northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Brown-headed Cowbird I met last spring. Though it's easy to disapprove of the lifestyle of Brown-headed Cowbirds - basically tricking other bird species into raising their young to the detriment of the other bird species - a lot goes on in nature that seems unfair; predatory and parasitic organisms aren't exactly "playing nice" either, and many herbivores end up harming the plants they eat.  Is this particular cowbird studying a leaf? While formal dendrology may be beyond these birds, I suppose some leaf recognition could come in handy since they could be suggestive of nearby seeds that could be eaten. (Still, it's probably more likely that some sort of bug was on or near the leaf.) May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557462, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

I guess this Wood Duck picture came out good enough that it merits a post. (As always, all the credit goes to the duck; the photographer was doing little more than skulking around along the shore.) I did see other Wood Ducks in the vicinity, but I suspect they heard me and were calmly but determinately vacating the area. (A wildlife photographer quickly learns that most wild animals will least a minimum shun them, and sometimes flee the area while loudly alerting everyone else of your presence.)  May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557757, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Despite seeing Orioles, Blue Jays, and Cardinals 1 day this past spring, no baseball was being played. Of course, Orioles , Blue Jays , and Cardinals are different birds than Orioles , Blue Jays , and Cardinals . (It's doubtful that any of the birds I've mentioned would be particularly good at baseball since they all weigh less that a baseball [1]. In recent years a number of sports teams have changed their nicknames/mascots due to concerns about offending a group. We could eliminate all of that if every team switched to using bird names instead; at least I've never heard a bird complain that a team nickname demeaned them [2]. We could have heated battles between Juncos and Buntings, Scaups and Mallards, Cuckoos and Roadrunners. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278556506, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557219, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557422, (c) jpviolette, some ri

Last spring I saw a number of shorebirds , most of them migrating through New Jersey to get to more northerly breeding grounds [1]. On this particular day I saw a couple of Solitary Sandpipers in the same general vicinity at the same time. Although they get the "solitary" part of their name because they're frequently found alone, during migration there are probably only a limited number of good way stations available along their route. It's not shocking to see them and/or their larger Lesser Yellowlegs and Greater Yellowlegs cousins working the same area of a river even if they're not purposely flocking together. Solitary Sandpipers may prefer their alone time, but they're not psychopathic about it; these 2 were working different parts of Dukes Brook without any hostility that I could see. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278556645, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278556715, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserve

Here's an Eastern Phoebe I met last spring. Does the phoebe think it's hiding behind that twig? Probably not, though it's hard to get into the brain of a bird and figure out what they're thinking. Perhaps a small bird could misinterpret a small twig to be providing more protection than a human would attribute to it. Although gnats are a subset of flies , there is not really a corresponding relationship between gnatcatchers (like the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher ) and the tyrant flycatchers (like the Eastern Phoebe) [1]. And their names are both somewhat misleading, with gnatcatchers and many flycatchers being general-purpose insectivores rather than gnat and fly specialists. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557410, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] Though gnatcatchers and flycatchers both passerines , so are crows, sparrows, warblers, and many more.

Last spring I saw 2 of the area birds noted for their mimicry of other sounds. The 1st 1 is a bird that commonly seen and even more often heard; if you hear what sounds like various birds, frogs, crickets, and/or an ambulance coming sequentially from a tree, there's a pretty good chance there's 1 Northern Mockingbird up there [1]. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557926, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) Next there's another bird that's around here often enough but that I mostly see in the spring, a Brown Thrasher  [2]. Though they don't look similar and aren't in the same genus as the Northern Mockingbird, they are in the same bird mimic family  [3]. Unlike the Northern Mockingbird who generally repeat a sound 3 times, the Brown Thrasher tends to repeat only twice, so you can sometimes distinguish them just by hearing them. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278556938, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] In my experience, there

Our common names for many species can cause confusion: Sometimes people will tell you they saw a "blue bird" and you'll think they're talking about a bluebird, which in this area basically means an Eastern Bluebird . Other times people will be unaware that there's a difference between the Eastern Bluebird and other blue birds. While we have lots of birds that are bluish gray (including the aptly named Blue-gray Gnatcatcher ) and some vibrantly blue birds that you don't see a lot (like the Indigo Bunting ), there are actually some common blue birds we see more often than Eastern Bluebirds. Here's a non-bluebird blue bird, the Blue Jay . These noisy birds are actually much larger than Eastern Bluebirds; confusing them is probably similar to confusing me with a Polar Bear. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557206, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) The next bird, a Tree Swallow , has a shinier blue than the Eastern Bluebird, and as cavity nester

