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These little guys had me puzzled–so many sandpipers look alike to me! But when they did a short flight, they gave themselves away: their white rumps in flight marked them as–what else?–White-rumped Sandpipers. A first for me.
Plumb Beach
Brooklyn, New York
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Starlings convening before the rain
Marine Park Salt Marsh
Brooklyn, New York
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Not 100% sure, but I think it’s a Greater Yellowlegs.
On second thought, I’m going with it’s a Dowitcher.
Marine Park Salt Marsh
Brooklyn, New York
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Coney Island Beach
Brooklyn, New York
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Our osprey friends who arrived a few months ago at the Marine Park Salt Marsh, are now on the lookout to make sure the two newborns are safe.
Marine Park Salt Marsh
Brooklyn, New York
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Terns are tough for me to identify specifically, so while I’ll guess they’re Common Terns, there are some other possibilities.
But I am eating my heart out that there wasn’t another one nearby so that I could title the post, “Tern, Tern, Tern…”
Marine Park Salt Marsh,
Brooklyn, New York
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Great Egret
Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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This osprey has just come back to its nest with a bunch of extra building material to keep it nice and warm.
Marine Park Salt Marsh
Brooklyn, New York
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This peeling birch is providing both insects and cover for the blue jay. Did you spot it right away?
Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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This glamorous Wood Duck walks the model runway showing off for fellow birds.
Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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Prospect Park
Brooklyn, NY
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Sometimes, from a distance, a Northern Shoveler can look like a Mallard to me. But it’s fun to see the ducks swimming in groups of concentric circles like in the zoomed-in photo above—then I can be pretty sure they’re Shovelers that I’m looking at, as they go round and round sifting the water near the surface for food with their bills.
Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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This young Grey Catbird was scampering out in the open, rather than hiding out under bushes as they usually like to do. They look a lot like Northern Mockingbirds, but their black caps and mewing sound clearly identify them.
Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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When the lake freezes over, the birds have to squeeze into a smaller space in the un-iced parts of the lake, but the different species of ducks co-exist surprisingly well considering that they are all after a similar limited food supply of small plants and fish in the constrained area.
In this picture you can see the large Canadian Geese, the male and female Mallards with their wings spread, the small American Coots with their white bills and dark bodies, and lastly, a bunch of Northern Shovelers, standing in the back and floating in the water, dark green head and dark, flat-ended bills, and bodies with white breasts and brown flanks.
It was fascinating to see all these different kinds of birds band together and turn around as one when a few aggressive gulls approached; the gulls were not welcome to this party—perhaps they would not play well with others?—and the ducks soon mobbed the gulls and forced them to go elsewhere.
Prospect Park Lake
Brooklyn, New York
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This jaunty little guy, a Tufted Titmouse, is a kind of bird I usually see hanging out with its cousin, the Black-Capped Chickadee, but this one was foraging all alone. They have a distinct way of flying from a branch down to the ground—they dive bomb straight down headfirst as if they were a gull about to catch a fish, so that even though they’re small, they can be identified from a distance.
Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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First Robin I’ve seen since the beginning of winter. I trust the birds more than the groundhogs.
Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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Prospect Park Lake
Brooklyn, New York
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These Mourning Doves, despite the snow-covered ground, have found some tasty seeds and insects.
Marine Park Salt Marsh
Brooklyn, New York
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This male (the red nape) Downy Woodpecker looks a lot like a miniature version of its larger cousin, the Hairy Woodpecker. They’ve both got very similar markings including a white back, but the Downy is around 6″ compared to the Hairy’s 9″.
One advantage of trying to photograph birds in winter is that you can get a clearer shot without leaves in the way.
Marine Park Salt Marsh
Brooklyn, New York
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Here’s the Ruddy Duck. They’re small and like to travel in large same-species groups. The male and female both have chestnut sides and backs, with sharp tails; the male has white cheek patches. In the photo above you can see two males in the foreground and a female behind them.
Prospect Park,
Brooklyn, New York
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Prospect Park
Brooklyn, New York
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Nice thing about the winter is that for a while at least, the ducks don’t take a holiday.
Sheepshead Bay
Brooklyn, New York
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This guy looks to me to be an adult male House Finch, though I supose it could be a Purple Finch. I’m going with house finch because there appears to be a bit too much brown on the face for a Purple Finch.
Grounds For Sculpture park
Hamilton Township, New Jersey
If you have any doubt that some species of birds are highly intelligent, watch what this crow does. What the bird is doing is very different from performing a trained act; the bird is actually solving a multi-step puzzle it’s never seen before. This bird was also mentioned in my interview with the author of The Bird Way, Jennifer Ackerman.
Thanks to YouTuber rationalstabs
And forgive the recent Blowin in the Wind discombobulation. It will return to its regularly scheduled time, tomorrow.
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American Wigeon, another lifer for me: eyepatch, green neck, white beak with dark tip.
Marine Park Salt Marsh
Brooklyn, New York
