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.”

  • Checking in With the Horseshoes

    The shed exoskeleton of an Atlantic Horseshoe Crab. And another, rather larger one. To grow, these arthropods must shed to expand. Yet another, along with a darker corpse. Another dead one. This one is tagged. I reported it to the USFWS, but don’t know if anybody is home there after the destruction wrote by the…

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    Checking in With the Horseshoes

  • Rockefeller State Park Preserve

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    Rockefeller State Park Preserve

  • A New One

    Fluttering at the dune end of Plumb Beach recently… An adult antlion, the first I’ve seen in NYC. This is a female Brchynemurus abdominalis. (Which makes it the first species of antlion I’ve identified.) This one is a male. I presume of the same species, for he was nearby.

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    A New One

  • Raptor Wednesday

    Male Kestrel snacking on dragonfly. A female. Both observed from apartment. Osprey sightings from Plumb Beach. Red-tailed. If I didn’t see the tail, I’d say this was a juvenile with that chest plumage, but the tail is one-year-old or older red. Birds, bugs, & galls! I’ll be leading bird, bug, and gall walks in Green-Wood…

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    Raptor Wednesday

  • Chimney Swifts

    Chimney Swifts keep flying after sunset, but not for long. This one story building is a printing shop now, but clearly used to be something else. The chimney, unused in summer, has long been a roosting spot for some of our local swifts. When the birds call it a day, they plunge down into the…

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  • Mushroom Hosting Monday

    Some big Berkeley’s Polypore mushrooms around Willow Oaks in Green-Wood. If you look closely… they are practically swarming with Two-spotted Diaperis beetles, who mate and lay their eggs on the mushrooms. The smaller, less numerous Dacne picta is doing the same. Meanwhile, this ichneumon wasp was crawling all over one of the ‘shrooms. Was she…

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    Mushroom Hosting Monday

  • Beach Combing

    A well picked over skate. Snail Fur, a colonial marine hydroid on snail shell used by hermit crab. A closer look… And here’s some on another hermit crab shell. Long-claw Hermit/Pagurus longicarpus using an Eastern Mudsnail shell. Some kind of segmented worm with its own sand tube. Speaking of worms, the same Semi-palmated Plover scarfs…

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    Beach Combing

  • Odds and Ends

    Pepper Maggot fly on underside of White Oak leaf… though their larval host plants are Solanum. Brand new Round Bullet Gall Wasp on White Oak. Neoboletus. Ex -cherry tree with slug trail. The UV light brings all the Asian Ladybugs to the party. Four of the ten or so that turned up recently. Problem is…

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  • Skimming

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    Skimming

  • Abstract

    Bill of a Great Black-backed Gull. The thing being scavenged was fairly abstract, too.

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    Abstract