Green-Wood

Walking through the unruly lawns of Green-Wood Cemetery this time of year stirs up grasshoppers, skippers, and moths, who scurry away from your feet in the grass. Sulphurs and Cabbage White butterflies flitter about, sometimes laddering up together in mating flights.An occasional giant butterfly, like this Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), is seen.Something had nibbled on one of these apples on the ground, but they were too tart for me.These being the dog days, the cicadas were in full whine. Their shed exoskeletons were everywhere.

There were lots of mockingbirds and starlings about. Northern flickers, jays, and red-tail hawks added their vocalizations. Alarms were sounded when a male kestrel flew into a pine in front of the neo-Gothic 5th Avenue entrance. Superb views were had of this small falcon, who retreated across 5th Avenue to perch on a rooftop antennae after much harassment by mockingbirds. Seeing us laden with the badges of our trade, binoculars, one of the employees told us about watching a red-tail ripping up one of the local parrots on the grounds. As these big hawks nest in the cemetery, they are seen frequently; the Bishop Ford HS radio tower across the street is a good place to spot them perching.

Of predators of another kind, I learned yesterday that someone (or more) vandalized the cemetery earlier this week, doing damage to 43 monuments and memorials. What a shame. However, Green-Wood’s historian Jeff Richman notes that security cams may have recorded one of the perps.