May 2011
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In the hallway
A meal moth, Pyralis farinalis, eager to get to my pasta, flour, and grains.
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Wildflower Week Continues
NYC Wildflower Week continues: I took part in the fantastic tour of the Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden yesterday. Curator Uli Lorimer, here showing us the whole mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum, was an extraordinary guide to his own domain. Grab any chance you get to have this expert show you around the place,…
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Chicago Lights
My friend Cathy has been finding dead birds in the Windy City, victims of high-rise glass towers and bright lights. The migration seasons in particular takes an enormous toll. Here’s some more information about how skyscrapers kill and what can be done about it. This is a picture she sent me: it’s an Eastern bluebird,…
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Wildflower Week
I’m looking down for a change. We’re in the thick of New York City Wildflower Week, with tours, lectures, and walks happening throughout the city until Sunday. It’s all free and it’s mostly outdoors. What are you waiting for? (I’ll be doing a walk at Four Sparrow Marsh on Sunday.) Dodecatheon jeffreyi, Jeffrey’s shooting star.Zizia…
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Colors of Spring
Redbud. Orange fungus. American robin blue. Grey squirrel (black variant) & magnolia. Burnt orange fungus. Black dog, having a hell of a time trying to get out of the Lullwater.
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Hot Spot
This part of the Ambergill in Prospect Park has become a hot spot for watching birds bathe. I saw my first indigo buntings of the season here this week, and many other species are coming in to dip and shake those tail feathers, including all manner of orioles and warblers. The shallow pools on the…
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Sulphur
A female orange sulphur butterfly, Colias eurytheme, I think, and not a female clouded sulphur, C. philodice, because, although these species are quite similar, this one looks just like the example in Kaufman’s Field Guide to Butterflies of North America. Complicating matters, these two species can hybridize.
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Confessions of a warblerholic
The wood warblers have returned, as they have done for millennia unnumbered. They are coming out of a night sky thick with migrating birds, thickets that show up on Doppler radar like weather patterns, falling on the green islands of the city to eat furiously before catching another tailwind to fly north to breed. And…
Backyard and Beyond 