birds
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Fallout
The lighthouse keeper on Machias Seal Island — kept there by the Canadian Coast Guard to make sure the little island, claimed by both Canada and the US, stays Canadian, O Canada… but I digress — the lighthouse keeper took this sequence of photos on the night of May 24 this year. Bad weather caused…
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Harriman State Park
(Or, Catskills Day 2, Part II) On the way back we stopped off at Silvermine Lake in Harriman State Park. The mountain laurel, Kalmia latifolia, was in bloom. Barn swallows were swooshing all around, and nesting on one of the park structures.We walked along a trail on the south side of the lake. A snake…
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The Catskills ~ Day 2
We started the morning in the thickest fog any of us had ever seen. It lifted as we descended down towards Hunter, NY.We couldn’t resist stopping in this former drive-in on Route 296 south of Windham, now claimed by a meadow. The gate proudly claims “we will be back,” but that seems unlikely. Meanwhile, this…
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The Catskills ~ Day I
Four of us journeyed up to the Catskills this past weekend, daring the iffy, drippy weather. (Considering it was close to 100 degrees in NYC last week, we enjoyed a 50-degree drop going up there.) On the way up, we stopped at the RamsHorn-Livingstone Sanctuary in the town of Catskill. At this Scienic Hudson/NYAudubon administered…
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In Prospect Park
A walk in Prospect Park never fails to turn up something exciting in the animal/vegetable/mineral kingdoms, even if I’m paying more attention to the conversation. When the conversation is with NYC Wildflower Week’s Mariellé Anzelone, there’s plenty to learn. For instance, I think I can now actually name the two flowers pictured here. That’s one…
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City Kestrels
Or: The Importance of Falling Apart. An intriguing passage in Bernd Heinrich’s The Nesting Season about German architects incorporating nesting spaces for such cavity nesters as Eurasian kestrels, jackdaws, and swifts, in new buildings got me thinking about Bob DeCandido’s project of tracking American kestrel nest sites in old buildings in New York City. In…
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Chicago Lights
My friend Cathy has been finding dead birds in the Windy City, victims of high-rise glass towers and bright lights. The migration seasons in particular takes an enormous toll. Here’s some more information about how skyscrapers kill and what can be done about it. This is a picture she sent me: it’s an Eastern bluebird,…
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Colors of Spring
Redbud. Orange fungus. American robin blue. Grey squirrel (black variant) & magnolia. Burnt orange fungus. Black dog, having a hell of a time trying to get out of the Lullwater.
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Hot Spot
This part of the Ambergill in Prospect Park has become a hot spot for watching birds bathe. I saw my first indigo buntings of the season here this week, and many other species are coming in to dip and shake those tail feathers, including all manner of orioles and warblers. The shallow pools on the…
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Confessions of a warblerholic
The wood warblers have returned, as they have done for millennia unnumbered. They are coming out of a night sky thick with migrating birds, thickets that show up on Doppler radar like weather patterns, falling on the green islands of the city to eat furiously before catching another tailwind to fly north to breed. And…
Backyard and Beyond 