April 2010
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Field Notes: First Damselflies
We saw our first damselflies Sunday at the Valley Water in Green-Wood. The very first one we noticed, alas, was dead. All four wings can be seen clearly here. Mid-April is early for damselflies in these parts (and it was a rather cool day). Most species emerge later in the year, mid-May and after. The…
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Field Notes: Blooming Brooklyn
A walk around Brooklyn yesterday found these colors: Cherry in Green-Wood. Columbine in Prospect. Eastern redbud in Clinton Hill. Royal Paulownia in Clinton Hill.
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Evening Chorus
A week ago on Nantucket at twilight I wandered down past the MSPCA’s driveway, which is also a road, of sorts. It’s unpaved, and runs through a bit of piney woods past someone’s great-tracks-of-land spread, complete with big red barn and, um, llamas. At one point, you come across an emphatic stone marker noting that…
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Back 40: Spider
Technically, this isn’t out in the back yard (which I call the Back 40), it’s inside, in the bathroom. In fact, there are two of them in there on the ceiling….
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Field Trip: Beetles!
Found this handsome creature on the beach on Nantucket, where it was not doing well with the shifting, treacherous, sisyphean sands. The good folks at Bug Guide identified it for me as Tricrania sanguinipennis. Like the oil beetles we found at Jamaica Bay, these parasitize ground nesting bees. Euphoria inda, the bumble flower scarab, found…
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Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn
My dispatches about my Nantucket field trip will continue for several days, but, since I’m back in Brooklyn, I thought I would note the gorgeousness of spring right here, right now. White blossoms (Callery pear, apple, etc.) are falling like sprinkles of snow. The cherry trees are in perfect form. I will try to make…
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Field Trip: Nantucket
Harbor seals on the Jetties, Nantucket Harbor. I went up to Nantucket, MA, last week, taking a bus up to Hyannis and then the “slow boat,” the ferry, across the Sound. For a couple of years now, I’ve noticed osprey over Hyannis harbor and wondered where they nest. On the return trip, this time on…
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Natural Object: Cedar-Apple Rust
Many of us look to the stars hoping for new discoveries. Obviously, there’s plenty to find out there. But some people seem to think everything has already been done right down here. Ha! Last week I was on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. Thirty miles at sea, it’s a damp and very windy…
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Foxy Thoughts
In our hyper-specialized society, “amateur” is far from a noble description. It is, in fact, usually the opposite, a term of disparagement, insult, attack. Meanwhile, in the sports-entertainment industry, it has lost all meaning, corrupted by the NCAA’s exploitative hypocrisy and the corporate/nationalist perversion of the Olympics. But the word’s roots lie in the Latin…
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Field Trip: Moths, Spider
From inside the house. And running along the ground. There actually seem to be a lot of spiders running on the ground up there.
Backyard and Beyond 