June 2013
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Red-Spotted Purple and Azure
In Sterling Forest State Park, a Red-spotted Purple. Limenitis arthemis has two rather different forms, the other, more northerly, one known as the White Admiral. The “Spring Azure Complex, Celastrina ladon and others,” is how the Kaufman Field Guide refers to these small, widespread, and common butterflies that are azure on the upperside of their…
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Chipmunk
No mean forager and predator, the Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) will eat just about anything, from acorns and nuts to baby birds, from slugs to insects to carrion. Our local ones are missing out on the bonanza of the 17-year cicadas, which are concentrated in Staten Island. Central Park has seen a rapid rise of…
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Magicicada Now
Saturday, in Doodletown, we found a few Magicicadas.And heard, in the distance, always the distance, the science-fiction-like thrum of them in the trees.On Sunday, we returned to Clove Lakes Park in Staten Island.Up on the hill and along Royal Oak Road, we found thousands and thousands and thousands of the husks.This is the bus shelter…
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Hummingbird Nest
Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) nest throughout eastern North America, but in both the first (1988) and second (2008) Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State, none were found to be breeding in NYC. (As the City Birder, who found this nest, notes: it’s certainly possible that previous nesting was just missed because of the…
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Swallow Nesting
That mud-daubed Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) nest is occupied.
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Black-throated Blues
Before I began watching birds, I could identify a bare few of them: cardinals, robins, mourning doves, “sparrows,” things seen on bird feeders or everywhere. One day in the late 1990s when I lived on the top floor of a Park Slope rowhouse, I noticed a small dark bird moving quickly through the tree out…
Backyard and Beyond 