October 2013
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Hiking the Highlands
The last two Sundays I’ve gone up to the eastern Hudson Highlands, just above Cold Spring. The earlier trip, I went along the Wilkinson Memorial, Notch, Brook, and Cornish trails. The Brook Trail, red blazed, follows Breakneck Brook, which cuts through the valley pictured below:That’s Breakneck Ridge and Sugarloaf on the other side. Picture taken…
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In the Spartina
They seemed to be taking whole reeds, perhaps to line their nests in the rocks. Rats can be awfully finicky about their nests. Rattus rattus, baby. Updated: Evidently actually Rattus norvegicus. See comments.
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Full Moon on the Rise
Last night’s full Moon, the Hunter’s Moon, was in penumbral eclipse, passing through the faint shadow of the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The effect was subtle without an un-elcipsed full Moon to compare it to. Shot through a telescope from the 4th floor on Prospect Park West.
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Wren Nest
A nest of a Marsh Wren (Cistothorus palustris). About the size of a softball, made of woven reeds, with a side-entrance usually facing south. Males may build up to half a dozen partially completed nests in a courting area of territory before females arrive in the spring. A female who choses a particular mate/nest will…
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Desert Varnish
The “varnish” here, looking a little like apparitional tree trunks, is made up of clay, iron and manganese oxides, and some organic material. And time. The darker it is, the more manganese, a mineral rare on the planet. In some accessible areas, this thin layer can be chipped off to reveal the lighter rock beneath.…
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Memento Mori
Found, like this, on University Place yesterday. A male Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapitcus varius). You almost never see the yellow-tinged belly from a distance.
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Field Trip: Cape May
Rothko sunrise on the big beach at Wildwood Crest on the Cape May peninsula, hanging down from New Jersey’s southeastern end like an appendix. I was on the beach about 50 minutes before sunrise, with a long row of mostly-empty-in-the-off-season motels behind me, and the Sanderlings already working the edge of the waves in the…
Backyard and Beyond 