Green-Wood

We interrupt our week of small birds with an eater of small birds: a Merlin. In this case, though, this small falcon was being harried by Blue Jays.Which meant lots of noise, almost all of it from the screeching jays.

Very determined is this bird. The typical procedure is to score a seed from some thick evergreen, fly it to a nearby deciduous tree with ample branches and gnarly bark, and attack!Then repeat.But you know what else is important?Water.Happy New Year.

If you look closely and follow a line extending from the sharp bill of this Red-breasted Nuthatch, you’ll see a dark round seed, just a tad larger than the bird’s eye, hatched into a crevice of bark.Whack goes the chisel-bill!

Back to this… birch?This time — and it was the same time as yesterday’s Tufted Titmouse, give or take a minute — a White-breasted Nuthatch is partaking of the sapsucker holes.In Green-Wood Cemetery at this time of year, you can go a good distance without seeing any birds. But when you come across them, the…

This Red-tailed Hawk sailed past me to land further up a slope in Green-Wood. Had it captured something? As you probably know, most raptor strikes come up empty. But not this time. Was it a thrush?This perch in a pine seemed to be an even better butcher’s block. (It gets gory from here).Visceral even.And within four…

November 25th.December 8th.December 9th. You will notice that the water is iced over in the last picture, making fishing problematic. With fish and frogs out of the picture, what is this young Great Blue Heron eating? Whatever it can catch, presumably, including birds and small mammals. I wonder if it’s policing the Dell Water for…

A screaming Blue Jay, a dark silhouette in the tree. If the bird sits still long enough — no guarantee with the jumpy Accipiters — maybe we can get around to the front end and……see if there’s a bit of color on the front end of the raptor situation. This is an adult Cooper’s Hawk.…

In the depths of a Callery pear tree, whose fruit was simultaneously being ravaged by Monk Parakeets, this determined Red-breasted Nuthatch hammered away at nuts ferreted out of a neighboring arborvitae. From food tree to anvil tree, over and over again.While Green-Wood has been awash in White-breasted Nuthatches, a few Red-breasted have been present as…