Bronx
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Plathemis lydia
Male Common Whitetail.Female. The male above is actually a young one. He won’t get his chalky white “tail,” or abdomen, until he gets a little older. When that happens, they do stand out. Here, from the archive of summers past, are some of the males in all their obviousness: This of course assumes that our…
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Northern Rough-winged Swallows
That’s a mouthful of a common name, but then Stelgidopteryx serripennis is a binomial tongue-exercise as well. We found five fledglings perched over the water. They were being fed at their perches and in mid-air, with the older and/or bolder siblings flying out to meet their busy parents. You can see the cinnamon color on…
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Nests
Green Heron, evidently abandoned. A rather loose collection, looking precarious, like a Mourning Dove’s, but larger and twiggier.Red-winged Blackbird. Lots of grassy-sedgy material in these whirling constructions.Fierce defenders of their breeding areas, RWBBs will go after anything that gets in their space, including much bigger birds like Red-tailed Hawks. As I approached this lake, one…
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Pale Beauty
Subtly tinged with green, Campaea perlata is known as the Pale Beauty moth. The caterpillars, also known as Fringed Loopers, enjoy munching away on the leaves of a broad range of deciduous trees and plants (65 species!). Like most moths, it’s nocturnal, hiding away from predators during the day. This particular day was quite overcast,…
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Wood Thrush
If the rich fluty yodeling of a Wood Thrush (Hylocichla mustelina) hadn’t alerted me, I probably wouldn’t have noticed their nest.You can just see the top of the bird’s head here, rusty orange, with white eye-ring.And the heavy spotting on the breast. Tis the season. Clutch size for this species is 3-4. The eggs are…
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Raptor Wednesday
This Red-tailed Hawk remained perched as four of us walked underneath it on the path.We’re probably too big to eat.And from the other side. That’s an Osprey on the upper right in the distance. * Timothy Snyder’s pamphlet On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century should be distributed to motel rooms. Or posted on the…
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Naturalist Notes
Viola canadensis, a native violet.It was cool, so this Robin (Turdus migratorius) was hunkered down on those blue blue eggs.A Red Velvet Mite of the family Trombidiidae. Predators of the leaf-litter zone, as large as a blood-gorged tick and, being mite-y, rather looking like one.So many vocal White-Throated Sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) in the Ramble!And a…
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Blooming
Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica).Rue Anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides).Toothwort (Cardamine).Trillium.Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense), unrelated to ginger root (Zingiber).
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Common Goldeneye
You can almost see the golden eye from here. You can certainly see the white spot on the cheek of this male Bucephala clangula. I don’t see these often: they do not favor the harbor. There were a few dozen off Hunter Island in the Bronx, the western end of Long Island Sound, and the…
Backyard and Beyond 