March 2011
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Mourning Cloak
One of the earliest butterflies of spring, the mourning cloak, Nymphalis antiopa. Appropriately enough for its mournful name, this one was photographed today in Green-Wood Cemetery.
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Mushroom season
The early days of spring, with their rain and damp, are good for mushrooms. These fruiting bodies of fungi grow quite quickly when conditions are right. This one was peaking out of the leaf-litter in Prospect Park over the weekend. I’m pretty clueless on identifying mushrooms, but I think it’s a polypore of some kind.…
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Beach CSI
A beach is an inhospitable place. The wind turns sand into a blasting medium. The sea means a high level of salt, which is antagonistic to much life. In summer, the sand’s heat makes you jump. If you look closely, you’ll see invertebrates adapted to this harsh environment; there’s all sorts of life underground, especially…
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Natural Object: Poppy
Sweet dreams are made of this — well, they might be if this was that kind — a poppy seed capsule/pod that managed to survive the winter in the garden of friends in Windsor Terrace. Meanwhile, let’s go walking with Thomas De Quincey: Some of these rambles led me to great distances; for an opium-eater…
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Uneven Development
Forsythia blooming: the microclimate of a ESE-facing wall on Sydney Place intensifies the sun. Meanwhile, in Prospect Park:The trees bid their time.
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Basic beach
I live on an island. It’s a rather lengthy island, and so, unimaginatively, it’s been called “Long Island” for several centuries now. I’m on its far western end, in the once-upon-a-time city and now borough of Brooklyn, which, uh, doesn’t really think of itself as being a part of “Lon Guyland.” The reasons for this…
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Early Spring Subtleties
Some tree species aren’t very showy with their flowers. They aren’t out to attract animals because they’re wind-pollinated; and they aren’t out to seduce gardeners with luscious blooms. So their beauty is subtle, but undeniable. This is some kind of elm species, near Prospect Park Lake.I was away for a week, and while I was,…
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Winkles
Four shells collected at Cape Anne, Massachusetts. The three clustered around the illustration are Common European Periwinkles, Littorina littorea. This winkle, much savored by Old World palates, was first recorded in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1840, perhaps arriving via rock ballast in ships. Another source says they may have arrived much earlier, upon…
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A short note on size
One of the things about harvesting fish, whether cod before the crash, blue fin tuna today, or any hunted species, is that the bigger fish are the most prized by the industry. An example that made the news in January was a 752-pound blue fin auctioned for $396,000 in a Japanese fish market. There are…
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Ribbed Mussels
The Atlantic ribbed mussel, Geukensia demissa, at low tide at Calvert Vaux Park. Unlike the more famous (because delicious) blue mussel, Mytilus edulis, the ribbed mussel, which is found up and down the East Coast, prefers brackish waters. They are a keystone species for salt marsh habitat and vital to Jamaica Bay. Establishing beds within…
Backyard and Beyond 