birding
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Hunkering Down With Ardea herodias
November 25th.December 8th.December 9th. You will notice that the water is iced over in the last picture, making fishing problematic. With fish and frogs out of the picture, what is this young Great Blue Heron eating? Whatever it can catch, presumably, including birds and small mammals. I wonder if it’s policing the Dell Water for…
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Larix Snack
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) in a larch (Larix) scarfing up… something. It looked like popcorn. It was too big for a seed from the cones, which wouldn’t be white anyway. And besides, the things were also being gleaned from the limbs. I guess they was some kind of larvae. Something that thought they could while…
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Raptor Wednesday
A screaming Blue Jay, a dark silhouette in the tree. If the bird sits still long enough — no guarantee with the jumpy Accipiters — maybe we can get around to the front end and……see if there’s a bit of color on the front end of the raptor situation. This is an adult Cooper’s Hawk.…
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Hammer and Tongs
In the depths of a Callery pear tree, whose fruit was simultaneously being ravaged by Monk Parakeets, this determined Red-breasted Nuthatch hammered away at nuts ferreted out of a neighboring arborvitae. From food tree to anvil tree, over and over again.While Green-Wood has been awash in White-breasted Nuthatches, a few Red-breasted have been present as…
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Raptor Wednesday
This was quite a drama. Several Blue Jays chasing a Sharp-shinned Hawk from tree to tree in Green-Wood. The hawk couldn’t escape the persecution.There was no perch free from the jays.The noise, of course, was terrific. There’s nothing like Blue Jays for alarums and excursions of the vocal kind. The hawk eventually moved on. It’s…
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Tufted
When last we saw a Tufted Titmouse on this blog, it was eating a dead Winter Wren. That was surprising. But here we’re back to a more regular diet, of seeds and nuts in winter; this bird briefly emerged from a thick conglomeration of shrubbery with something edible in bill.There were three in the thicket,…
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Revealed by The Fall
One day this summer I saw and heard several Baltimore Orioles around this linden. It was so thickly leafed I couldn’t see a nest, but it was pretty clear there was one in there.Woven from grasses and human garbage, suspended like a flapper’s purse. These things always surprise me because they seem so improbable as…
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A Very Warbler Thanksgiving
Debonair male Black-throated Blue, Setophaga caerulescens. They winter mainly in the Caribbean, with some going to the Bahamas and some to the eastern side of the Yucatan. Seen here October 19.While the male BTB sports the same general plumage in the off-breeding as in the breeding season, Palm Warblers (Setophaga palmarum) are much more subdued…
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Raptor Wednesday
It seems like there are American Kestrels everywhere. But how many? Without banding or electronic tracking, I can’t say for sure. But: There were three individual males, a new record, seen together from the windows here recently. There was much tail-pumping amongst the trio as they perched near each other on building and tree. The…
Backyard and Beyond 