Green-Wood
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Ring-necked Duck?
Aythya collaris does have a chestnut collar. But you usually can’t see it in the field.What sticks out, of course, is the white ring around the bill. Yet nobody calls it a Ring-billed Duck, except perhaps me in my bird-name dyslexia. Why is this?Rick Wright was speaking at NYC Audubon recently. One of the things…
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Raptor Wednesday
Merlins (Falco columbarius) like the high points.Where they will sometimes perch for quite a while on the look-out for birds to pursue.Slightly larger than American Kestrels, Merlins are much rarer in the city.
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Yellowbelly
On a 40F day, a single turtle is observed on the edge of the Sylvan Water. What’s this, though? Not a Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), by far the most common turtle across the city. I once counted 70 basking along the Lullwater in Prospect Park. This is a Yellow-bellied Slider (Trachemys scripta scripta). As…
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Sappy
A Blue Atlas Cedar (Cedrus atlantica)A line of sapsucker holes. About 3/4″ deep, through the bark.These holes are chiseled out by, in our parts, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius), who drinks the sugary sap and snaps up any insects also attracted to the sweet stuff.
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Thryothorus ludovicianus
A pair of Carolina Wrens were exploring a slope in Green-Wood.No crevice went unexplored in the search for insects, eggs, and cocoons..
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Make Your Own Metaphors
Turtle with a leech latched onto its…brain? Some people say the Senator from Oligarchy, Mitch McConnell, whose career is based on an infusion of foreign cash, looks like a turtle. I wouldn’t want to insult a turtle with that comparison. But the miserable old cynic sure acts like a leech on democracy… so there’s that.
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Raptor Wednesday
An old Red-tailed Hawk nest being refurbished. Over a couple of weekends, I watched Red-tailed Hawks bringing new sticks to this nest.The last time I was watching, one hawk perched nearby.While this one did all the work. Unseen here are the Blue Jays buzzing the hawk as it scouted a nearby tree for nesting material.…
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Mammal Monday
The front door.Looked too small for a backdoor, so let’s call it a window. (No mammals were woken up for these photos.]
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Cyanocitta cristata
Or at least one lone feather from a Blue Jay.
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Raptor Wednesday
A crop of Cooper’s! These were all seen on the same day recently in Green-Wood. Four sightings, I think of three individual birds, but possibly four. I inadvertently flushed the first (seen in first two photos). It was hiding in an evergreen thicket; I didn’t see the bird until it flew out and landed nearby.…
Backyard and Beyond 