birds
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Cyanocitta cristata
Blue Jay. Called by Linnaeus Corvus cristatus. Still a Corvidae. In his five volume Ornithological Biography,* written to accompany The Birds of America, Audubon begins the Blue Jay section with “Reader, look at the plate in which are presented three individuals of this beautiful species, — rogues though they be, and thieves, as I would…
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Raptor Wednesday
This Red-tailed Hawk remained perched as four of us walked underneath it on the path.We’re probably too big to eat.And from the other side. That’s an Osprey on the upper right in the distance. * Timothy Snyder’s pamphlet On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century should be distributed to motel rooms. Or posted on the…
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Not Just The Legs
It’s a long stretch from the edge to the water.Yet this Green Heron (Butorides virescens) not only got this frog but dipped it back into the water over and over again until a car flushed the heron and it flew off with its hominid-looking prey. That’s a long neck. And the dipping? Making lunch easier…
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Whole Birds
Was there some grumbling about Tuesday’s bird-parts photos? Here’s an Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla) to tide you over until you get outside.And a Chestnut-sided Warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica).One of my favorite warblers. A Veery (Catharus fuscescen), our least marked thrush.Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina), our most-marked thrush.Scarlet Tanager (Piranga olivacea), le rouge et le noir.
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Raptor Wednesday
A new Red-tailed Hawk nest on a Park Slope church. The nest got some media attention. Evidently the church fathers thought it would be fitting that there be a contest to name the birds, encapsulating Christianity’s misguided view of nature. I haven’t see any sign of hawks yet. My last pass by was Monday. The…
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Barely Glimpsed Birds
This is a natural history blog, not a photographic one. I try to use my best pictures for illustrative purposes, but my PowerShot SX50 definitely isn’t a SLR with a long lens. Sometimes I get a fine shot. Often not. You’ll notice few in-flight images here, for instance. And sometimes I get shots for reference’s…
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Swallows and Swifts
Dr. Johnson, in his 59th year, 1768 (per wee Jaimie Boswell): “He seemed pleased to talk of natural philosophy. ‘That woodcocks, (said he,) fly over the northern countries, is proved, because they have been observed at sea. Swallows certainly sleep all the winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, then…
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Raptor Wednesday
A pair of Bald Eagles immediately after mating.We heard them before we saw them.Haliaeetus leucocephalus make some very un-eagle-like sounds. (That’s because they are usually dubbed over with the calls of Red-tailed Hawks in the professional bullshit business of entertainment.) The sound that alerted us to their presence is described on the Cornell sound page…
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Audubon II
There is darn little art without political economy. Welcome back to another way of looking at John James Audubon. In his book, Audubon’s Elephant, detailing the difficulties of getting the double elephant edition of Birds of America published in Britain, Duff Hart-Davis says Audubon’s portfolio weighed a hundred pounds. Hart-Davis doesn’t inform us that when Audubon referred to…
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Turning Tern
Do you have as much difficulty with terns as I do?This is a Forster’s (Sterna forsteri) in (mostly) non-breeding plumage. A good field mark is that dark mask and pale nape. Also most helpful: not moving for a good long view. * The Anatomy of Liberal Melancholy is food for thought, as is this appreciation…
Backyard and Beyond 