A soft rain of pieces of cucumber magnolia fruit reveals a tree, thickly cloaked in big, thick leaves, busy with Red-eyed Vireos, Catbirds, four different species of thrush. Across the road, the noisier fall of hickory husks point to squirrels at work.
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I abandoned the absurdly high-salaried and beyond-bullshit dot-com world just weeks before the attack on the World Trade Center in September, 2001. The cafeteria in our office building, Cross & Cross’s magnificent Deco-fantasy Twenty Exchange, was on the top floor, so those who went in early for breakfast saw it from on high.
I saw, felt, and smelled it from Brooklyn, from my old subway stop, from my roof.
It has been estimated that at least 22,000 and as many as 48,000 civilians have been killed by the U.S. in the “war on terror” since then. The cost to democracy here has been devastating. The damage done by the reactionary incompetents of the Bush regime, only in power because of a partisan Supreme Court, was a greater blow to the nation than the terror attack.
That Fall was long and lingering. In another time, it would have been called glorious. I spent a lot of time in Prospect Park, just a couple avenues up the moraine from where I lived. A Great Blue Heron was in the area of the Pools, just beyond some fencing. I mean, just beyond. The gigantic bird was almost within hand’s reach. It was an extraordinary opportunity to study it up close.
As winter stretched into the new year, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks courtshipped and mated in front of everybody. That spring they would nest just over the circling Drive. In summer, their two young would fly right past you, past startled nannies, excited dogs.. I reported my sightings to my mother, the bird-watcher in the family. She was dying of pancreatic cancer. She gave me a pair of binoculars. Swift 8x20s. This is when I became a bird-watcher
For those keeping count, I now have 1055 verified species recorded in Kings County on iNaturalist. “Verified” meaning they aren’t casual observations, which are reserved for cultivated or captive life-forms. Many of our urban plants were planted, meaning they’re casual observations by iNaturalist’s standards. Even a tree planted a century ago is still considered a casual observation, but of course the lifeforms on it aren’t!.
A lot of small-scale drama on this venerable willow oak. I first noticed the Bald-faced Hornets at two different spots on the trunk.
At this spot, they were actually going underneath the bark. I suspect they were after leaking sap. But it wasn’t just wasps.
There were also flies, all rather smaller than the wasps. But just as interested in the tree’s juices. This was a classic case of noticing something, the big, bold white-highlighted black wasps, and then seeing a lot more.
Hackberry Mosaic Virus. Also called island chlorosis. Not much explication of this, probably because the damage is cosmetic. I’d wager the genus is even in question. Viruses, people, are strange.
