Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

Montreal

  • Museum of Extinct Birds

    The Carolina Parakeet, Conuropsis carolinensis, was the only parrot species native to the eastern U.S. It ranged from the Gulf of Mexico to the Ohio River Valley, and as far west as Colorado; it sometimes made it as far north as Ontario. The last wild bird was thought to have been shot in 1904. The…

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  • Insectarium

    Montréal’s Insectarium is located next to the Jardin botanique. Admission is included with the garden. And here’s a jump back to some of the beetles.

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  • Jardin Botanique

    The Jardin botanique de Montreal is reported to be the third largest botanical garden in the world. The middle of November, however, may not be the best time to visit. But there I was, so I couldn’t miss it.A very light dusting of snow on the grounds could not daunt these well-named Arctic daisies, Arctanthemum…

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  • Musée Redpath

    The Redpath Museum, on the McGill University campus, is a natural history potpourri, a wunderkammer writ large.Exhibits on zoology, mineralogy, paleontology, and, um, ethnology, fill the place, which is the oldest building built as a museum in Canada. It was completed 1882, and has a very Victorian feel (but lacks the requisite dust and must).La…

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  • Oh, Canada

    Montreal’s maples were frequently spotted like this. I think it’s a tar spot fungus in the Rhytisma genus, mostly harmless but cosmetically challenging.

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  • Mont Royal

    A big lump of magma long exposed to erosion, Mont Royal rises above the island of Montreal. A good place for a park, no? Frederick Law Olmsted — who I inevitably call Frederick Lawn Olmsted, with a nod to James Joyce’s “Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet” — evidently thought so, too. After the triumphs of Central…

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  • Beetlemania

    A collection of beetles at the Insectarium de Montreal which I visited earlier this month. This picture was shot through the vitrine glass. There are 350,000-400,000 described species of beetles; estimates suggest there may be a million or more species of them all told. These are just some of the most spectacular and shiny ones…

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