birding
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Winter is for waterfowl
Water, water, everywhere, and ducks amuck on much of it. Winter officially departs in just a little over a week (“here’s your hat/what’s your hurry?”), which means that many of the ducks found within the New York City area will shortly be heading north for their breeding grounds. Like Rick in Casablanca, they came here…
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Twilight JBWR
Yesterday was the first anniversary of this blog. It’s been a lot of fun and I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves, too. I want to thank all my regular readers, first time visitors, random googlers and members of the Academy for coming along for the ride.The birds fly into the West Pond of Jamaica Bay Wildlife…
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Virgin Gorda Birds
I had the good fortune to spend last week on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. I’ve never been anywhere near the Antilles, Greater or Lesser, so I was quite unfamiliar with the flora and fauna. I’ll be posting shots and thoughts over the next week or so detailing explorations and discovers. In summary,…
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Coney Island Creeky
Coney Island is no longer an island and it is no longer full of what the Dutch called konijn, or, as the English would say, conies — that is, rabbits. Coney Island Creek, which cuts into the western end of the neighborhood, is all that remains of the watery border between the erstwhile island and…
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Just ducks, ducky
The other day I was actually heard to express some weariness with winter. Even me. Mostly, I’m just tired of putting on and taking off my boots, putting on and taking off my boots. A surefire antidote to the winter ice blues, though, is to go looking for waterfowl. These fat-swaddled birds let the cold…
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Three hour harbor tour
Thalatta, thalatta! cried Xenophon’s Greeks when, after a long struggle, they finally saw the Black Sea again. (In modern Greek, it’s thalasssa, thalassa, the sea, the sea!) I often think of this rejoicing when I see the water. Like the Aegean, another cradle of civilizations, New York City is an archipelago, with almost all of…
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Cardinals
I’m betting that an awful lot of people who say they don’t know their birds can recognize the cardinals. The Northern Cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, is one of our most distinctive year-around birds. They are particularly obvious in winter, when the red male sticks out like a tropical flower in the snow. The female, although less…
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Winter Trio
The winter beach can be an unforgiving landscape, scraped by the wind and beaten by the waves. There are almost always dead sea birds to be found washed ashore. This red-breasted merganser was on its way to being thoroughly recycled. Note the serrated jaws here, a characteristic of the species notably lacking in the loons.…
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Winter II
Maybe it was my peripatetic upbringing, but I didn’t know until fairly recently that trees carry their buds all through winter. I just assumed they appeared right before they opened up as the days grew longer and temperatures rose in the spring. This was another instance of my not actually seeing while I was looking.…
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Owl Week: Golden
There are some 181 species of owls in the world. Nineteen breed in North America. The one above is one of the many symbolic or metaphysical types. You’ll find it atop the ornate entrance of the Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch, Grand Army Plaza, along with the golden characters of some great American books. Glaukos,…
Backyard and Beyond 