Brooklyn
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The Red-Orange and the Black-Purple
Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula)
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Ruddy, Ruddy
Many ducks sport their breeding plumage over the winter, but the Ruddy Ducks don’t start turning until… about now. This male should have an astonishingly light, electric blue bill and much warmer cinnamon-brown plumage in a month or so.A female. She won’t get all peacocky. Ruddy ducks often have their stiff tails raised as here…
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Raptor Wednesday
What you don’t see here are the Blue Jays (Cyanocitta cristata) that were buzzing this Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). I may have inadvertently flushed the hawk from some prey on the ground on the hill below me, since when it first landed it looked like it was stretching a piece of flesh between talon and…
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Common Reed
It’s certainly photogenic, if nothing else. You don’t find much life in a patch of Phragmites, although Downy Woodpeckers and, as here, a Black-capped Chickadee in winter extremis, peck and poke among the dry stalks for evidence of invertebrates.
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Winter Work
A bare patch in the snow finds Starlings, Robin, and White-thoated Sparrow rooting in the leaf litter. Snow cover definitely makes it harder to find seeds and invertebrates.Here’s one of the White-throated Sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis). This species comes in two forms: this is the white-striped, with the strong white stripe along the forehead. This is…
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Foxy
A couple of Fox Sparrows (Passerella iliaca) were out from under the usual undergrowth they like to kick up in. The species visits us in winter, but not in great numbers. Their russet red plumage is a nice contrast to other sparrow species, and quite tell-tale. This was an overcast day, and you really want…
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Twilight’s Last Gulls
This was a recent sunset over Governor’s Island. It was cold there on the edge of the water, colder than anywhere else around, but the sight was worth the bone-chill of time. But even when it’s not a technicolor spectacle — and this one reminded me of the many-initialed Turner — sunset on New York…
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Beautiful
Sometimes in the shit-storm of bullshit that so overwhelms us, we just need to stop and look at the world. Given that it’s February and all the roses are imported from horror-stricken farms where the workers are brutalized and doused with toxic chemicals and then the roses themselves are stripped of their thorns — what…
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All Trees Edition
River Birch (Betula nigra), young above and middle-aged below, if I’m not mistaken. The giant old Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) between the two bridges.Bud on ice. Waiting, waiting…A trio of Catalpa trees, prime Two-Spotted Ladybug habitat.The Kentucky Coffee trees on the right, however, don’t inspire the aphids the ladybugs eat.Catalpa pods.
Backyard and Beyond 