Green-Wood
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Cocoons
Over the weekend I found four large silkworm cocoons. This one was hanging in an oak. This one was on the ground. I turned it over to see the other side. Coin is just over an inch in diameter. There was an oak overhead…. Another in a willow oak (at perhaps half a mile’s distance…
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Raptor Wednesday
Cooper’s Hawk! This bird was still up here two hours later. I think it was digesting breakfast. *** Uncivil disobedience: a new paradigm in Hong Kong, or how do you fight the awful might of the state?
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More of That Kestrel
This male was on a familiar kestrel-tree. From 2018. From 2017. Different tree, but same hunting grounds. This is a gentle slope leading to a corner of the cemetery fenced off from the streets. It’s filled with modest headstones. Trees along the edges provide great perches. This one perched in four different trees while I…
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Raptor Wednesday
Happy New Year! Ready… setgo!
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Reach
Whoa! Make sure the five foot long branches of poison ivy coming off the vine twirled up this old pine don’t get ya! This is one of the best examples of the vine form of Toxicodendron radicans I’ve ever seen. It’s wild and wooly and has a hell of a wingspan. It would be easy…
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Out with the Year…
Not infrequently, a wanderer in Green-Wood will find piles gingko nuts at the base of trees. Or higher up trees, as in this example. Raccoons have been at work. Here’s another pile out on a big limb. And where there is poop, there are flies. I’ve really noticed the flies this fall: they can take…
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Iced Out
The other day, this young Great Blue Heron landed close to me by the Valley Water. I guess it was on the other side, but I hadn’t noticed it. Some people walking over there must have spooked it. I had just seen something small and dark run into the plants by the side of the…
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Trees in Winter
Look at this diabolical face! The downy upper portion of the leaf scar points to Butternut (Juglans cinerea). This one, on the other hand, baffled me. I couldn’t find it in Core and Ammons’ Woody Plants in Winter. (It is in there, though.) iNaturalist people provided the identification: this is the incredibly common Ailanthus (Ailanthus…
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Raptor Wednesday Holiday Delay
An American Kestrel male in Green-Wood. Same American Kestrel and a Northern Mockingbird. .Aerial Boxing Day?
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Unwrapped
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a large Bald-faced Hornet nest being whipped around by the wind way up a tree overlooking the Dell Water. More recently, I looked up and saw nothing. A clump of hornet paper stuck on a bush was my first clue. I scanned the ground up the slope with…
Backyard and Beyond 