birding
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Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn
My dispatches about my Nantucket field trip will continue for several days, but, since I’m back in Brooklyn, I thought I would note the gorgeousness of spring right here, right now. White blossoms (Callery pear, apple, etc.) are falling like sprinkles of snow. The cherry trees are in perfect form. I will try to make…
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Birding Prospect
As I won’t be getting to Prospect Park for the next several days, I decided I needed an early April census of birds to compare the coming weeks to. Yesterday, I entered the Park at 9th Street and walked down to the Pools and through the Ravine and across the Midwood and the Vale and…
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Field Notes: Four Sparrow Marsh
Birding, or any other natural history pursuit, depends upon the kindness of strangers and friends. We all learn from each other. This in prelude to saying I have no anxiety of influence about this: I followed the lead of the City Birder and went to Four Sparrow Marsh yesterday. It was my first time there.…
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Scolopax minor
It was an unusually cold Saturday night, but damn it, it was spring, and the timberdoodles were in town. We went out to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge to listen for them. The American woodcock, Scolopax minor, as it is more formally known, is a shorebird that isn’t. It is related to the sandpipers, and looks…
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Field Notes
Top, left to right, Lacebark pine, crocus, snowdrop. Bottom: Paulownia seedpod, snowdrops, sweetgum seedpods. Prospect Park, Friday morning/early afternoon. Mild weather: overcast early, clearing, little to no wind. Temperature: low 40s by the time I was done, hat off, coat unzipped. I walked half way around the Lake from the south end, and then ran…
Backyard and Beyond 