birds
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Brooklyn: It’s Not Just for Hipsters
A parent and young Woodchuck/Groundhog (Marmota monax). Here’s the youngster, perhaps 2/3rds the size of the adult, who is presumably the mother as males visit burrows to mate but don’t stay around. Both animals were mowing through the grasses, then this one found a nut or fruit. They are eating-machines this time of year, fattening…
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On Plumb Beach
Plumb Beach is off the Belt Parkway between Sheepshead Bay and Flatbush Avenue. The Parks Dept.’s website calls it Plumb; Parks Dept. signs on site call it Plum; it is supposed to be named after Beach Plums (Prunus maritima). It has a unexpected history, although perhaps not for Brooklyn’s wild edges, capped more recently by…
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Young Night-herons
A pair of Yellow-crowned Night-herons (Nyctanassa violacea) nested on Governor’s Island this year, a first — in ages, at least. I haven’t seen the nest, but I did run into this youngster over the weekend at Bush Terminal Park. No idea where the natal spot was, of course; YCNH also nest in Jamaica Bay, and…
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Morning’s Heronry
Just before Bush Terminal Park opened yesterday morning, we had a trifecta of herons. There were three Black-crowned Night Herons (Nycticorax nycticorax) the adult above, and two juveniles.One of the youngsters stuck around as parent and sibling (?) flew off “kwoking” to this Cottonwood:This tree also hosted a Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) — barely…
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White’s Selborne
Have you read Richard Mabey’s rousing defense of nature writing? You should. I’ll wait here until you return. Mabey quite rightly marks the beginnings of nature writing in English with Gilbert White (1720-1793), the British country parson whose Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne I’ve finally come around to reading. Mostly: I picked up a…
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Gather Ye Terns While You May
Gather in the optical sense, of course. Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) have been breeding in New York Harbor for the last few years, a new and exciting development in a world where the environmental/ecological news is usually bad. They use the abandoned piers on Governor’s Island, with some help from friendly bipeds (cf. NYC Audubon)…
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Nidification
In the last week, I’ve seen House Sparrow and Northern Cardinal nestlings, gaping mouths squawking. It’s late in the breeding season, but some birds, especially the non-migratory locals who started early, may be on their second brood of the year. This Rock Pigeon (Columba livia) is using a train station window-well for its cliff-face nest.…
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Always Check That Bird
Because the assumption “pigeon” may usually be correct, but it isn’t always. Something about that silhouette…Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus).At the top of 1st Avenue. You may remember that on January 1st, I found a pair of Ravens (Corvus corax) courting near here. Lately, four Ravens have been seen in the area, so presumably the nest-building…
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Windhover
A Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus), the “dapple-dawn-drawn-falcon,” as Hopkins alliterated to the nth degree, hovering over the Northumberland beach. Hopkins’s poem The Windhover, although another of his mash notes to his Invisible Boyfriend, captures something of the impression made by these birds hovering with head to the wind and eyes to the ground, searching for…
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An Errant Whooper and A Quiz
As we neared the near-end of our first day’s walk along the Northumberland Coast, we spotted two swans in the distance. One was a familiar Mute Swan (Cygnus olor), invasive in the U.S., but native in the UK (and very present on the Tweed, where we started our walk) and the other, pictured below, a…
Backyard and Beyond 