Bush Terminal Park
-
American Wigeon
Male. Female. Choate says wigeon is from the French vigeon, for a whistling duck. Possibly from the Latin vipeo for small crane.
-
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…
-
Kingfisher!
A male Belted Kingfisher patrolling the bays at Bush Terminal. Yesterday I saw one in Green-Wood. I wonder if this is the same bird moving between fresh and salt water? The Green-Wood bird, which I’ve seen twice now, is very vocal, calling between flights and while rattling away while perched. N.B. All the strings and…
-
Goldeneye
We surprised each other. I think this Common Goldeneye had just come up from a dive when I reached the end of the pier. It shot off. I shot off a few pictures. The eyes are really something, aren’t they? Even from some distance, they jump out as gold on the black and white face.
-
The Morning Sun
Saturday dawned at 49F, the coldest day since some time back in the early spring. A small huddle of Palm Warblers were exploring Bush Terminal Park with me. A couple of hours later, I spotted this White-crowned Sparrow in Green-Wood. Earlier, when I entered G-W around 9:30, it was still cool but the sun was…
-
Great Egret
Ardea alba have even been known to show up in small backyard goldfish ponds. If there’s food… and they do seem readily habituated to the presence of similarly long-legged hominids.One of the bird’s long plumes, or aigrettes. These are breeding plumage feathers; this one about 18″ long. They’re the reason these birds were nearly hunted…
-
Cottonwood Air
There was so much Eastern Cotton fluff, it was easy to scoop up a handful off the ground. A single mature Populus deltoides can produce an estimated 40 million seeds in a season. The seed is inside the dried fruit or achene attached to cotton-like filaments that help transport it through the air.Here’s my attempt…
-
More Spring
Red maple flowers. Eastern Phoebe.These are wind pollinated trees, so early spring emergence isn’t predicated on insects.An early arriving migrant, this bird is dependent on insects.Speaking of which, beetles and flies are emerging.A millipede in a leafy liverwort. Interesting similarity of shape…And here’s a frog-sex teaser. There’s some amplexus in the water…
-
Winter Killdeer
Rocks, Ring-billed Gulls, and hey, a Killdeer! (You can’t see the rats inside the rocks, but when they scurry around in broad daylight, you know the tubular rodents are all over; suckers have always loved waterfronts.) Bush Terminal Park had breeding Killdeer last year.
-
Dawn Corvids
One morning recently, a great parliament of crows flew over the apartment heading towards the bay. I estimated fifty at least. They boiled around the air column over the empty parking lot of the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, before turning right to head northish along the coast of Brooklyn. They must have been roosting inland.…
Backyard and Beyond 