Brooklyn
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Sassy!
A venerable sassafras (Sassafras albidum) in Green-Wood. May be the state record holder for tallest: 69′ in 2016. 138″ in diameter at 4.5′ height. More interestingly, at least to me, is the question of age. Does this pre-date the establishment of the cemetery in 1838? If not it must come close. Sprouting adjacent. Sassafras is…
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Good Bones
A couple of red oaks. Gates of tuliptree, or… Ents, yes, there are definitely Ent possibilities in these two. An uncharacteristic tuliptree. Usually they are quite straight and single-boled.
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Cocoons
Over the weekend I found four large silkworm cocoons. This one was hanging in an oak. This one was on the ground. I turned it over to see the other side. Coin is just over an inch in diameter. There was an oak overhead…. Another in a willow oak (at perhaps half a mile’s distance…
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Raptor Wednesday
Cooper’s Hawk! This bird was still up here two hours later. I think it was digesting breakfast. *** Uncivil disobedience: a new paradigm in Hong Kong, or how do you fight the awful might of the state?
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American Wigeon
Male. Female. Choate says wigeon is from the French vigeon, for a whistling duck. Possibly from the Latin vipeo for small crane.
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H. histrionicus
Brooklyn has gone avian rarities this winter. A Varied Thrush, a bird of the northwest into Alaska, has been hanging out in Prospect Park. A female Painted Bunting has been enjoying the amenities at Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is also hosting a Black-headed Gull amid the thousands of Ring-billed Gulls who roost there. And, something…
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Motley Mute
Mute Swans are invasive, but the transition from juvenile to adult plumage is still kinda cool.
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Hedge Apple
For years I have read that Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera) is also known as hedge apple and that it was often used as natural fencing, a living hedge as well as the source of very long lasting fence posts. I’ve never quite understood how this would work since the specimens I see are usually stately…
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Raptor Wednesday
One of the local feral cats was passing by below. Cooper’s hawk at Bush Terminal. I’d say a male because it wasn’t so big. (Females are substantially larger.) *** It all seems so tenuous sometimes. Here is awful news on the American Kestrel front. The Montreal population is in free-fall, mirroring downward trends across North…
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American Coot
Those toes, though. Looks like some serration in the upper jaw… And is this a tongue? This bird, and a few others, were on terra firms because somebody was feeding them. And it looks like the feeders were not spreading bread, which is actually quite bad for waterfowl. Yes, the time-honored tradition of throwing bread…
Backyard and Beyond 