birds
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Prospect Park
The Upper Pool is just starting to blush with the coming of fall. A walk through the park yesterday. We saw: Wood Duck, Mallard, Red-tailed Hawk, Rock Pigeon, Mourning Dove, Chimney Swift, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, American Kestrel, Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, White-breasted Nuthatch, Brown Creeper, House Wren, Carolina…
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Blackpoll in BBP
From the air, or, as in this case, the great bridge, Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 1 is an island of green. We’re not the only species that sees and enjoys this. Recently a migrating Eastern Red Bat was noticed resting through the daylight. Yesterday, I saw three species of warblers in the park. They’ve dropped…
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Brooklyn Bridge Park
It’s the middle of September, but Brooklyn Bridge Park is still hopping. And flitting. And flirting. And… but see below. Noted yesterday, most often spotted first by my eagle, or should I say bug? -eyed companions:Gray Hairstreak, Strymon melinus, a small butterfly that looks like it could be going either way.Baby Gray Catbird, Dumetella carolinensis.…
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Far Southern Queens
Yellow Queen Honey from Greenpoint. To the Honey Festival at Beach 96th and the Boardwalk on the Rockaway Peninsula yesterday, where the beach was swarming with Black Saddlebags dragonflies. Like Monarch butterflies, the Black Saddlebags are migratory. (Until fairly recently, I didn’t know that some dragonfly species migrated. Natural history is an arena of near-infinite…
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Stamps
I’ve been away from my post here nearly two weeks, during which I barely had any time to get out and about. But I did find this handsome stamp. The tits of GB and Ireland are, ahem, equivalent to our chickadees. Birds do lend themselves to stamp designs. Here are some of the first class…
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Brooklyn Sunset
I like to think of these as a herd of giraffe, heading towards the last watering hole of the day across the harbor in New Jersey.Brooklyn Bridge Park, where all these pictures were taken tonight, is scarce on mammals. This rat, a creature of the docks if there ever was one, was larger than it…
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Yes, we have egrets
The larger Great Egret (Ardea alba) and the smaller Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) are sometimes found side-by side, making the size differential between them easy to see at a distance. For more detailed observation, especially in flight, the Great has a yellow bill and black feet, the Snowy a black bill and yellow feet. Note…
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Two Gulls
Ring-Billed Gull (Larus delawarensis), one of the three species of gull found here in the city year around.Laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla), a summer visitor to the city. Named for their call, which sounds a bit like crazy-laughter. (The name “Black-headed gull” was taken.) These birds will soon lose their breeding plumage, which includes the black…
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Banding Osprey, Part II
Osprey chicks can be too old to band, because as they near fledging, they may jump off the nest site prematurely to get away from the human who has climbed up to borrow them for a moment. If they aren’t actually ready to fly, this can lead to broken wings. This one, however, was a…
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Banding Osprey, Part I
Last year, there was one fledged Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) chick on the east end of Nantucket. Numbers had been dwindling in previous years and last year was pretty much bottom; there just weren’t any fish to be had, so the adult Osprey were traveling to hunt at the other end of the island, but that…
Backyard and Beyond 