Bald Eagle mugged by a crow

At least I think it was a crow. It might have been a hawk, but it's difficult to tell from this distance:

Horseshoe crab mating season

Horseshoe crab is probably the most perfect organism that ever existed on Earth. It first appeared about 400 million years ago, and has not changed much since then. It stopped evolving because it didn't need to anymore! One part of their behavior cycle is the mating ritual that happens during full and new moons in late May. The horseshoe crabs (actually more related to spiders than other crabs) come out from the water onto beaches, mate, and leave their eggs (which the birds then eat!). I took these pictures in Jamaica Bay, shortly after the high tide has receded.

Ready to come out of the water:


The two in the back are starting their courtship:


The male is smaller than the female, because it doesn't have to develop or carry the eggs.


Still mating, even after the tide has gone down:


They can survive out of the water for a few hours, provided their gills remain moist. (We turned this one back on his legs after we took the picture.)


You can guess the age of the crab by how large the barnacles and muscles are on its shell. They shed their shell once in a while, but much more frequently when they are young. For the muscles to grow to the size they are on this female crab, they had to be growing for a few years. Which means she hasn't molted in 2-3 years, and that means she is probably 25-30 years old.


The horseshoe crab sea:


The crabs have light-detecting patches on their shells, in addition to the two eyes. Those allow them to detect where the water is once they are out on the beach, and then crawl to it:

What the whole kefuffle is about: horseshoe crab eggs:


Which the birds then promptly eat. (Only 2 eggs of about 60,000 on average become adult crabs.)

Northern Mockingbird Jump

I spent about 15 minutes watching a Northern Mockingbird hide in a juniper bush and wait for an insect to pass above. The moment it noticed it, it would jump out of the bush and nail it - flying up almost vertically for several yards. Here is a time-lapse snapshot of one of these jumps:

Black Skimmers

Black Skimmers are weirdly shaped birds. Actually, the only part of them that's weirdly shaped are the beaks - the lower mandible is much much longer than the upper one:



The reason is that much longer is because it's used to scoop up fish from the water - in flight:



While they are sized similarly to gulls, their profile is distinctly different:



Here is a Black Skimmer in flight:

Peregrine Falcons

It's tough to find Peregrine Falcons in the wild near NYC. But there are two places where they have been nesting reliably over the past several years, and that's in the bridges over the Jamaica Bay. On a recent cruise in the bay, we were able to take several good shots:







Other pictures from the Broad Channel bridge area:

"A" train crossing from Broad Channel into the Rockaways:




To let our boat pass, they had to turn the subway bridge around. So if you were stuck on the "A" train on the evening of May 27, you were waiting for us!


The black things sticking upward from the bridge deck are actually the subway rails!


Someone buzzing the Marine Parkway Bridge from below:

Willets

Willet is a interesting little shorebird. Well, not little - it's actually one of the largest shorebirds around. It looks drab when standing, but it has bold white and black stripes on its wings, which are visible in flight. It's common in a way that the birders call "common" - you'll definitely see it if you visit any saltwater marshes, but don't expect to see one from the car driving down you local road. These pictures were taken at the Brigantine Wildlife Refuge in NJ:









Other interesting pictures from Brigantine:

Two cormorants (adult and juvenile) on an evening walk:


Snapping Turtle swim-by:


Moon over Brigantine:

Kittatinny Ridge

A few good pictures from a trip to Kittatinny Ridge earlier in May:

Turkey Vulture flying over New Jersey:


Circling around something?


This is probably the closest and sharpest I've ever gotten to a vulture in flight:


Cerulean Warbler (relatively rare and diminishing in population). It was moving all around the tree. I must've taken 100 shots of it, and only one came out reasonably sharp:


Pictures from Danaray Farm, at the base of the Kittatinny Ridge:






Parting shot: