birds
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No. Ro. Wi.
Rare to see a swallow perched. Yet Northern Rough-winged Swallows, they of the long name, seem to do it more than the Barn and Tree Swallows they were sharing the Sylvan Water’s insects with. Stelgidopteryx serripennis, scraper wing saw feather.
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Raptor Wednesday
We had to be away from the #BrooklynKestrels Lookout for a week. All the trees leafed out in our absence. Except for this bare branch sticking upright across the street. Yes! The wee falcons are still going strong. Yesterday morning around 8:30 the male announced his presence with swirling call. He had prey. The female…
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House
Whose nest is this?Why, it’s Passer domesticus, of course. The House Sparrow. Usually stuffed into a hole in a building, or, better yet, a stop light pole, this tornado of dried grasses is generally invisible. House Sparrows are unrelated to the New World sparrows; sometimes they are called weaver finches, and looking at the woven…
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Bird Boxing
It’s a little late in the year for this, but I just found this book. It’s a very good place to start if you want to set up and maintain — stress on the maintain — bird homes for the next breeding season and the ones after that. Habitat, siting, building, monitoring, maintaining are all…
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Raptor Wednesday
When I spotted this male American Kestrel on the ground and some of the smaller tombstones, I thought, whoa, a way of hunting I’ve never seen before! But look at that left wing. It’s damaged. I followed. This, of course, made the bird move away from me. I formulated a make-shift falcon-catching situation out of…
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Kestrels
This male is a hell of a provider. I’ve seen three feedings per day recently, in which the male will bring prey to a perch, pluck and eat some, and then noisily give to the female. Caught a glimpse of her. She’s coming out of the nest to take food. He has popped into the…
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Portrait of a Kingfisher
Female Belted Kingfisher. I half wondered if the binomial Megaceryle alcyon had anything to do with big hair…. The genus name is from the Greek for “great sea bird,” or a king fisher, if you will. The specific epithet is from a Greek myth: Alcyon mourned so for her drowned husband that the gods turned…
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Raptor Wednesday
Other American Kestrels. Six or seven blocks away from home as the falcon flies is Green-Wood Cemetery. From one corner of the cemetery, you can see the top corner of my apartment building, so naturally I wonder if the #BrooklynKestrels pair have hunted there.This is a male I saw recently in Green-Wood, above Sylvan Water.…
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Earth Day
I’m a 24/7/365 celebrator of Earth — doubters could start with oxygen — but here, for the official Earth Day, are some of the avian life forms who’ve visited my part of the ol’ oblate spheroid this week.For instance, this Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra) hawking for insects over water for days. Wowza!And this Indigo Bunting…
Backyard and Beyond 