I took this picture of my local American robin on the first day of spring this year. We had come through a very cold winter. Like some robins in these parts, this one stayed north. I fed him raisins. There were days when it was so cold that he’d take a raisin and hop away […]
Tag: Julie Feinstein
Turtle Day
A turtle haiku from Kobayashi Issa, 1825 – “short summer night – in the field turtles cavort”. May 23rd was World Turtle Day, a day for celebrating turtles and tortoises. To raise awareness of them and to help protect their disappearing habitats, I am reposting photos from all the blogs I’ve written about turtles. This […]
Parakeets
I stopped by Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn this week to visit the locally famous parakeets. This group flew over and landed by me, sat and squawked for a while, and then flew deeper into the cemetery. Monk parakeets have been around Brooklyn for about forty years; the colony at Green-Wood is one of the largest […]
Defender of Raisins
One day last week there was a mockingbird perched outside my window in the cold, first thing in the morning. I opened up and threw some raisins on the surface of the snow. The mockingbird was eating when all of a sudden a robin appeared. The robin flew in so close that the mockingbird had […]
Chipping Sparrow
I just spent a week in the pine lands of southern New Jersey. Chipping sparrows there started singing at dawn and kept on until the sun set. I saw dozens of them. This one was gathering material for a nest.
The First Real Day of Spring
One thing signals the start of spring to me — when the white-throated sparrows start to sing. So, according to me, spring started this past Wednesday when I heard the first one right outside my window. Today they were singing all over Brooklyn. The song is distinctive and once you know what it is you […]
Ruddy Turnstone
I see ruddy turnstones in the nicest places — ocean beaches, mud flats, jetties, rocky shores, and boat docks. There are usually a few of them around New York and New Jersey in winter. I saw these in Cape May, New Jersey. They can be found wintering on the coasts of five other continents, too: […]