hole. Could this be it? I think so, but damn it looks like a tight fit. But I want confirmation: to see…
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Kestrels, Pt. I
A female American Kestrel perched in a pine on the edge of Green-Wood took off and headed towards the Neo-Gothic gatehouse, stirred up the Monk Parrots, rounded it, and came back towards me and the fence. She landed on a chimney pot a full block away. And she had prey with her up there. Gosh,…
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Bee Knowing
This book will buzz your world. Pollinator ecologist Buchmann has put together a very readable compendium of what we have learned about the “thoughts, memories, and personalities of bees.” Every word in that subtitle except “and” will probably come as a surprise to many people not keeping up with the scientific literature. Bees and other…
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Night Warbling
Friend-of-blog Geoff Wisner has a new book coming out. Pre-ordering it at this link saves you money and supports the Thoreau Society, not that nasty plutocratic emperor of Amazon. The book gathers a large sampling of Thoreau’s many writings about birds over the years and organizes them through a single calendrical year. This will doubtlessly…
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More Early Bees
Last week it jumped up to almost 70F. It’s dropped quite bit since, but it resulted in a bloom, so to speak of bees. Note the slits in the sides of the Japanese Andromeda/Pieris japonica flowers above. This Two-spotted Bumble Bee/Bombus bimaculatus is sticking her tongue into the flower opening to suck up that sweet…
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Backyard and Beyond 