Central Park
22 April 2024
Red-winged blackbird
Yellow-rumped warbler
Double-crested cormorant
Two of three raccoons that were by the stream in the Loch.
Raccoon
Hermit thrush
Ruby-crowned kinglet
Osprey
Northern flicker
Morningside Heights and Central Park
21 April 2024
This is one of the pair of ravens with a nest on St. John the Divine. It's perched on top of a stone cross.
Common raven
Yellow-rumped warbler
Great egret
Tree swallow
Double-crested cormorant
I was bemused by the accidental composition of this photo.
Great egret
Someone told me that the osprey has been showing up at 5:00 promptly at the Harlem Meer. That could very well be—I saw it at 5:08, but I wasn't in a position to see it earlier.
Osprey
Central Park
20 April 2024
Today was a lovely spring day for a walk in Central Park.
The rusty blackbird was definitely the best sighting of the day—it's my first-ever.
Rusty blackbird
The picture isn't upside down, nor was the camera.
Black-and-white warbler
No, it's a raccoon, not a bird, but…
Raccoon
White-throated sparrow
Eastern towhee
Red-winged blackbird
Hermit thrush
Palm warbler
Golden-crowned kinglet
The Ravens of St. John the Divine
13 April 2024
I'm continuing to watch the ravens nesting at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Normally, there's not much to see; available sight lines generally hide a brooding bird. This afternoon, though, I got lucky: both ravens flew onto a lower roof and preened each other. Eventually, one flew back to the nest (last photo) and entered it.
Common raven
Total Eclipse of the Sun: April 8, 2024, Berlin, Vermont
8 April 2024
I've neglected this blog shamefully, but what better way to restart it than with pictures of a total eclipse.
It begins… Note two sunspots, one just above the center and one in the upper left.
More is gone.
The moon is about to swallow one of the sunspots.
A crescent sun, with the second sunspot about to go.
A thin crescent sun.
Totality! Note the solar prominences around the sun, especially on the left side.
A diamond ring, with small stones… (Update: I've since learned that these are called Baily's Beads.)
A post-totality picture, with the sun smiling for the great show it gave us.
Bartholomew's Cobble
10 August 2020
Apparently, Bartholomew's Cobble is known as a great venue for birding. I hadn't heard of it before—but if my trip last week is any indication, I should certainly head back.
Northern flicker
Red-tailed hawk
Turkey vulture
Pileated woodpecker
Dragonfly
Tripds, Timers, and Hummingbirds
4 August 2020
Almost all of my pictures are taken “by hand”. That is, I spot the bird, point the camera, adjust assorted settings, and take the picture. (Yes, there are lots of useless shots that way, but pixels are cheap.) Sometimes, though, I “cheat”. There's a rose of Sharon bush I know of that ruby-throated hummingbirds like to visit in August, but I can't easily predict when. Accordingly, I set up my camera on a tripod, aimed it broadside at one flower, and set the interval timer to take a shot every 15 seconds. 400 pictures later…
I didn't want to examine 400 pictures carefully, though. Accordingly, I wrote a small script that turned them into a short movie. Any time I saw something dark flicker through a frame, I noted where, and went back and reviewed those pictures by hand. (Technical details: I used a high shutter speed, to freeze wing movement, and I used a relatively small aperture to get the entire bird in focus. If you look closely at the picture, you'll see that even 1/1000th of a second exposure wasn't fast enough—I should have gone to 1/2000 or even 1/4000. To make the “movie”, I used ImageMagick to rescale each picture to 25% of the original, converted it to a GIF, and wrote the filename and timestamp in the upper right of each one. I then combined all 400 GIFs into an animated GIF, with each frame lasting 40 ms. That's long enough that I can see the flicker of a hummingbird, and since most of the characters of the filename don't change between frames I can see the approximate point in the sequence. I have to view ~15 shots quickly to pick out the ones I want.)
Ruby-throated hummingbird (female)
Of course, there are many insects who like flowers, too. And the flowers don't mind that much—look at how pollen-coated they are.
The Central Park Pond
26 July 2020
I had a great time this morning at the Central Park Pond: a black-crowned night heron, an egret that found some prey, a turtle that decided it wanted to be under a bench instead of in the water, a wood duck, and a great blue heron perched in a tree. I should note: that bird showed why one should not park a car under a tree in which a heron perches…
A Red-Tailed Hawk, Grooming Itself
25 July 2020
A red-tailed hawk was grooming itself. It apparently heard the click of my camera shutter, stopped what it was doing, and lookeed down at me. I suppose I'm anthropomorphizing to say that it was glaring at me…
Red-tailed hawk
Peregrine Falcons
23 July 2020
A pair of peregrine falcons have a nest high up on Riverside Church; the church very kindly installed some 2x4s for them to perch on.
The other day, I saw several falcons—at least two, more likely three or four—circling around the Interchurch Center across the street. Speculation I've heard is that this was the parents teaching the fledglings how to fly well.
Peregrine falcon
