birds
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Raptor Wednesday
It sometimes seems like I have a raptor sighting every day. So, for the last month, I’ve been keeping tabs. My “daily raptor” is a good practice. In the political shitstorm, it is my daily rapture. Over the 31 days of January I had 37 raptor sightings, the majority of them (21) from my windows.…
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Red-bellied Woodpecker
I’m seeing, and hearing, more Red-bellied Woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus) this winter than Downy Woodpeckers. In the Spartan woods of winter, their loud calls can be the only sound other than the wind. I learned recently that this bird, with its ambiguous name (the Red-headed Woodpecker is a whole other species, and the red-belly here is…
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Raptor Wednesday
Heads up! Peregrine on St. Michael’s, check. But what’s that on the left side? That little one was hassling the big falcon, or at least trying to. I think it was an American Kestrel (Falco sparverius). The little one did not stay, but I hustled down two long avenue blocks.From the other side of the…
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Facing the Wind
Have you ever noticed how gulls, like these Ring-billed (Larus delawarensis) hunkered down at Bush Terminal, always face the wind? The better to take off into, of course, the better to fly. The specimen to the rear is a first winter bird, the one in front an adult. * “Thoreau’s quest for the “bottom” of…
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American Robin
Here’s a bird you don’t see too many of in winter up here. Note the binomial Turdus migratorius, the wandering thrush. Most of them do head south for the winter, but some will stick around, usually flocking together as they wander around for berries and the remains of fruits. Off the lawn and out of…
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Raptor Week IV
Sometimes the bird gets away from you. Many times, actually. S’ok. Sometimes you see the Snow Leopard, sometimes you don’t. Over the harbor. It came towards us, but no closer in resolution. What do you think it is? * While you are pondering, consider: here’s a list of Trump-supporting companies, either carriers of that mafia family’s junk or funders of…
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Raptor Week III
This big antenna a long block away from my apartment is a regular perch for a male American Kestrel. (This is what it looks like without much optical enhancement, btw.) He’ll park on either the taller or the shorter portion (the shorter is bent back towards us), sometimes on the cross-bars. Sometimes just for a…
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Raptor Week II
Red-tailed Hawk. Buteo jamaicensis: “of Jamaica,” where the original specimen was taken. The most common road-side and soaring hawk of North America. To recap, the common name is particularly unhelpful when you get a yearling like this one. The brick-red tail feathers don’t appear until after the first year of life, if they’re the one out of…
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Raptor Week I
Cooper’s Hawk. Accipiter cooperii. William C. Cooper’s hawk. The species was named in his honor by Charles Lucien Bonaparte. Cooper was a conchologist and founder of what became the New York Academy of Sciences. Bonaparte was a Bonaparte, a nephew of the Emperor, and an ornithologist who explored the U.S. in the 1820s. You can’t…
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Raptor Wednesday
A Cooper’s Hawk on a winter’s day. Here’s Audubon’s rendition. Normally, I find JJ’s birds on the strangely attenuated side, longer and skinnier than they are, probably a result in his pinning up their dead bodies to illustrate them. But I like his capturing of the patterning on the back here very much. Another thing…
Backyard and Beyond 