Category: Prospect Park

I heard green herons gurgling high up in the trees this morning and lucked into a sightline where I could see them building a nest (the nest is the mass of twigs in the upper right corner of the photo). I saw two bringing twigs to the nest and arranging them, but three herons seem to be involved, so I’m guessing they’re poly? (I’m not going to say online where the nest is, but if I see you in the park, I’m happy to show you.)

This catbird was singing like a nightclub chanteuse in a spotlight.

The mulberry that this robin was picking was for a fledgling nearly as large as she was.

The attunement to each other that paired brown-headed cowbirds show in their body language is uncanny to me. I’ve seen other birds, while courting, move in a sort of call-and-response pattern, or even perform together in waltz-like symmetry, but cowbirds seem capable of almost synchronized swimming. I always wonder if it’s because their life of crime requires tighter coordination than innocence would. There were two pairs of cowbirds this morning, all four courting together, making their weird digital sounds.

The green herons were also courting. One sat in a tree and puffed out its chest, headed cocked back, as it issued its call, which sounds, rather unromantically, like the rumbling of a hungry stomach.

There are multiple reports of a wood duck hen in the park who’s supervising nineteen ducklings this year, but so far I’ve only seen this hen, who’s in charge of a more modest quota of seven (only six are countable in the lower photo, but there are seven).