birds
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A Tale of Two Kingfishers
A female Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon) in Green-Wood Cemetery recently. You almost always hear these birds before you see them. This one wasn’t rattling loudly, it was more of a whisper or grumble under her breath. Nonetheless, my ears crested, as it were, when I heard that dry sound. I find Kingfishers generally intolerant of…
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Raptor Wednesday
Old faithful: Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). You will see these all over the city, as often perched upon a human edifice as in tree. The guard at Woodlawn Cemetery’s Jerome/Bainbridge Avenue gate said there’s frequently a Red-tail atop this chapel’s steeple. Further into the grounds, I heard a Common Raven making that distinctive knocking sound…
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Raptor Wednesday
A couple of species of raptors have been called Chicken Hawks, so the name isn’t very definitive.I’m using it here for this Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) because there are actually chickens in a yard next to this building in the Bronx. Roosters, too (technically illegal because of the noise, but law isn’t much enforced in…
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After the Woodcock Storm
On Saturday, I couldn’t help flushing more than two dozen “mud bats,” or American Woodcock (Scolopax minor), in Green-Wood Cemetery during an hour’s walk. On Sunday, although we spent nearly three hours there and covered a much greater extent of the grounds, we only only found three. One of them, though, allowed us to observe…
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Woodcock Moon
According to a tweet from a British wildlife trust, November’s first full moon is known as a Woodcock Moon because it “coincides with an influx of these nocturnal woodlanders.” Well, yesterday, on this side of the Atlantic, following Friday night’s full moon, Green-Wood Cemetery was positively timberdoodle-riffic. I counted, conservatively, twenty-eight of the buffy orange-bellied…
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Et in Arcadia Ego
Still sparrow, moving fly.A White-throated Sparrow, no doubt recently arrived from the north. In NYC, dead birds can be reported to NYC Audubon. This database is intended to track window- and building-strikes. This bird was found in the middle of McGolrick Park, but I noted it anyway. It’s All Hallows, the Day of the Dead,…
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The Blackbird of Song and Legend
The Common or Eurasian Blackbird, Turdus merula. Unlike our New world blackbirds, this is a thrush, and rather similar to the American Robin (Turdus migratorius) in habit. Our blackbirds are Icteridae; the thrushes are Turdidae. Our Robin, meanwhile, isn’t related to their Robin (Erithacus rubecula).This is the bird that bursts out of the pie, alive…
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Raptor Wednesday
We were eating dinner in Park Slope, near a known hole-in-the-cornice Kestrel nest site. After dinner, we noticed a Kestrel making sorties for bugs up a side street. The bird returned to this perch twice and was still there as we left the scene.
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Fall-ish
Yesterday was the first day it felt like fall, more than three weeks past the equinox. And then it dropped to 41 overnight. This morning the radiators were gurgling. Locally, not many leaves have turned yet, but these, fallen from a Nyssa sylvatica (Black Gum, Black Tupelo), are in the mood.This Eastern Phoebe was a…
Backyard and Beyond 