Earth Day 2016

     From about 9:30 this morning till about 3:30 this afternoon I spent my day outside (with an hour break for lunch). It was the most perfect Earth Day, 80 degrees (shorts weather!!), sunny, got to ride my bike to all my destinations, and got to share some of the day with my good friend Shannon, The Writing Whisperer.
     My day began in a walk through Prospect Park, the trees were alive with birds, the insects were buzzing through the air, frogs & turtles were common sights in the water, and I spotted a sleepy raccoon and very active chipmunks among the many birds.
     After a delicious lunch of Indian food with Shannon, we ventured through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Most of the cherry trees were blooming (not yet to their fullest), the tulips were amazing and the air everywhere was fragrant. The rain held off and we were happy to not have to use my umbrella and rain jacket that I had taken with me.
     Anyway, here are a lot (really, a lot) of pictures from the day, I am very proud of myself as I did not even touch the "sports mode" today- all of these are in manual. Enjoy:

A modest American Robin in Prospect Park.

Mourning Dove, in case you were wondering: this is what it sounds like, when doves cry.

Palm warblers were a common sight today, but not as common as...

The butter butt, yellow-rumped warblers were very very abundant, but I had to check each one out-- just in case! 

That's where the "butter butt" comes from, see the yellow rump, dorsal side, above the tail? Also in shooting in manual mode, it is enabling me to get some higher quality shots, I can crop this down to...

...this. and he still looks decently crisp.

The two species of butterfly I saw today were the cabbage white (pictured) and mourning cloak. I am excited for others to begin showing up soon!

Caught this squirrel (guiltily?) snacking on young leaves and buds in this tree.

Oh yeah, did I mention how abundant the yellow-rumped warblers were today? Many of these guys over winter here in NY, I will say they are fairly drab in the winter- they look quite snazzy in the spring. This is my first warbler I learned to identify, so even though they are plentiful, I still like them very much!

Wild violets growing at the base of Lookout Hill.

Then this guy. He landed exactly across the path from me, near the Ravine and he gave me piece of his mind.

Gave me the side-eye glance.

Flared his crest and fluffed his feathers.

The other side, side-eye.

Chipped a few calls.

All before repositioning himself and finding another male cardinal to square off with. Maybe he just liked that we wear the same color plumage, red hair, red feathers, it's all good.

A female belted kingfisher landed (relatively) close to myself and a few other birders I ran into today, including The City Birder. This may be my "best" Brooklyn Belted Kingfisher photo yet. This is a female, the females have the red on their breast, males lack this coloration.

Young leaves and flowers are really doing a great job of brightening the place up. Fellowing the Ravine there are some small ponds that then lead to the Boathouse, Lullwater, and ultimately, the Lake.
Before this moment, I found both the Northern and Louisiana waterthrush at Ambergill Falls and the Neathermead Arches, respectfully.

At Brooklyn Botanic Garden, blooms were very abundant, also abundant, red-eared sliders!

I like visiting BBG anytime before or after the Cherry Blossom Festival (next weekend!). I, personally don't enjoy large crowds, and honestly, I just want to look, smell, and photo. But if you are into events, it is next weekend: http://www.bbg.org/visit/event/sakura_matsuri_2016

SO FLUFFY!

Turtles basking in the Japanese Garden.

Manual mode for the win, I am pretty excited about how this honey bee turned out!

So of course with blooms, there are pollinators. I can't wait to see more and more as the season wears on. Honey bees of course are of super huge importance and their populations have not been doing super well. If we want to keep eating and surviving, we need to make sure the bees are too!

I do adore the tulips at BBG this time of year.

I found these interestingly named "Purple Prince." I wonder if they were named for him, before his passing yesterday.

I was pretty excited that I can now ID Trout Lilies on my own!

Happy Earth Day, I hope we can try harder to celebrate Earth Day everyday (I very much try to!).

