Spring Symphony

The chorus of birds throughout the City's Parks resounds with the song of renewal. Flowers are blooming, songbirds are nesting and the raptors are sitting on their precious eggs. The perfect timing of all this implies a hidden conductor, silently signaling each section, in a master concert! With its characteristic pauses and crescendos, the music spans the entire range from the tiniest wing beats of the bumble bees, to the massive conglomeration of a huge flock of starlings roosting at dusk. Here's a pictoral equivalent of this masterpiece.







The new male, hunting hard over Morningside for his potential brood!

The resident male kestrel, doing the same!


Isolde, taking a break from nest sitting, atop St. Luke's

Also saw this male kestrel hunting house finches above Barnard campus.

At the nest on CCNY, still cant see if the female is brooding, but the male is following the same pattern as their Cathedral neighbors. Here he is hunting hard over Hamilton Heights, crow in tow!

While the female kestrel on 155th takes a break from nesting duty.

This ragged juvy rth also flew over 155th, stooping on Jackie Robinson Park.


So many storylines, how will it all play out? Will the Cathedral pair be successful despite their troubles, or will they go the way of the Fenway pair? Will the new nest at CCNY be a success? Will the many kestrels nests produce another prodigious crop of fledglings?

Only the master conductor knows, and in due time He will tell us all if we listen carefully enough!

Christmas 2007

Beautiful weather contributed great light to a unseasonably warm day.
Full of Christmas Colors!

More of his handiwork






While rounding the Blockhouse, I heard a sound not unlike the whine of a squirrel alarm call.

I listened closer, and the call was more sharp and not as high pitched. Looking out, I spotted a juvy Cooper's

The call was not the sharp kek-kek-kek described in guidebooks. It was similar to a squirrel alarm call, but not as nasally. I looked through the trees to see what it was calling to.



The juvy flew off at the adult,


The murderous red eye of the adult...


and both circled around the Blockhouse, out of sight.
After a few minutes of searching, I heard the same sound and found the juvy making furtive advances towards the adult.



The juvy then tried to hop on the adult!

Knocking the adult off the branch...

she then promptly flew off.



Also seen were a thrush of one sort or another.