birding
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Water Bugs and Birds
Under a thin layer of ice, two true bugs in the Crescent Water. The first is a water boatman, the second a backswimmer. Not all of the pond was iced over. Aerators keep donut holes of water ice-free, and the edge along one side of the pond was also open. This Eastern Phoebe was making…
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Breeding Birds
The third edition of the New York State Breeding Bird Atlas project is underway. So far I’ve submitted observations to ebird of American Kestrels mating and Common Ravens carrying nesting material. One of them, anyway. I almost always hear these big corvids before I see them. One of their most common calls is a “ha-rupp”…
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Raptor Wednesday
Passing Bald Eagle. Coasting Red-tailed Hawk. On Saturday, there were four overhead at the same time. Merlin. I regularly saw them late last year, but this was the last time I spotted one, back in the middle of January. American Kestrel male perched on this 1960s vision of a future telecommunications center. Female and male…
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Raptor Wednesday
Aren’t you glad you’re not an inch tall, or, conversely, that these things aren’t forty feet tall? This young Red-tailed hawk, the same bird seen nearly an hour earlier, flew into a corner of Green-Wood that is sometimes patrolled by a male American Kestrel. The falcon was there! He set up a hue and cry,…
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Indigestible
Looks like feathers. Some bone fragments. These are pellets hawked up by various birds. The above three photos were all taken in rather close proximity, but under different trees. Examples in the third picture were found all bunched up like this. Too small for Great Horned, too big for Saw-Whet. Owl pellets are the most…
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Superb Owl Sunday
The Blue Jays bought me here. This was a sighting in late September. In October, I found a single Great Horned Owl feather, its down all entangled so that it flew like a flag. Imagine, at night, the silent sweep of one of these large birds while the traffic grunts and vomits a few hundred…
Backyard and Beyond 