Richmond County

     I can now say I have officially explored all 5 boroughs of NYC after today. In recent times I became a member of NYC Audubon and one of the perks are member discounts on walks and trips. So I took advantage of a trip led by an Audubon Naturalist and Park employee out in High Rock Park, a park that is part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.
     It involved a ferry ride from lower Manhattan and a bus that took us to the park where we began our hike. The ferry provided some good looks at some notable NYC landmarks and some birds, including greater black-back, ring-billed, herring, and laughing gulls, double crested cormorant, brant, and a red-throated loon.
     Upon arriving at the park, we took to the trail, where trees towered over us, jays made their presence known, and the warmth of the sun soon had us shedding our layers on the most beautiful day we have had in quite some time! It was a really great trip, even without a huge amount of bird diversity it was absolutely great to walk in these woods and learn about local plants and other fauna we came across.
Enjoy the sights...

You can get really great views of the Statue of Liberty from the Staten Island Ferry for free, 1/2 hour one way and then you can simply ride back or explore Staten Island, as we then did.

I was happy to spot this wood duck, originally just the male, others spotted the female. They are ducks you never get sick of seeing. Ever.

The park had lots of small ponds, some permanent, some vernal, which is great in supporting frog species like peepers, wood frogs, and gray tree frogs. We heard gray tree frogs while we ate lunch.

This could have been a nice picture if someones plastic trash was not photo bombing.

We saw two species of NATIVE turtle, Eastern Painted Turtles like this guy were everywhere! What a lovely thing to see, plentiful painteds, no sliders!
This painted turtle is male, you can tell by his long front claws, he uses these to wave in the faces of females that he fancies when it is time to breed. I don't know how this is attractive and not annoying to females, but it seems to float their boat. In June it is common to see turtles wondering beyond the pond, usually females looking for a suitable place to lay their eggs.

We also saw a common snapper, nice and large on a different pond.

Wood ducks are just at home on land as they are in water. They are perching ducks, they nest and perch in trees. Their young follow mom out of the nest and fall (and bounce) to the ground where they continue to follow her to the water.

Surely a great day to be a turtle!

I learned that this is trout lily, they were coming up, but none had flowers. We learned in other locations are NYC they had already bloomed, these seem to have not yet gotten to that point.

A few paces later, I found one blooming, pretty little thing it is!

I learned that this is trillium, that bud in the middle will soon be a flower!

A downy woodpecker landed close to us as we settled for a lunch break.

In addition to downy, we also saw hairy, red-bellied, and heard N. Flicker- no pileateds today, Staten Island is the only borough in NYC that has pileated woodpeckers.

I was pretty happy our guide was into looking for more than just birds, he also looked for salamanders. This involves turning over logs and taking a peek underneath,
I LOVE looking under logs. When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do was to (every day) go into the back yard and my parents used wood beams to border garden areas and I would lift and look under them daily. Picking up potato bugs (as I called them, also called sow bugs- a type of isopod), playing with millipedes, digging worms, and always looking for toads. My dad told me that he saw toads in our yard when we first moved there. I never found a toad but I looked back in our yard for them and all sort of crawly things every day. So, looking under logs, getting soil under my finger nails, and finding critters makes me so happy and reminds me of being a kid.
I lucked out and turned over a piece of branch to find this teeeeneh tinneh behbeh salamander, a "lead-back" color phase of the red-backed salamander. Also in the process of regenerating its tail!
(Please ignore the dry skin that reveals my man-hands)

Just to give you some scale on how little this guy was- super cute! Probably my most favorite part of the day, I also got soil stains on my knees, that's when you know you had a good day!

We did find one adult red-backed salamander hiding under a huge log. These are lungless salamanders of the family plethodontidae, as their family name suggests, they lack lungs. They conduct gas exchange through their skin, which requires they live in a moist habitat-- like that found under logs, rocks, and leaf litter. 

