mthew

On Thursday, I saw this Swamp Darner planting eggs in this sodden piece of old wood in the Vale of Cashmere. I’d seen the same thing happening… eight years ago (!) At that time, the darner was attacked by a Catbird once she’d finished her ovipositing, or at least some of it. The Catbird won.…

Update: as a couple of comments below note, these knobby parts are actually the bird’s ankle-equivalents. I was imagining the bee’s knees when I came up with this post…

D’oh! Yesterday you got two (2) posts for the price of one due to a scheduling error. Today, we celebrate National Moth Week. Raspberry Pyrausta Moth (Pyrausta signatalis) above. These were all seen recently. My walking stirred them up. More elaborate methods like lights and moth baits, gooey mixtures of fruit and beer, at night may…

Aesthetically, I’m not so sure about this yellowy-orange version of trumpet vine. But we have to abandon our perspectives. This messy, sprawling vine attracts insects with a vengeance. You’ll notice that many of these buds haven’t opened: there are extrafloral nectaries at work here, producing nectar on the outside of the flowers. Hence the wasps,…

When you poke around in the trees, turning over branches to look for galls and the like, you notice a lot of resting fireflies this time of year. Raptor Wednesday update: four American Kestrels flying, perching, and making a ruckus together.

Some of the things seen this weekend here in Brooklyn, NY. Four of these were first-time sightings, five if you count the juvenile Red-bellied WP. I’ve seen plenty adults of this woodpecker species, but never a youngster. Definitely sent this data point to the New York Breeding Bird Atlas III project. