Hiking In Nature
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Mallards
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Downy Woodpecker
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Open!
I was really revving myself up to get angry to break the sign and tug at the chain and look at the fence to see if there were weaknesses I could break.
Instead I told the worker about the joy of being able to walk down to the lake.
I meditated for 17 minutes. I heard a bird, and I opened my BirdNET app and found out it was a red winged blackbird, from the passerine family.
So many projects, I was going to read all of Thoreau's essays. And I see I've only read one. Next one is The Service, which wasn't published by Dial.
I listened to the essay. It's so complicated, and doesn't flow easily. He's a contrarian, who sought the military model when others are pacifists.
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Park still closed
So I talked to some workmen and they were saying that the pipes are gonna be sending drainage waste water to Whitestone where it’s processed and then released into the sound. The pollutants are taken out, and I asked him where they sent the pollutants and they said somewhere in Pennsylvania maybe.
I don’t think that’s why the park is closed. I didn’t even go and rattle the gate, it looked closed from a distance but now I’m thinking I need to go look again, make sure. When I write for the public, however unread this blog is, I feel an extra need to be truthful and right. Additionally I've been thinking truth is dead during the Trump years, so it's revolutionary to tell the truth in such an era.
They said the project was for 2 years, so that's probably not why the park is closed.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Pat Dolan Trail Continues to be closed!
The unlimited time irks me "until further notice" I'm thinking about crossing the Van Wyck and the fence anyway, and it's time to start making phone calls.
My friend writes from Portland: "...we learned all about a crazy plan to shoot 400,000 barred owls over the next ten years, because they are coming over from the eastern US and outcompeting the native spotted owls for food and habitat. The barred owls will eat anything and have less restrictive roosting requirements and the spotted owls keep a very limited diet and such and so they are unable to compete and are going extinct."
There was a majestic fish crow cawing away above us on the walk to school today.
Reading Derek Goodwin's Crows of the World (1983), which starts:
"The crow family, Corvidae, is a numerous, diverse and successful group of passerine birds. It includes such familiar species as the Rook in England and the Blue Jay in eastern North America and also others, such as the Sooty Jay and the African Bush-crow, about which little is known. Corvids range in size from the little lark-sized Hume's Ground Jay to the Raven, which is the largest of passerine birds. Some are dull or uniform black in hue, others are among the most colourful of the world's birds."
There's a substack about birds that mentions crows.
Flowers are coming soon:
Monday, January 20, 2025
Botanical sexism
Wikipedia: Botanical sexism is a term that describes the preferential planting of cloned male plants in urban areas because they do not produce fruits and flowers that litter the landscape. However, because males produce pollen, areas with only male plants can have high pollen in the air and, therefore, be inhospitable to people with pollen allergies.
Nice birding sub-stack.