birds
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Happy Birthday, John J.
It’s Audubon’s 232nd today. Backyard and Beyond will be noting this in several ways over the next couple of days. Some of you may be surprised to learn that John James Audubon retired to Manhattan. In 1841, upper New York County was still pretty wild, as the city more or less ended at 14th Street. Wishing…
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Cough!
A pellet of pieces of shell and pebbles. Found on a pier on the Piankatank, along with some other samples that had been smushed and otherwise disassembled. Diameter of a quarter and quite round. Who do you suppose chucked it up? Grebes, Kingfishers, Loons, Osprey out there: but they’re all fish-eaters.
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Double-crested
Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus): in case you were wondering what the double-crests are. Breeding plumage.As fine an example as any of how optical enhancement can reveal the astonishing beauty of birds. Those eyes! For anyone sliding into complacency, a perusal of Trump’s latest incoherence transcript will do the trick.
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Owlets
Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus).GHO are said to have the greatest diversity of prey of any raptor, diurnal or nocturnal. Mammals, mostly, but also birds, including other raptors. They will also eat insects, reptiles, fish, and carrion. And you know these Muppets are ravenous. By the way, is that down on their eyelids? Meanwhile, in…
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Naturalist Notes
Viola canadensis, a native violet.It was cool, so this Robin (Turdus migratorius) was hunkered down on those blue blue eggs.A Red Velvet Mite of the family Trombidiidae. Predators of the leaf-litter zone, as large as a blood-gorged tick and, being mite-y, rather looking like one.So many vocal White-Throated Sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) in the Ramble!And a…
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Roof Bird
Pavo cristatus, the Indian Pea Fowl. Big bird, helluva big voice. The only places I’ve run into these beasts (you should see their spur claws!) in NYC is in Prospect Park, where several boom from the zoo, and occasionally get loose, and on an old estate on Staten Island, near Princes Bay, where you can hear…
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Raptor Wednesday
The all-Merlin (Falco columbarius) edition. In Green-Wood. This falcon, seen here on two different perches, was one of two by the Crescent Water at the same time. The other flew into a nearby tree — but the photography possibilities were not worth posting home about. The second bird took off, followed by the first.…
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Bush Terminal Park
Field Sparrow (Spizella pusilla) on the fence.Female Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus).Carpet of little Brassicas.American Wigeon (Anas americana) and Eurasian Wideon (Anas penelope) drakes lined up for comparison’s sake. If only they’d been a little closer! Eurasian, as name suggest, is out of range; but we get a few in local waters most winters.
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Bubulcus ibis ibis
A Western Cattle Egret has been hanging out in Penn South, a co-op complex in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. There are damn few cattle thereabouts, but these birds, who in their original range (Africa, Middle East, Southern Europe) follow migrating ruminants who kick up a storm of bugs, are adaptable enough to get bugs and…
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New Point Comfort
What’s all this, then? At the limits of my telephoto. An observation platform at the tip of Mathews County, poking into the Chesapeake. And out there, a dead cetacean of some kind being recycled.Bald Eagles were nearby. Posted one is older, but not quite in full adult plumage.There was another juvenile on a nearby island.But it…
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