Brooklyn
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I’m Easy Lichen Sunday Morning…
When hunting lichens, it’s important to blend in. Stalking wild Lecanoromycetes is made all the easier by wearing appropriate camouflage. Lichens are slow, but they can see you coming. Glad to see the professionals agree! Back in December, my partner Molly and I discovered a very rare-for-the-city Usnea lichen. When another Usnea genus lichen was…
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Prunus serotina
There are still, after all these years, parts of Green-Wood I’ve never been. I came across this massive black cherry only recently. It was after a big wind and bits of the scaly bark and branches were scattered about. The mature bark is very different from the younger stuff from way up there. Turning over…
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Raptor Wednesday
Passing Bald Eagle. Coasting Red-tailed Hawk. On Saturday, there were four overhead at the same time. Merlin. I regularly saw them late last year, but this was the last time I spotted one, back in the middle of January. American Kestrel male perched on this 1960s vision of a future telecommunications center. Female and male…
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What Colors!
I can’t believe there are still fish in the Dell and Crescent Waters, since this male Belted Kingfisher has been around all winter dipping into the stock here. Here he has a goldfish. Usually they just scarf their prey down PDQ, flipping it so it’s head first and then sluuuurrrppppp! This bird, however, just chortled…
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Sunday
For the third year in a row, American Kestrels are in the ‘hood! A male has been around all winter, spotted almost every day. But lately a female has appeared. Copulation was observed on 1/23 on a roof pipe just to the right of this chimney pot. No sign of a female again until this…
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More Galls
I found a mother-of-gall tree! A red oak, Quercus rubra, in Green-Wood. This tree was probably brought in as a sapling a few years ago. I wonder where it was raised? Could it be that the gall-making species came in with the tree, as we’ve seen with lichens transported into the city on saplings destined…
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Raptor Wednesday
Aren’t you glad you’re not an inch tall, or, conversely, that these things aren’t forty feet tall? This young Red-tailed hawk, the same bird seen nearly an hour earlier, flew into a corner of Green-Wood that is sometimes patrolled by a male American Kestrel. The falcon was there! He set up a hue and cry,…
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Indigestible
Looks like feathers. Some bone fragments. These are pellets hawked up by various birds. The above three photos were all taken in rather close proximity, but under different trees. Examples in the third picture were found all bunched up like this. Too small for Great Horned, too big for Saw-Whet. Owl pellets are the most…
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Didelphis virginiana
How sad to run across an opossum stiff with death and cold. This one was the size of a very large cat. I hope he or she was a great fount of progeny. The tail is finely haired. Magnificent and remarkable creatures with bad press. They snarl when cornered, they’re vicious in a cage. But…
Backyard and Beyond 