birds
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Monday Again?
Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius). Shorebirds are already on the move, heading south from their breeding grounds. I saw at least two of these in Green-Wood yesterday. Like the Solitary Sandpiper (Tringa solitaria), this species is often seen away from the ocean shore, along freshwater shores. In its non-breeding plumage, as now, the Spotted lacks the…
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Wild Pigeons
“When an individual is seen gliding through the woods, it passes like a thought, and on trying to see it again, the eye searches in vain; the bird is gone,” so wrote John James Audubon on the Passenger Pigeon, which is of course now long gone. Audubon — who cribbed from Alexander Wilson more than…
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Raptor Wednesday
Ran into a family of four Bald Eagles at Mt. Loretto on Staten Island. Haliaeetus leucocephalus: this is one of this year’s youngsters. The white head and tail feathers come in fully by age 4 or so. The bird was making a racket, calling its parents for food. Big, but still learning. An adult flew…
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Some Birds
House Wren. Looks like they were nesting in this old snag.Brown-headed Cowbird male. The female was nearby. Sign. Look up:Robins; late or second brood. I usually only catch Little Blue Herons distantly, passing overhead at Jamaica Bay or bobbing distantly about in the marshes there. This one was hunting on Spring Pond in Blue Heron…
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How Great?
The Great Egret, Ardea alba.Working it.And another. Black toes, yellow bill. White plumes once worth so much the birds were almost slaughtered to extinction.
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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…
Backyard and Beyond 