Backyard and Beyond

The big antenna at 40th St. and 5th Avenue, a long block away from our apartment, hosts these raptors as well as the occasional Red-tailed Hawk and Merlin. Lousy photos because it’s so damn far away, and now that it’s winter the spotting scope is much distorted by the heat pouring out the windows when they’re opened.

The contents of a pod. You will note that there are winged seeds here and other bits. These other bits are infertile seeds. This source: “The infertile seeds found in each of the sweet gum’s compound seed capsules are a naturally occurring source of shikimic acid, one of the main ingredients in the manufacture of Tamiflu.”

Winter birds, especially finches, flock over the pods to prize out these tidbits.

Plantphobes despair of the seed pods, believing they’re messy and dangerous, but the resin is famous. It’s the source of the binomial Liquidambar styraciflua, which is a bit redundant: the words mean liquid amber and flowing gum.

*Caveat on that “quite distinctive” — Green-Wood does have at least three Liquidambar acalycina, a tree native to China. On Thursday, I will compare these two species…

Sunday is fund day.

Two different varieties of Common Witch-Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), the autumn bloomer.

Photographs taken the same day. There is about a mile distance between these two spots. Is this the same pair? I don’t think so. The pairs both have great fidelity to their territory.

All seen since October 31.

Squirrel in the hole! The base of this huge beech spreads all over the place, as shallow-rooted beeches are wont to do, and the convolution here makes for a cavity that fills with water. Voila! A watering-hole.