Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world. "The place to observe nature is where you are."—John Burroughs
A special Climate Strike edition: All my climate-themed posts are here.
These are some of the highlights over the years:
On the history of warnings about climate change.
Authoritarian carbon democracy.
And even worse: climate behemoth.
The last time humans saw a two degree global temperature change, it was the other way, and transformative.
Exxon knew, buried its own scientists’ work, and funded the denialist movement.
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If the world ran on the sun, we wouldn’t be fighting wars for oil.
A few signs from yesterday’s Climate Strike in NYC.
Amidst the crowd at the edges of Foley Square, it was hard to get an overall picture of the size and shape of things, but school kids predominated.
#ITMFA, a begging call to the Weimar Democrats.
Another good sign: “The lifestyle you ordered is out of stock.”
More than a quarter million people? (And yet not disruptive enough. Our foolish Mayor, having abandoned his Presidential fantasy, says we have ten years to do this climate thing right; yet every day he takes a SUV, with a two-SUV escort, from Gracie Mansion on the upper east side to his old gym in Brooklyn.)
But perhaps this march will be different, a chrysalis of something else. (This is the first Monarch pupa I’ve seen this year, from Thursday.)
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When a body meets a body coming through the…
Apiaceae.
Black Swallowtail caterpillar fit to pupate.
The Asteroid, AKA Goldenrod Hooded Owlet.
A reprise of the Common Buckeye caterpillar.
Five were seen in the same small patch.
The blue spines!
Our old friend the Monarch. On the same day, two days ago, a female was laying eggs nearby. This has not been a great year for Monarch caterpillars in Green-Wood.
An addendum to last Friday’s post on Tiger Swallowtails.
This is a brand new chrysalis.
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This is hard to read, but the unspeakable has become our reality.
Summer is quiet when it comes to raptors, unless you have American Kestrels breeding down the street.
But now fall is in the air. This Red-tailed hawk perched on a #BrooklynKestrel landmark recently. One of the local falcons, now days generally heard more than seen, was not happy about it. The kestrel’s alarms calls got me to look outside.
Coast Guard ship in the harbor beyond.
Another day, another RT or the same one? This building is just to the left of the one with the chimney pot. Someone’s observation on iNaturalist pictured one just down the street from here yesterday.
This one dropped down to the roof here three times from various perches around. Came up with nothing. What was the attraction?
Balancing on one leg is not unusual, but usually the bird will bring the other leg up into the breast. Here it just hangs down. It’s raptor contrapposto!
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Something I wrote on the origins of the general strike.
Close up, nature starts looking really, really hairy. Take a look at the green shoots of plants, the exoskeletons of insects. Hairs and spines are everywhere.
Common Buckeye larva.
Bumblebees, it goes without saying.
Other bees, too. Look at these bristly thighs, 
Writes Dennis Paulson in his natural history of Dragonflies & Damselflies: “Because a chitinous exoskeleton does not have a sense of touch like the skin of a vertebrate animal such as ourselves, they have sensory hairs or setae covering much of their body, everywhere except the surface of the eyes.” Such massing of “sensilla” work as tactile organs that “can be specialized for the reception of chemical (smell), mechanical (touch), or thermal (termperature) stimuli.”
The spines on the legs also help secure prey.
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Let’s make Friday’s Global Climate Strike the biggest ever.
This Friday is the beginning of a week of the Global Climate Strike. Some resources:
Fridays for Future youth activism training program.
Climate Strike educator toolkit.
Climate Strike Arts Kit, from whence this David Solnit fire-extinguisher logo comes.
People’s Climate Movement NYC.
Petition for teachers, educators, & faculty.
Here’s some history about general strikes, which are not completely alien to the U.S.
