birds
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Fledgling
Here’s a variation on a common sight: a young Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura). Note how much darker it is than an adult. You might almost want to make it another species, although there aren’t really any other options on this end of the country.
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Flickering
We’ve been lucky enough to catch the changing of the guard at this Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus) nest a couple of times. Parent flies to hole, perching outside. Other parent bird flies out. First parent scoots in hole.That black mark, the malar, on the cheek means this is the male. He spends a minute looking…
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Heather’s Birds
My friend Heather Wolf’s Birding At The Bridge has just been published. This handsome volume detail’s Heather’s adventures watching and photographing birds in Brooklyn Bridge Park over the course of a couple of years. BBP is where I first ran into Heather. She was carrying her long lens, which is what you really need to…
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JBWR
Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge bakes in the summer sun, with only a few shady areas in the north and south “gardens” along the eastern edge of the West Pond trail, but there is so much wildlife activity out there right now it’s worth putting on a big hat and lots of sun-screen. I’ve been…
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Local Warblers
Spotting an American Redstart (Setophaga ruticilla) male at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge recently was a surprise. There was actually another nearby, too. The bird-list put out by the NPS says they are “probable nesters” there; the state breeding survey, more recent, has them confirmed. This was news to me. Nice to see a “revival” of migration’s…
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Weather Vaned
Red-tails, Red-tails, everywhere you look. Yesterday, we saw one on a streetlight surveying the scene on the Belt Parkway. Another was atop the FDNY tower next to the BBG every time we looked up there over the course of nearly three hours in the wedding venue. And, as we come up Flatbush Avenue towards the…
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P. domesticus
Most overhanging stoplights in the city are supported by these t-shaped structures, and most seem to have a House Sparrow nest on each end. (And everybody knows it: we once watched a crow poking its bill into a couple of them, to see if there was anything to eat inside.) Passer domesticus: the House Sparrow’s…
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Oystercatchers
An adult American Oystercatcher (Haematopus palliatus) sticks out of the landscape like a sore bill. Sand-colored young American Oystercatchers, however, are not so easy to see or photograph. But they, or their parents, or all of them combined, sure do make a lot of noise.
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That Yellow Crown
Let’s get a little closer, shall we…?There is definitely some yellow in the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron’s crown.We’d see it better if the sun wasn’t so bright. Because I could hardly have been closer: I was in a blind, less than ten feet from the bird.
Backyard and Beyond 