Bush Terminal Park
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Pesticide Terminal
What is the Parks Department thinking here just above the salt-water marsh?According to this, they’re applying Triclopyr by “hand placement” for the control of Cottonwood (Populus deltoides). But if they’re doing it by hand, why don’t they physically weed out the potential trees instead of putting another biocide down? Yeah, Cottonwood is a bear: a…
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Summer
You never know what you’ll see out there. Sure, the frying days of summer make it hard to enjoy the brute sun and humidity, but on Saturday we had a respite from the heat tsunami. So off we wandered down to Bush Terminal Park, where lo and behold! Two amazing (and concurrent) sights/sounds. 1.…
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Waterfowl Counting
Four of us braved the element of a cold NNW wind coming off the bay to count waterfowl for an annual NYSOA survey. We were assigned to two segments of the Brooklyn waterfront, Bush Terminal Park and the Brooklyn Army Terminal pier. The latter was quiet; large bays on either side of the pier had…
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Drake Gadwall
Winter means ducks and their allies bobbing and diving offshore. The little blubber-bombs shrug off the cold, cold water. A recent trip to wind-ripped Bush Terminal Park revealed Brant, Mallard, American Black Duck, American Wigeon, Red-breasted Merganser, Bufflehead, Red-throated Loon, and Gadwall in the bays. You need to get a close view of the latter,…
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How Great?
The Great Egret, Ardea alba.Working it.And another. Black toes, yellow bill. White plumes once worth so much the birds were almost slaughtered to extinction.
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Raptor Wednesday
It sometimes seems like I have a raptor sighting every day. So, for the last month, I’ve been keeping tabs. My “daily raptor” is a good practice. In the political shitstorm, it is my daily rapture. Over the 31 days of January I had 37 raptor sightings, the majority of them (21) from my windows.…
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Facing the Wind
Have you ever noticed how gulls, like these Ring-billed (Larus delawarensis) hunkered down at Bush Terminal, always face the wind? The better to take off into, of course, the better to fly. The specimen to the rear is a first winter bird, the one in front an adult. * “Thoreau’s quest for the “bottom” of…
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Raptor Week IV
Sometimes the bird gets away from you. Many times, actually. S’ok. Sometimes you see the Snow Leopard, sometimes you don’t. Over the harbor. It came towards us, but no closer in resolution. What do you think it is? * While you are pondering, consider: here’s a list of Trump-supporting companies, either carriers of that mafia family’s junk or funders of…
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Wigeon And All
An American Wigeon (Anas americana) and American Black Duck (Anas rubripes). The other day a commentor here bemoaned the intrusion of ideas into his refined quest for pictures of nature. Those who refuse to make the connection between politics and the natural world, or what there is of it, are a monstrous problem. From the beginning…
Backyard and Beyond 