December 2012
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Cycles
If you’ve been following this blog a while, you’ve seen this before. Not this photo, not this example, but similar. For nature follows cycles, and so too does this blog. Pieces of the past summer’s Bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) nests, now abandoned by the generation of 2012, get blown out of trees this time of…
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Just winter
Even in the cold, all muffled up, we should be far from senseless.Look out for the textures, juxtapositions, paradoxes, and above all, in these quiet, near monochromatic, months, the subtleties. Isn’t life always in the details?Isn’t life always in the budding? The Catskills across the Hudson, and more shades of grey than we could ever…
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The Case of the Headless Mouse
It was as cold as a Titmouse on a bare oak branch that morning. The call came in from the Mammal Division. I’d fallen asleep in my suit, Kirkegaard propped against my noise. My tongue felt like it had been ground up for dog-food and probably smelled like that, too, but I shook off my…
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Xmas Blooms
“Sleigh bells in the snow”? So 20th century.“Jack Frost nipping at your nose”? “People dressed like Eskimos”? Not even the Inuit are dressed like Eskimos any more.
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A Christmas Eve Story
It was cold, but nothing like winter when I was boy, when the river froze over and wolves crossed the ice from the fens of New Jersey to ravage the stray cats. And it certainly wasn’t cold enough to kill off the mosquitoes. This is the story of one of them. A poor waif of…
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Stocking Stuffer
It’s never too late to subscribe to this blog, or, for the winter festive season, give a gift subscription to a friend. Just add your email in the slot on the upper right there and click the button. For your giftee — that special, thoughtful person who really appreciates an extremely cheap gift from the…
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Lord of all it surveys
A familiar silhouette. This Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) was on a mound of dirt and rubble near Pier 3 in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s still under-construction section the other day. As with all things, the more you practice, the better you get, and in this context it is looking and identifying birds. The raptors can be…
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Against the grain
More of the old-is-new-again Longleaf Yellow Pine in Brooklyn Bridge Park. This time I was looking at the knots and the resulting eddies of tree rings formed around them.During the last year, you were probably a combination of a little bit nice and a little bit naughty. (Whew! I know I was, but we’ll pass…
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Longest Night
Rainy-overcast today, as it was yesterday, but on Wednesday evening I watched the sun set far to the south over Governor’s Island in a very clear sky. From Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Promenade, I have an open-air calendar of sunsets, tracking the Earth’s tilt between the seasons. From behind Lower Manhattan in high summer,…
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Nigh, as always
Is this the day the world is supposed to end? Or is it tomorrow? Or was it yesterday? In fact, all our yesterdays are the end of the world, at least as it was then. Now, I’m not so up on my Mayan calendars, Sumerian planets, Aztec forecasters, Shang Dynasty bone-tossers, or other aspects of…
Backyard and Beyond 