birding
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Agelaius phoeniceus
This nest may never have been used, but Red-winged Blackbirds definitely bred along this lakeside. Here’s one of this year’s models, still getting some help with feeding. The feather pattern is not without interest.
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Purple Martins
It’s been several years since I last ventured to the Purple Martin colony at Lemon Creek on Staten Island. There are at least half a dozen nests going now. It’s hard to count with all the comings and goings. Also, House Sparrows and European Starlings have taken some of the spaces, adding to the difficulty…
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Raptor Wednesday
A Northern Mockingbird buzzing the apex of this church on 4th Avenue and 8th Street made me glad we were at a stoplight. And had a “raptor roof” (what I believe is known to the trade as a moonroof). For there was an American Kestrel up there. At the end of June, I had a…
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Quiscalus quiscula
Another day, another Common Grackle youngster being served up a moth for lunch. Note how the young bird’s plumage lacks the iridescence of the mature bird, and is a drab gray rather than blue-black, except in the tail feathers. (That’s plastic tarp they’re hanging out on, laid down to smother phragmites.) This, about a remarkably…
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Northern Rough-winged Swallows
That’s a mouthful of a common name, but then Stelgidopteryx serripennis is a binomial tongue-exercise as well. We found five fledglings perched over the water. They were being fed at their perches and in mid-air, with the older and/or bolder siblings flying out to meet their busy parents. You can see the cinnamon color on…
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Ravens!
The Common Raven (Corvus corax) family of Brooklyn numbers four. The first I heard of them was near the end of May, when the City Birder spotted them in Green-Wood Cemetery. I first saw them on June 9th. It was 6:15 a.m. and they were turning a floppy right over the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal…
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Nests
Green Heron, evidently abandoned. A rather loose collection, looking precarious, like a Mourning Dove’s, but larger and twiggier.Red-winged Blackbird. Lots of grassy-sedgy material in these whirling constructions.Fierce defenders of their breeding areas, RWBBs will go after anything that gets in their space, including much bigger birds like Red-tailed Hawks. As I approached this lake, one…
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Nycticorax nycticorax
The cosmopolitan Black-crowned Night Heron.That binomial means “night crow night crow,” named for the squawking sound they make at night, which was supposed to remind someone of a corvid.But they do some good work in the day, too. Although you’ll often finding them like these two, waiting for the darkness.A juvenile.
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Gracklettes
With their parents noisily thrashing in the leafy underbrush nearby, a trio of young Common Grackles (Quiscalus quiscula) were doing some of their own foraging in the grass. Still being fed, but also learning to do it for themselves. I was curious to see what would happen as a Great Egret approached one of the…
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How Now, Brown Thrasher?
All three of our regional Mimidae can be found here in New York City. Northern Mockingbirds are year-around regulars, even on the streets and in backyards. The Catbirds swoosh into the parks to breed in spring and their meowing calls and other songs are a major part of the aural landscape of the woods until…
Backyard and Beyond 