Merry Christmas

"I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year." Charles Dickens.

Happy 4th of July

 

No blog today, just some holiday-appropriate red, white, and blue local birds. Like this perky northern cardinal gathering a gift of grapes. Click to enlarge.

A great egret in a sultry summer pond.

And a handsome insouciant blue jay. Have a great holiday! Click to enlarge.

Appreciating Cardinals

It has been raining and gray here for days that feel like weeks. It seems to make the red cardinals stand out even more than usual. Click to enlarge.

It reminds me of something Terri Guillemets wrote:

"Winter is the slow-down

Winter is the search for self

Winter gives the silence you need to listen 

Winter goes gray so you can see your own colors..." 

On the technical side, when I was picturing red cardinals on gray backgrounds, I realized that although my camera can take a selectively colored photograph like that, I did not know how to change an existing color image to only show reds and grays. I figured out how to do it with Photoshop. (I have CS 5.) I opened this jpg and called it Layer 1. Then I chose Color Range from the Selection menu, and then Reds from the Selected Colors pull down. I copied that selection to a new layer. Then I used the Adjustment option from the Image menu to change Layer 1 to Black and White. That's it. Red cardinals on gray backgrounds.

Works well for house finches, too.

Holidays

The holidays have started. I hope your Halloween and Thanksgiving were as nice as mine. 

Here's a thought about holidays from Fred Rogers:

"I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending."

Winter is coming! Get the egg nog ready! 

Happy New Year... 5777

The Jewish NewYear 5777 begins today. I'm relaxing and thinking about what kind of sweet dessert to make. I'm pretty sure it will use apples and brown sugar and I'll borrow some raisins from the supply we bought for the birds. These days two and sometimes three robins show up on my porch every morning for a breakfast of raisins, so we use them up pretty fast. The robin above is hanging around hoping for a few. 

The female cardinal pictured above is usually waiting in the morning, too,  and she brings a begging baby; she hops over to the window sill and looks in if I'm not there soon enough for her schedule. She says "CHIP!" to get my attention and I give her a peanut, which she breaks into small pieces to feed beak-to-beak to the baby. I can't show a photo because they let me watch them but both grab their peanuts and fly away when I point a camera at them. Click to enlarge. 

So for dessert I think I'll stew tart apples in butter with brown sugar, pie spices, and a few of the robins' raisins, and then pour it over yogurt. Sounds good, right? We can eat it while watching the birds outside the window having their own feast of raisins and peanuts.

Happy New Year!

Wishing you great wildlife sightings in 2013...

Sunday Breakfast

I scatter seeds on my porch in Brooklyn Heights for the birds when the weather gets cold. This morning I had lots of visitors. Click on the photos to enlarge.

House sparrows, Passer domesticus, are always the first to arrive. They like seeds and breadcrumbs.  They usually come in a group. 

The cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, eats seeds, nuts, and fruit. A male/female pair come together, and he usually comes out from cover first. She is less trusting and flies away if she sees me watching. They can open peanut shells, and often nibble some grapes and then fly off with one big peanut each to peel and eat in a more private place. 

I can always tell when the blue jays arrive from their loud calls of Jay! Jay! Jay! The jays, Cyanocitta cristata, target whole peanuts in the shell, carrying them off, one by one, until they have collected them all. They find a good spot and bury them for later. 

White-throated sparrows, Zonotrichia albicollis, mainly breed in Canada and then migrate south to spend the winter in the eastern and southern states, west coast, and northern South America -- and in my garden. They show up on the porch when I put out seeds, seeming mainly to be interested in the smaller ones, like millet. 

Pigeons, Columba livia, almost never come to the garden, but they seem to know immediately whenever there are seeds on my porch. Ditto breadcrumbs, another of their favorites. 

Happy Holidays!

Born in the summer of 2010

It's 30 degrees and windy in New York City today. As I scattered seeds on my Brooklyn porch for the birds this morning I couldn't help thinking about the coming winter and how it will impact the birds. Some of them, like the northern cardinals and the pigeons, will stay here through the winter; they are called residents. Others, like robins and blue jays, have mixed feelings about leaving; some of them migrate but some don't. Still other birds, like winter wrens, migrate to here to spend the winter from even colder places further north. Regardless of the migration plan, winter causes upheaval; the birds face either a long cold season or a long round trip.

The baby birds pictured below were all born this summer in New York City despite noise, pollution, and about eight million people. Despite all that and snow, ice, and freezing temperatures, or a trip to Florida or Mexico, they will be here next spring to start families of their own.

A family of Canada geese, Branta canadensis, in the East River.

This baby rock pigeon, Columba livia, was born
on a Manhattan building ledge. 

Baby American robins, Turdus americana, look like
adults with spots.This one was born in a tree behind
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

These Mallard ducklings, Ana platyrhynchus, were
born by The Pond in Central Park, across the street
from the Plaza Hotel. 

This baby blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata, was born
on Manhattan'supper west side in Central Park near
the Shakespeare Garden. 

This baby northern cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis,
was born in my condo garden in Brooklyn.

New Bird!

This immature northern cardinal, Cardinalis cardinalis, showed up on the porch this week. It looks like its dad -- crested and thick-billed -- but it has not yet acquired its adult colors.

This bright male is probably the father. He has been visiting our porch for seeds and peanuts for a few years, especially during winter when food is hard to find and for the last few weeks while he has been feeding his new family. 

The female cardinal is mainly brown like the immature, but she has a bright orange bill and red highlights.

During mating season males often feed females, passing a bit of food from his beak to hers. Cardinal form pairs in spring, when males define and begin to defend territories – like the garden behind our building.

Females build bowl-shaped nests in privet and rose bushes, briars, lilacs, honeysuckle, hardwood saplings, young evergreens, and shrubs. The nest is usually placed between four and five feet from the ground. They build with weed stems, small flexible twigs, bark strips, grass, vines, rootlets, leaves and paper.

Cardinal eggs are dotted, spotted, and blotched with brown on a grayish-white background. Females incubate while males bring food. It's a perilous business; many eggs are lost to cats, blue jays, nest collapse, wind, and other accidents. But cardinals are persistent. It they lose a nest, they build another.

When a clutch of eggs hatches, the female often starts a new nest while the father takes over raising the hatchlings. Two nests mean twice as many trips to my window! Over the last month, the male cardinal has been visiting a few times a day; he sits on the sill looking in, chipping loudly, and waving his wings for attention.

Cardinals are famous for using the same feeding and nesting spots year after year. They can live for more than ten years. We have lots of visits to look forward to!

There is more information about urban birds in my book, A Field Guide to Urban Wildlife of North America, which will be published by Stackpole Books in spring 2011.