October 2012
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Trick or Treat Fungus Among Us
Inexplicably, there will be few fungus costumes today, just as in Halloweens past. And that’s a shame. Fascinating, ubiquitous, vitally important in the plant’s interconnected systems, fungi are a high-level rank of life, a kingdom, up there with plants, animals, and bacteria. It’s important to remember that fungi are not plants, or even much like…
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Red Hook
The Weeping Willow at Van Brunt and King St., an old friend, has come down in the storm. The Red Hook neighborhood, an island at high tide during colonial times, was quite inundated last night and looks miserable today, but not crushed like the Jersey shore or the burned out neighborhoods on the Rockaway peninsula.…
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Calm
Pier One about an hour before high tide. I was somewhat amused to hear someone on the radio say that “high tide would come again.” Yes, it will, roughly every twelve hours, until the moon drifts further away. Meanwhile, the salt marsh perseveres. Squally out there. Very little damage in my neighborhood; largest trees fine,…
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Safe and Sound
Hurricane Sandy gets in your eye. Funky convergence of north-bound hurricane, feeding off hotter than usual ocean (Atlantic temps at 2nd highest record), and south-dipping jet stream pouring in a cold front, plus a full-moon-(last night)-jacked storm surge. The storm is now dumping snow in places. Radical weather aligns/precedes/accompanies radical climate change. Reports of lots…
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High Tide
This was high tide at Brooklyn Bridge Park this morning around 9. This is a 3-foot surge; it is forecast to be nearly double that at the next high tide (9:17 p.m at Brooklyn Bridge). But don’t forget the wind, pushing it even further. The saltmarsh in the right corner is underwater. Salt marshes are…
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Stormy thoughts
“Climate change is almost always abrupt, shifting rapidly within decades, even years,” writes Brian Fagin in his book about the Little Ice Age. That period, which interrupted the interglacial warming phase that has seen the rise of human beings to overwhelm the planet, lasted roughly from 1300-1850, and saw massive demographic crises throughout the world;…
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Gall-ish
Plenty of oaks yet to turn color in the Hudson Highlands, 60 miles north of Brooklyn. And where there are oaks, there are galls. Here’s one I came across up there recently:Not sure what species is inside here. To re-cap, galls are formed by the interaction of animal and plant. Irritated by wasp, mite, aphid,…
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Cawngress of Crows
American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), an intensely social species.
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Barnacle Goose, Prospect Lake
A Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis) hanging out with some Canada Greese (Branta canadensis) on the Lake in Prospect Park. A most uncommon sight in the northeast, since this bird is native to Greenland and Northern Europe. First one I’ve ever seen. Probably the first one ever seen in Prospect. If you go looking for it,…
Backyard and Beyond 