Top: l-r, monk parakeet; red maple (?); dawn redwood cones. Middle: bald-faced hornet comb; honey bees; honey bee nest. Bottom: leeches on turtle plastron; live red sliders; witch hazel in bloom.
Took a walk through Green-Wood Cemetery today. This Victorian garden necropolis sits upon the flank of Brooklyn’s Harbor Hill Moraine, making it the highest place in the borough. The weather was close to perfect. A couple of trees and a lot more branches had been knocked down in the weekend storm and the sound of wood being ground up greeted me in what is usually the quietest place around. Some people were flying a kite that looked like an eagle to scare away the Canada geese. “Geesebusters,” according to their van. What fools these mortals be!
Highlights were a male belted kingfisher rattling at the Crescent Water; a feral honey-bee hive in an oak; one of the red-tailed hawks sitting on the edge of the nest; a Cooper’s hawk airborne and perched; a very big dawn redwood billowing with pollen. There were two dead turtles and what I took to be a dead raccoon in the Valley Water, but a half dozen live turtles were warming up after the long winter buried in the murk. Yes, it is most definitely springtime.
Backyard and Beyond 
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