Prospect Park
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Vigilance Against Poachers
Yesterday, some bird poachers were interrupted in Prospect Park by Park Rangers and park staff. Earlier, one of the poachers actually walked through a group of birders with a caged American Goldfinch in one hand and a glue stick (used to trap birds, a variation on bird lime; very nasty stuff) in the other. It’s…
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Prospect 150
This year marks the 150th anniversary of Prospect Park. Of course, the park was not finished when it opened, and it has remained a work-in-progress ever since. When I first started birding I lived two long blocks away from the 3rd Street entrance, where The Panthers watch over the road; like all the ornament of…
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Raptor Wednesday
A scrum of noisy Starlings on the ground suddenly ceased their jabbering. I looked around the sky and the trees. Nothing out of the ordinary, but my raptor senses were activated. I was a few yards from the 9th Street/PPW entrance to Prospect Park. I don’t know if this female Kestrel (Falco sparverius) had spooked…
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Accipiter gentilis III
The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds (2000-05) had 130 confirmed Goshawk nests in New York state, with 170 more possible and 54 probable, a decrease from the First Atlas (1980-05). But there are no records of such for the NYC-Long Island area, which lacks the extensive tracts of forest that makes up the species’ usual…
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Accipiter gentilis II
This is a juvenile. Goshawk adults, who settle into their plumage by their third year, have blue-grey backs and gray fronts. They’re unmistakable; I’ve never seen one. These yearlings, on the other wing, look like they could be mistaken for a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk. This is a bigger bird than a Cooper’s, but sizing can…
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Accipiter gentilis I
As promised, a Northern Goshawk. Goshawks are large raptors of northern woods and mountains. It’s in the Accipiter genus, along with the Cooper’s Hawk (A. cooperii) and Sharp-shinned Hawk (A. striatus). Goshawks are rare in general, and practically unheard of New York City.But a juvenile has been spotted in Prospect Park for about a month now.…
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Crown
Looks like a crown feather of an American Woodcock to me. Just under an inch long. On the snow in Prospect; it was devilishly difficult to get the warm gold of the edging accurately into digital form!And you can, I think, see these crown feathers pretty well here.
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Suet-like
Black-capped Chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) will come to your hand if you offer them birdseed. Looks like they will also probably come to your hand if you’re dead in the snow…. These photos were taken from some distance, but I assume those are Grey Squirrel remains.It’s a cute-bird-eat-cute-mammal world out there, after all. The omnivorous approach…
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Cardinalis cardinalis
You know how modern, big-money campaigns work, right? Known partisan voters are bombarded with fliers, TV and internet ads, and robocalls. A few people and corporations make a pile of money. The unregistered voters and non-voting registered voters are completely left out of the loop. But door-to-door canvassing was the point of that Harper’s article…
Backyard and Beyond 