birds
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Wintering Hawk
I usually see immature Cooper’s Hawks (Accipiter cooperii) around the borough. Over the weekend, though, I saw this nice specimen of an adult in Brooklyn Heights. The russet-lined front is a give-away for a mature bird from a distance. In truth, I barely saw the bird, since it was so high up in a tree…
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Pro Tip
Don’t walk underneath perching Red-Tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis). I narrowly missed being spritzed with one of these birds’s ribbons of excreta. You will notice, when you watch raptors with any regularity, that they tend to squirt just before launching into flight.
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Little, Big
A Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis) looks somewhat like the Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia), but with a shorter tail. There is also usually a yellow cast to the lores. A couple were atop the old landfill at Croton Point recently. I went looking for Bald Eagles. There was a dearth of them for over an hour.…
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Insistent Kinglet(s)
I have had two run-ins with Ruby-crowned Kinglets recently in Brooklyn Bridge Park. These birds are called kinglets because they are little kings, fearless creatures. They are the birds I’ve always gotten closest too; or, put another way, they are birds that have always gotten closest to me. Easily within hand’s reach. They have other…
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Lord of All He Surveys
Richard Upjohn’s Gothic-y gate to Green-Wood Cemetery. The Monk Parakeets have colonized it with their massive stick nest. Maybe it reminds them of the Andes? On a recent weekend, the birds were unusually quiet. I spotted half a dozen nearby.And up there with the lightning rod? Our old friend the American Kestrel (Falco sparverius). That…
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A Good Walk
A good walk in Prospect Park with Ken Chaya, who always adds immeasurably to my knowledge. This young Red Oak (Quercus rubra) was holding on to its youthfully large leaves.A particularly nice spread of “knees” of a Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum). It was once thought that these projections from the roots were pneumatophores, helping the…
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GBH
A Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) in Green-Wood. *** Today is “Giving Tuesday.” The vast range of options suggestions the desperate straits of our world, as does the fact that these entities have to go a-begging. (Philanthropy, a system in which the very rich set socio-political agendas while avoiding taxes, is the flip side of…
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Cassin’s Kingbird & Co.
In what seems to be only the second New York state record, a Cassin’s Kingbird (Tyrannus vociferans) has been hanging out next to Floyd Bennett Field’s community garden. The species’ usual habitat is in the Southwest and Mexico, so it’s a long way from home. The temperature was in the 30s when I saw the…
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Return of the Green-Wood Merlin
I said recently that Merlins (Falco columbarius) were comparable in size to Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata). Ummmm, well…. That’s a Merlin on the upper left. The other birds are Jays. Up to seven were in the tree recently on a very gray day, harrying the falcon until it flew off. Wheeler’s Raptors of Eastern North…
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Can’t Get Enough Kestrel?
A week after spotting an American Kestrel male perching in Green-Wood I found another not so very far away. Or is this the very same bird? Mayhaps: they don’t have huge territories Check out the bird’s under and over grip on the tippy-top of the tree. And those false eye-spots on the back of the…
Backyard and Beyond 