Weekend Naturalist

Through the Naturalists’ Gate at 77th Street, past the enormous head of the great geographer Alexander von and under the eagle eye of this AMNH topper I entered the Central Park and rambled in the Ramble in search of the barred owl that had been reported yesterday. The owl remained with Minerva, although the local blue jays kept up a hue and cry and led birders on wild goose-owl chases to and fro. But for a while I was inside a flock of four and twenty dozen blackbirds, common grackles, a mostly aural experience as they filled the high canopy. Then they came down to earth and all the levels in between, and even a passing French couple would not flush them away. But then, on their own frequency, they all began to bolt, silently, heading towards the lake and the south. Something big and brown dropped down from a branch, and I followed it, seeing it move twice more, but never getting a bead on it. It seemed too big and dark for an accipter, one of the forest hawks, and so was probably a red-tailed hawk, skulking amid the trees instead of soaring overhead. The owl would unlikely to be moving so much during the day.Mushrooms are a mystery to me. This serving bowl-sized clump of stalked polypores may be hen of the woods, and if it is how come nobody has stolen away with it to cook it in butter?

There are quite a few red and orange berries about now. Some of them are hawswhich aredefended by thorns. Hence “hawthorn,” that unruly member of the rose family. It was once thought that there were over a thousand species of hawthorns in the U.S. Crataegus species may number more like a hundred, although the taxonomy is confused by much hybridization.

On the way back from the subway, right around the corner from home, two pin oaks are feeding these beautiful 5″ shelf mushrooms. I think this is Gandoderma lucidum, also known as Ling Chih, the mushroom of immortality to the ancient Chinese, the “herb of spiritual potency.” May your spirit be potent.