On June 1st we drove to Jamaica Bay in Queens, New York City. It is one of my favorite places to visit. I forgot the good bug spray with Deet in it and only had some herbal bug spray which was useless, so the mosquitos chewed us up. I gave blood to see a Red-headed Woodpecker there.
After a short stop at Jamaica Bay I decided to visit the community gardens at Floyd Bennett Field to look for butterflies.
Landscapes of Jamaica Bay. The first image shows Snow Geese and Brant in flight. I wonder what the plant is. I liked the red color on the leaves.
Sunday’s excursion to Jamaica Bay, Gateway NWR.
Jamaica Bay is an estuary on the southern portion of the western tip of Long Island, in the U.S. state of New York. The estuary is partially man-made, and partially natural. The bay connects with Lower New York Bay to the west, through Rockaway Inlet, and is the westernmost of the coastal lagoons on the south shore of Long Island. Politically, it is primarily divided between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in New York City, with a small part touching Nassau County.
The bay contains numerous marshy islands. It was known as Grassy Bay as late as the 1940s. Jamaica Bay is located adjacent to the confluence of the New York Bight and New York Bay, and is at the turning point of the primarily east-west oriented coastline of southern New England and Long Island and the north-south oriented coastline of the mid-Atlantic coast. (Jamaica Bay – Wikipedia)
The Ospreys are back and competing for nesting spots.
A short trip to Jamaica bay netted these. It was great to see that the East Pond is once more accessible. This is thanks to the efforts of dedicated birders like Andrew Baksh, who worked with Gateway National Recreation Area to see to it the the pumps were repaired. The water levels are now maintained at a lower levels so that both shorebirds and birders may use the shores of the pond.
I had fun editing these images. I knew I wanted to create lots of atmosphere and a dark mood when I photographed these. The Snow Geese will be leaving soon. Read-winged Blackbirds are singing away as are the Song Sparrows. Ospreys are building their nests. And I saw 5 Black-bellied Plovers at Floyd Bennett Field.
Lightroom and mostly Photoshop in Windows 11 keeps randomly freezing. I wonder if anyone else is having trouble with it. I pushed Photoshop hard to make it freeze while I made these. I have a new super fast computer, an Alienware Aurora R213. Dell replaced the graphics card. Microsoft had me make a new profile. Adobe techs tried everything they could. 20 tech calls later and it is still no good.
While I tidy up my archives I paused to make this image.
We had a brief but rewarding trip out to Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn, New York on the 15th of August. I added a few new odonates to my life list. I learned the word odonates from my fellow Linnaean NY members. September starts the new Zoom meetings and they are free. You may attend one from anywhere or view a recording of one if the timing isn’t right linnaeannewyork.org. The first one on September 14 will be about Bats.
