Posts Tagged 'fish'

Raptor Wednesday

Published April 29, 2020 Fieldnotes 2 Comments
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Every once and a while, an Osprey scouts out Green-Wood’s Sylvan Water, the largest body of water in the cemetery. Just in case.
There certainly are fish in there. This one is entirely too small for an Osprey, but intriguing nonetheless. What is it?
Of course, that fish is perfect for a Kingfisher. This one was spotted earlier in the day than the Osprey. Heard first, actually, which is typical.

Now this one is more Osprey size. It was found in G-W last September. Just like this, at the mouth of the drain. Swam upstream from the bay through the combined sewage-outflow system the city absurdly still uses? I doubt it.
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Worth reading: on Science-ism.

Skates

Published March 5, 2020 Fieldnotes 1 Comment
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A skate egg case. From a Little Skate, Leucoraja erinacea, according to iNaturalist. Found at Jones Beach recently. The species is under assault from the fishing industry, a victim of bait-hunters (for lobstering) and by-catch.
Same day, same beach. This is a skate’s tail.
Folks on iNaturalist have identified this as belonging to the Rough Skates, the genus Leucoraja. Where is the rest of the animal? Possibly butchered for bait — the “wings” are where the meat is — and then discarded.

What Colors!

Published February 10, 2020 Fieldnotes 2 Comments
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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 and rattled from tree to tree, carrying the fish with him.
He was up pretty high in a tree here. And he dropped the fish. What?
About 12 seconds after my last shot of fish-in-bill, I caught this image of the Kingfisher in the act of spitting up a pellet! I guess he couldn’t have the external thing meeting the internal thing half-way, so the fish had be sacrificed to get that bundle of scales and tiny fish bones out of the gullet…
I was chatting with a passerby for a few minutes, so didn’t find this before the fleshfly was on the job already.

Eel

Published June 9, 2016 Fieldnotes 1 Comment
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Anguilla rostrataLast Saturday, there was a fish survey around the archipelago of NYC and further up the Hudson River. I was too lazy to go to any of the events, but that morning I did run across an interesting sample. On Bush Terminal Park’s pier was this half-an-eel. American Eel Anguilla rostrata, the adult stage of their very interesting life-cycle.Anguilla rostrataWas it deposited there by Osprey, Great Blue Heron, Double-crested Cormorant, Great Egret, either of the Night-herons? All are possibilities (all were seen in the area on Saturday, although the brief glimpse of a juvenile Night-heron wasn’t enough to fix its species). The smaller of these predators will definitely grab things that look to us to be too large for them, and sometimes quite successfully swallow them whole. That clearly didn’t happen here.

On The Pier

Published December 28, 2015 Fieldnotes 2 Comments
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On Plumb Beach

Published September 20, 2015 Fieldnotes 1 Comment
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IMG_3902Plumb Beach is off the Belt Parkway between Sheepshead Bay and Flatbush Avenue. The Parks Dept.’s website calls it Plumb; Parks Dept. signs on site call it Plum; it is supposed to be named after Beach Plums (Prunus maritima). It has a unexpected history, although perhaps not for Brooklyn’s wild edges, capped more recently by tragedy. In the supposedly more savage natural world, it is one of the premier places for Horseshoe Crabs in the spring. It was surprisingly quiet on a recent late afternoon. But that may have been explained by an enormous NYS Envirnonmental Police vehicle and armored-vest (!) wearing rangers on patrol.Danaus plexippusMonarchs (Danaus plexippus) are starting to show up on the shore in preparation for flightward south.Leucophaeus atricillaThis Laughing Gull (Leucophaeus atricilla) is already well out of breeding plumage. Charadrius semipalmatusThere were two Semipalmated Plovers (Charadrius semipalmatus) scoottling along the shore. Other notable birds were pair of Oystercatchers passing offshore and two Snowy Egrets rising briefly from the marsh.sharkA two-foot “sand shark” as I would have called them in my youth, missing a big chuck from the side of the head, the gills. Fraternal or by-catch? Holler if you know the species.

Tad?

Published May 16, 2015 Fieldnotes 1 Comment
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IMG_1893In the Sylvan Water at Green-Wood. Tadpole…?

Ruins

Published April 5, 2015 Fieldnotes 2 Comments
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IMG_6177In the Henry Street Basin next to the old Port of New York Authority Grain Terminal* colossus, there were a pair or Mallards, a Gadwall, and a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers. And then there was this: IMG_1147Some kind of carp. Usually, the members of the Cyprinidae are freshwater fish. Here, next to the Gowanus Bay and a tank farm, where invisible guards order you off what seem to be public streets via a PA system, “fresh” water of any sort is pretty much a non-starter.IMG_1155

* This great ruin of a building was a bust from its beginnings when it was built to save NYC as a major grain port. It was sold off by the PANYNJ to a character who has done nothing with it for nearly two decades. That seems par for the course. I know two of his other (residential) properties: one’s remained a hollow shell for ten years. Meanwhile, the house he lives in looks abandoned, except for the security cameras, and often has squirrels living on the upper floors.

Oyster Toadfish

Published August 18, 2014 Fieldnotes 1 Comment
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Opsanus tauLast night as I watched the sun tuck behind the embankment of New Jersey, a fisherman beside me on the end of Pier 5 reeled this fish out of the dark water. He thought it was a Sea Robin, but I didn’t. It wasn’t that weird. Some research reveals it to be an Oyster Toadfish (Opsanus tau), a species with a high tolerance for hanging out in the bottom murk of polluted, junk-filled waters. Also known as oyster-cracker, ugly fish, mother-in-law fish, etc. It doesn’t have scales, but rather a slimy skin, hence the allusion to toads. The strong jaws are good for cracking oysters and other shellfish, but they will eat anything they can get. They are also known as a vocal species: males make “foghorn” like noises to attract females.

The bright yellow is the lure. Having maimed the 8″ long creature for sport, the fisherman extracted the hook and threw it back in.

Freshwater

Published July 13, 2014 Fieldnotes 8 Comments
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Perithemis teneraI was enjoying the life above the Duckweed (Lemnaceae) recently, marveling that I’ve never seen so many Eastern Amberwings (Perithemis tenera).Pachydiplax longipennisThere were also a few Blue Dashers (Pachydiplax longipennis), making more Blue Dashers.A damselfly of unknown provenance was depositing eggs.

And then, along the edge of the lake, some disturbance from below. There was an agitated simmering, not quite bubbling. I wondered what it might be. Then, rising, a mass of little black fish, tightly clumped together at the surface, swarming over each other, some half out of the water momentarily. They were feasting on something. fish The individual fish visible on the edges of this mass had serious whiskers, barbels, making me think of some kind of catfish. What the hell, I took the plunge.fishI’m taking a semi-wild guess that these are Black Bullheads (Ameiurus melas); what do you think?fishThe barbels are flush to the sides here.LemnaceaeAs an added benefit of my open-handed catch and release, the underside of the Duckweed, some of the smallest flowering plants anywhere, is revealed as purple.

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This work by Matthew Wills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.