Backyard and Beyond

These two ducklings, still with stubbs of wings, swam against the flow of tumbling Fall Creek to team up with their mother on another rock.This foam looks a little like the froth atop latte or one of those other coffee products.

Good segue to this, then? Caffeine, like other drugs we take, passes through us and enters both fresh and ocean water via sewer systems. There’s a pretty limited understanding of all what all these uppers and downers and other chemicals are doing to other lifeforms, but bets on it not being good?

Yes, the bird has caught a little fish here, one of several seen captured and swallowed with dispatch.This Great Blue Heron flew some thousand feet across Beebe Lake in Ithaca to chase away another Great Blue that had just flown in. I would have thought there was room enough for two.Baby flycatchers?!This Cedar Waxwing posing haiku-ready made sorties out over the lake for insects.

The first time I saw a Least Bittern was on Padre Island, Texas. It was a brief glimpse, the bird jumping from one clump of reeds to another. The second time was strange: the bird was high up in a tree in Prospect Park.Third time is a charm of a cliche, but what a sighting! Note those long toes. The bird, a juvenile (no dark crown), stilt-walked above the water by grabbing nearby foliage. They don’t have to wade like other herons.This was up at Montezuma NWR, where a fellow bird-dog called me back twice to make sure I spotted the bird, since it kept scooting back into the reeds.The binomial Ixobrychus exilis can be broken down nicely: the genus name might be translated as “reed boomer” and exilis simply means small. A Green Heron, a larger bird than the Least, seen a few minutes earlier nearby.

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In New York? Today is the last weekday you can register to vote for the vital primaries held on September 13th.