Thanksgiving 2014

As the Thanksgiving festivities draw to a close, consider the wild turkeys  of New Jersey, a few of which are pictured above. Wild turkeys had been extirpated in New Jersey by the mid-1800s. In the 1970s a few birds were reintroduced. That population caught on, and wildlife managers captured and released them more broadly around the state. Now, about 40 years later, turkeys are a common sight all over New Jersey. Too common a sight, some say; there are thought to be about 23,000 of them out there! Click to enlarge. 

This looks like a lovely autumn lake in the country, doesn't it? Nope. It is in Prospect Park in Brooklyn -- about as urban as a place can be. The designers did a great job of creating an illusion of remoteness, didn't they? There's no population of wild turkeys here yet, but you can see one big old male wild turkey in the Prospect Park Zoo. 

Wishing you all another year filled with things to be thankful for! 

Pretty Pigeons

I walked around my Brooklyn neighborhood today, scouting for handsome pigeons. I am partial to the piebald ones that have patches of iridescence. Although pigeons rarely seem to stay still for long (at least when I am trying to photograph them), some paused long enough for these portraits. Click to enlarge. 

Two-toned bill! 

And a poem -- 

Pigeons by Richard Kell

They paddle with staccato feet

In powder-pools of sunlight,

Small blue busybodies

Strutting like fat gentlemen

With hands clasped

Under their swallowtail coats;

And, as they stump about,

Their heads like tiny hammers

Tap at imaginary nails

In non-existent walls.

Elusive ghosts of sunshine

Slither down the green gloss

Of their necks in an instant, and are gone.

Summer hangs drugged from sky to earth

In limpid fathoms of silence:

Only warm dark dimples of sound

Slide like slow bubbles

From the contented throats.

Raise a casual hand -

With one quick gust

They fountain into air. 

 A puffed up pigeon on my porch celebrated the relatively warm day... 

With a nap. 

200,000 Pageviews!

 The Urban Wildlife Guide just passed 200,000 pageviews. I am taking the day off to bask in the glow...

p.s. Stay tuned for the upcoming gallery of Brooklyn's most beautiful pigeons.

Gull and Crab

Can you find the crab in this picture? It's like a hidden object puzzle to me. Click to enlarge. 

No problem for the herring gull, though. The bird, Larus argentatus, is in adult winter plumage. 

Crab dinner. 

This poem comes to mind -- A Green Crab's Shell, by Mark Doty, 1953

Not, exactly, green: 

closer to bronze

preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved 

from a Greco-Roman wreck,

patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot 

know what his fantastic 

legs were like -- 

though evidence

suggests eight

complexly folded

scuttling works 

of armament, crowned

by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace

and power. A gull's

gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber

--size of a demitasse--

open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue. 

Though it smells

of seaweed and ruin, 

this little traveling case 

comes with such lavish lining! 

Imagine breathing

surrounded by 

the brilliant rinse

of summer's firmament. 

What color is 

the underside of skin?

Not so bad, to die, 

if we could be opened 

into this -- 

if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,

similarly,

revealed some sky. 

Friendly English Herons

Here are a few more things I saw while birdwatching in Kensington Gardens in London this past summer.

The horses on the carousel had names. One was called Perrin. 

Some of the pigeons were common wood pigeons, Columba palumbus -- big pigeons with bold white neck patches. 

The park's great blue herons, Ardea herodias, were uncharacteristically friendly. At home, I usually see great blue herons hunting alone in marshes, often, like this one, in litter-strewn marshes. Click to enlarge. 

But in Kensington Gardens there were several great blue herons among the hordes of swans, geese, and ducks soliciting handouts of food from passing humans. I had never seen a great blue heron do that before (although I have seen a flock of white ibis go from door to door for snacks in suburban backyards in Florida).