March 2015
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Longleaf
I’m becoming obsessed with Pinus palustris, the longleaf pine that once covered 92 million acres of the southeast from Maryland to Texas, but now exists in only a handful of preserves. I’ve not seen it in its natural state, only as old lumber repurposed. That’s a piece of it above, one of the benches at…
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Misc.
Long-time readers may know of my interest in the Two-spotted Ladybugs of Brooklyn Bridge Park. I wrote about them for Humans and Nature this week. I hope you’ll visit and read this and other interesting takes on the intersection of humans and nature. Some of my recent JSTOR Daily work may be of interest to…
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Fly
I found this dead fly inside the convoluted head of an organically-raised cauliflower from Salinas, CA, with its brain-like flowerets. Brassica! Diptera! The first day of spring!
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Raptor Wednesday
This was my winter of the Rough-legged Hawks (Buteo lagopus). I’d never seen these tundra-evolved raptors before, but the good, cold, blistering winds from the north brought them down to the coast of Long Island, possibly in larger numbers than usual, where they searched for grasslands similar to their northern habitat. Floyd Bennett Field. In…
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Ravens Making Ravens?
Remember when I saw a pair of Common Ravens flying and courting over a quiet (on the weekends) piece of the Sunset Park waterfront? It was a fantastic experience. I’ve been out to Bush Terminal Park several times since New Year’s Day, but didn’t have any luck in seeing the birds again until this weekend.…
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A Forest in Times Square…
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: .. but the beavers might take a little longer. My friend, the botanist and all around urban nature superhero Marielle Anzelone, is fundraising for a PopUp Forest in Times Square. Sounds crazy, right? A bit of forest in the resolutely artificial, corporate-gagged, light-pollution-bathed, Elmo-stalked, tourist-duped nightmare they’ve made of…
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Word-Hoards
Kame, karst, kettle, key, kill, kipuka, kiss tank, knob, knoll, krummholz, kudzu. These are all the entries under the letter K in Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape, put together by a team of 45 writers and with an introduction by Barry Lopez. What a treasure trove! Sometimes, I’m down on the ol’ species…
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Foxy Thoughts
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: In our hyper-specialized society, “amateur” is far from a noble description. It is, in fact, usually the opposite, a term of disparagement, insult, attack. Meanwhile, in the sports-entertainment industry, it has lost all meaning, corrupted by the NCAA’s exploitative hypocrisy and the corporate/nationalist perversion of the Olympics. But the…
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Lil’ Snapper
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: A baby Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) has the unfortunate characteristic of blending in quite well with a road. South Cross Road, in Bradford, Mass., to be exact. While in the area last week, I saw several Painted turtles and a few others I could not identify who didn’t make…
Backyard and Beyond 