It's surprising sometimes how much time you can spend getting a fairly mediocre picture. I 1st noticed this Blue-gray Gnatcatcher - or its mate - while helping out at a Duke Farms program for schoolkids, though I believe this picture was taken a couple days later when I had more time to loiter around waiting for a photo opportunity. I didn't see 2 birds around at the same time, though: Branches and foliage provided only quick looks as the bird(s) returned to the nest. These are pretty small birds. They're only slightly sexually dimorphic, so distinguishing a male from a female is pretty hard. I'm unsure if I was seeing 1 or 2 birds. The weather in early May was frequently cool in the mornings but was frequently warm in the afternoons. I'm not sure the eggs need someone tending them continuously during this weather. I didn't hear little birds begging for food, and it looked like the nest was complete, so my best guess is that the adult would look for something t

Here's a Chipping Sparrow , a bird I see the most around May (this picture was from early May of 2023) but will encounter sometimes in the summer. My guess is that this is because we're on the southern part of their summer range, and in the early spring I'm seeing at least some individuals who are passing through New Jersey on their way further north. In the summer I'm probably only seeing the Chipping Sparrows that have chosen to breed here. Though not our most distinctive sparrow (that's probably the showy Eastern Towhee ), these crisp-looking little birds with the rufus caps generally stand out from the "little brown birds". Their closest relatives that are commonly found in New Jersey are the Field Sparrows . Chipping and Field Sparrows aren't extremely common here, but it's also not hard to run across a few of them. Chipping Sparrows frequently sing a chi-chi-chi-chi song which led to their name. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278557367, (c)

Last spring I saw  Baltimore Orioles in this general area though I only got pictures of this individual. This fella would sing a bit , fly to another branch, sing a bit more, and repeat this process.  The activity was near Duke Farms' Hay Barn, up in the American Sycamore and London Plane trees. As birds that will eat Eastern Tent Caterpillars [1], there was an abundance of food nearby. On the other hand Orioles enjoy a balanced diet that includes fruit, and this immediate area doesn't strike me as rich in berries and other fruits [2]. May 3, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 278556535, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] I'm pretty sure they eat these caterpillars when the caterpillars leave their tents to forage for food. [2] Depending on how far they're willing to go for a meal, raspberries, blackberries, and grapes would probably be available later in the year.

Here's another rabble [1] of Eastern Tent Caterpillars . Few caterpillars are as social as Eastern Tent Caterpillars. They spend their non-feeding time crowded together in the silken "tents" they spin, and leave their tent together to go out to eat about 3 times a day [2], then return together to the tent to rest up and work on their tent [3]. These social caterpillars may be more like family than friends. Late in the preceding spring or early in the preceding summer, their moms laid 200-300 eggs. They'll overwinter in their eggs, hatching the following spring. I suspect that if 2 moms laid their eggs in the same vicinity their kids could hatch and team up on a tent, but there's almost certainly a lot of brothers and sisters squirming around in those tents. In early spring when it can still be chilly, their tents function as mini-greenhouses, helping to keep the caterpillars warm enough to digest food. When temperatures warm, the caterpillars sometimes need to han

I got this somewhat obstructed picture of an Eastern Bluebird this spring. While the bird seemed to be awfully interested in this tree, I have to confess I'm not certain what had gotten his attention: I know squirrels and birds will sometimes eat the buds off of trees; it's possible that's what's going on here. My understanding is that bluebirds - like their bigger American Robin cousins - are omnivorous, preferring to eat bugs when they're available but willing to go vegetarian when bugs are scarce. Bugs > Buds > Nothing. This looks like a smallish opposite-branching tree; I'm suspicious that it's a dogwood tree. When I asked the internet whether birds eat dogwood buds, I found about a bajillion gazillion articles about birds eating dogwood berries, and a couple broken links about them eating dogwood buds. (Thanks a lot, internet.) And of course trees - especially native ones - are home to insects, so it's possible that our bluebird friend has f

Here's 1 of our more common (though somewhat shy) ducks swimming at the Washington Valley Reservoir. Though a male in eclipse plumage looks similar overall to a female Wood Duck , I'm confident this is a female: The eyes don't look red (which a male should have) but there is a white ring around the eyes (which only a female should have). This picture was taken in the spring [1], when I'd expect a male to look more like this in his full breeding plumage. May 1, 2023 at Washington Valley Reservoir Photo 278271098, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) [1] If you saw a male Wood Duck on this date, he probably would look a bit like a red-eyed female. One tricky things about some birds (especially males) is having to recognize different plumages.

As birds that like to fish, it's easy to imagine that this Double-crested Cormorant is demonstrating the size of "the fish that got away". (Fishermen are known for their exaggerations , after all.) In actuality, the cormorant was almost certainly just drying its wings off after a dip in the water. Their feathers are less oily than most waterfowl, so they get wetter and need to dry off more than ducks/geese do. May 1, 2023 at Washington Valley Park Photo 278270674, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)