Our trip concluded with finding this guy, which really made me happy. I love seeing herps (reptiles & amphibians) just as much as I love seeing birds, or any other animal for that matter.

To learn more about other trips with NYC Audubon, check out their website. I plan to go on more of their walks myself as my time allows, but look forward to discovering new places in taking such trips!

Fort Greene Firsts

     First off, I want to explain to my father, who I know reads this, I promise, Dad, Fort Greene is pretty darn safe, in comparison to your Brooklyn living in the 80's.
     Now that the air is clear, I traveled by bike to Fort Greene Park today to seek out a reported yellow-throated warbler, not to be confused with the common yellowthroat. Being April, one would normally be excited to head outside on a sunny day, except for the fact I had to wear gloves on my bike, thermals under my clothing, and couldn't type into my phone because my hands were so iced! Spring, where you at?! Srsly.
     I do not know the park well and meandered my way up to the monument, where I found a group had formed, also looking for this warbler. In the end, I met some new folks, saw some familiar faces and we all used our eyes to call out when we had the bird in sight. I find birding to be such a wonderful way to socialize, I have made such great friends through doing this and always look forward to meeting new people while out in the field.
     Glad to say, the yellow throated warbler is officially ticked on my list!

A very light colored American Robin.

This one mourning dove caught my eye, the feathers on its shoulders were like gold leaf! Super metallic!

The dark-eyed juncos were super singers today- also singing were the house finches!

And here come some really cruddy photos of the Yellow-throated warbler! 

So this tree had 2 to 3 yellowbellied sapsuckers working some wells they created and the sap was flowing, quite generously. It drew in this guy, as well as juncos, kinglets, and house sparrows -- probably insects too, for the birds to also dine on! 

Here is one of the yellow-bellied sapsuckers, this park had a ton of sapsuckers in it, the most I have ever seen at once! And they were doing as their name states, they were sucking sap! Right in front of this bird, you can see a shine on the branch, that is sap. This bird drills into a tree, the tree reacts to this "wound" by secreting sap (just like how we would put that weird "second skin" product on minor cuts) to seal up the gash in its bark. This bird knows the tree does this and uses this to their advantage, giving them a super wonderful way to get some high energy food, that also draws in bugs. No greater delicacy than sap-dipped insects!
This one tree was leaking sap from various places, it glistened on its limbs with sap that flowed and attracted in many free-loaders, like the yellow-throated warbler.

The people who named birds, I get the feeling they weren't super creative. Most birds are named for the calls they make (like chickadees) or their general appearance, like the yellow-throated warbler. And then someone else also has a warbler with a yellow throat, and darn, that name was already taken, and so that's why this guy, name-wise, should not be confused with the Common Yellowthroat.

A yellow-bellied sapsucker (another creative point withdrawn from those responsible for naming birds) shows off some wonderful camouflage with some lichen-covered bark.

We know this one is a female, males have a red bib on their throat, females lack this feature.

A few of the birders and myself came to the consensus that the Yellow-throated warbler was maintaining a circuit, possibly visiting different sapsuckers, because they were everywhere! It ever 10-15 minutes flew into the same part of the tree, allowing me to see him 4 different times, just by standing stationary. He would then fly off, and we'd loose him, not really seeing where he went. On one flight I saw where he headed, and positioned myself a bit differently- which is how I got the following angles.

The photos are still pretty cruddy, but it gave me a bit closer of a look. He did not seem to mind the crowded area he was in, the only thing he seemed to mind were house sparrows. The house sparrows were absolute punks, chasing each other, the sapsuckers, and as soon as this guy landed, he was easy to pick on, as the house sparrows were fat and very much throw their weight (all few grams of them) around.

I saw him off to this plane tree, and from there he flew downward from the slope I was viewing him on, I'm sure only to make a few more rounds. Super glad I got to see this little beauty, super cool find to those who first spotted him and got the word out! Urban birding, for the win!