birds
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Black-Crowned Night Heron
Nycticorax nycticorax is the most-common heron in the NYC area. It is also the most wide-spread of herons on the planet, being found on five continents. This one was very close to me, and everybody else, in Prospect Park recently, and seemed oblivious to all of us gawkers. As their common name suggests, they do…
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Sidewalk Kill
It gets graphic at the end…. I was just minding my own business walking down the grandly named Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard towards Atlantic Avenue, across from the Brooklyn Pokey/Detention Complex. I kept one eye on the sky, because I am half an optimist, and one eye on the sidewalk, because I am the other half…
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Dinosaur Jr. Feathered Out
A little less than two weeks ago, I snapped a picture of a brand new Rock Pigeon. This was the bird yesterday (on the right):They grow up fast, the kids. Still a bit smaller than the adult (both parents were around), but this youngster was furiously flapping its wings, getting used to them, preparing for…
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Ablutions
This Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula) was bathing in Brooklyn Bridge Park the other day.Then it preened, in those hard-to-get-to corners.Most of the passerines, of the order Passeriformes — who make up more than half of all bird species — have twelve tail feathers.This bird looks black from a distance, but blues, browns, purples, and greens…
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Gifts of Sight and Sound
Saturday was an epic day of nature exploration here in the wide world of the Borough of Brooklyn. In the morning, I took a friend and her mother birding in Prospect Park. We saw some 44 species of birds, a good-turn out for our visiting Virginia birder. In the late afternoon, I joined two other…
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Green-Wood
Cherries are starting to bloom.Although still chilly, the morning sun was strong enough to begin heating these hard cases up.The bulbs and corms, of course, are bursting with stored-up goodness. Dark-eyed Junco, a winter bird, still hanging around. Two weeks ago, when I was last in Green-Wood, the cemetery was all about the Common Raven,…
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Urban Myth Busting
“Have you ever seen a baby pigeon?” Well, yes, and now so have you. After all, they do not spontaneously rise out of nothing fully feathered as adult birds. I have seen the young ‘uns both in the nest and recently fledged, and, as in this unfortunate case, dead. Yup, the Rock Pigeons (Columba livia)…
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Waterfowl
A female Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) mixes Punk feathers with Goth eyes.A pair of these ducks were hanging out around Pier 5 the other day. Constant diving did not seem to plaster those stiff head feathers down for long.A Red-throated loon (Gavia stellata) was preening between Pier 5 and the ruins of Pier 4.The throat…
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Saw Whet
Of all the many services provided here at Backyard & Beyond, bird identification tops the list. Want to know what kind of owl that is in your backyard? You could look it up, of course, like my friend Zina Saunders did when she saw an owl outside her window. This was in the air/light shaft…
Backyard and Beyond 