Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

March 2012

  • A Mystery

    This is brand new Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) leaf, pinky-nail-sized, still to unfold into its characteristic mitten-like shape. That was the extent of early spring growth on these giants of our forest one weeks ago, so when I noticed a patch of rich green way up on a branch of a mature specimen of this…

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  • The Darling Buds of… March?

    The two crab apple trees on my block are now blooming. Title riff: “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” ~ Shakespeare, Sonnet 18.

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  • Ouroboros

    Every twenty years or so, my dander gets up and I write a letter to the New York Times. In the mid-1980s, I did it to spank Edward Teller, who poo-pooed the concept of nuclear winter in an Op-Ed, with a reminder of the global climate effects of “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.” That…

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  • Long Horns

    Sometimes you don’t notice the details (or the scandalously narrow field of focus) of a macro shot until later. Check out these great big antenna, like something you’d find on long-horned cattle. This worker ant is busy on that understory delight Spicebush, Lindera benzoin.

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  • Lifelines

    The usual notion of a tree root is that it has a large root mirroring the trunk, running as deep underground as the trunk runs up into the sky. Or, like Tobin’s sculpture, it has a series of deep roots, but that’s his artistic license, not to mention a practical way of allowing people to…

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  • Inner Magnolia

    Like sea anemones, the hearts of magnolias. And from my archives, a shot from the NY Aquarium:

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  • View From the Back 40

    The Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia × soulangeana) in a neighbor’s backyard today: A busload of girls from St. Flora’s trying to keep their pink uniforms from blowing away in the March wind. The hazards of early blooming: tonight’s forecasted hard freeze may KO the ornamental fruit and magnolia blossoms that have run riot for the last…

    mthew

  • A Very Strange Crab Indeed

    A piece of barnacle conglomeration I found at Dead Horse Bay recently. Most species of barnacles need a surface to attach to, and sometimes that surface is other barnacles. These are a type of acorn barnacle, one of the two main groups. I understand differentiating the local species is difficult for the lay person. Give…

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  • Starling Excavation

    The European Starling, rather vulgarly branded by the taxonomists as Sturnus vulgaris, was introduced to New York because some idiot wanted to see all of Shakespeare’s birds in the New World. Cf. “I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak/Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him/To keep his anger still in motion.” ~ Hotspur,…

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  • Sparrow Duplex

    The House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, is an Old World sparrow unrelated to the numerous species of New World sparrows. The bird has spread around the world to general urban ubiquity; they were introduced to North America — among other places, they were let loose right here in New York City in the 1880s — initially…

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