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January 2025

February 2025

Happy Valentine's Day!


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When I filled the feeders this morning, I added a heart-shaped seed cake that had been sitting around. (That's the Celery Farm in the Background.)

The first partaker: A male downy woodpecker, hopefully bringing it to his girlfriend. Seedy but thoughtful.


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Monday Mystery 021025

FDR mystery 3
This is the third and final FDR mystery -- from the wallpaper in one of the rooms in the mansion in Hyde Park, N.Y.

Is this a foreign bird, a figment of an artist's imagination, or just a poorly limned Brown-headed Cowbird? (Wallpaper bird ID  typically stump me.)

 


Rat Poison in the News (Alas)

My Screech Owl Companion co-author Scott Weston writes:

I work in Salem, Mass.,  and the post office where the screech owl was found poisoned is about 800 feet from where the Peabody Essex Museum put up one of my screech owl nest boxes -- such a hindrance for success.

https://patch.com/massachusetts/swampscott/s/j4to7/salem-owls-survival-fight-spurs-push-for-action-against-rodentcides

The good news is the Massachusetts Legislature is considering legislation to ban the worst of these rat poisons.


A Terrific Birding Streak

Image001(3)A year and half ago, I wrote my "Bird Watcher" column about Marc Chelemer of Tenafly, who had been birding for 1,000 days in a row.

Marc just wrote to me that yesterday marked a birding milestone: IMG_4224

" I visited the Great Swamp in between my regular full-time job and my afternoon teaching job for a 35 minute visit along Pleasant Plains Road.  The resident Barred Owl was the highlight, though a continuing burly White-crowned Sparrow at the Helen Fenske Visitor Center feeders was also nice.   The checklist marked 1,500 days in a row…"

Congrats, Marc. That's some serious birding.

You can read my earlier column about Marc here:

https://www.celeryfarm.net/2023/08/my-column-birder-on-a-streak.html