November 2013
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Put A Fish On It
Seen within a couple blocks of each other recently on Centre St. in the Inner Borough. Above, business card on the street. Below: throw pillow through a window (…it would be a serious pillow to be able to break the glass).Now, you may protest that a whale is not a fish, as do I. A…
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Silent Nests
Revealed by the thinning of the leaves, two more Bald-faced Hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) nests:Note the differences in the color pattern of the wood-pulp paper between the above nest and the one below. I have some paper that is predominately reddish, but the one above is the usual pattern I see here in Brooklyn. The all-gray…
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Little Pigs
Or boars to be more exact. This is an early 14th Century coat of arms from the Porcelet family of Provence. The family Piglet! I would guess they changed their name and emblem by the time the Renaissance showed up in the form of Caterina de Medici, who brought the fork, for sticking into Huguenots,…
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The Unfeathered Bird
This remarkable book goes well with chicken and, I would think, a nice dry white wine that hasn’t seen the inside of an oak barrel. Because a chicken is the closest most of us ever get to a featherless bird. Or, given the season, you could go with a turkey. Both of these birds are…
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Light on the Face of the Water
(It’s New York Harbor, between the piers on the Brooklyn side, so there maybe some other things on the surface as well.)
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Thrush Hushed
A Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus), much in evidence in the parks now as they head south, who didn’t make it. Hit a window in Coney Island.
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The Wagner Free Institute
There are so many life forms here on Earth that it is impossible to comprehend the sheer variety and diversity of them all. Sure, there are Internet projects attempting to catalog all the planet’s species, perhaps a Sisyphean task, but for any one individual, it is all surely far too much. Mind-boggling; a good word,…
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Eclipsed
The hybrid eclipse of the Sun this morning was mostly drowned in the clouds over the Rockaway Peninsula. A little bit of our life-giving star was briefly visible, through Nate’s DIY binocular hack, with the dark curve of Moon upon it. Still, a gorgeous morning to watch the sunrise from the oceanside end of the…
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Forever
A taxidermy representation of a Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), a species hunted to extinction by the mid-19th century. This was the largest Alcid, up to a three feet tall and weighing some 11 lbs. They were flightless but excellent swimmers in the cold, fish rich waters of the north. The bird’s scientific name was later…
Backyard and Beyond 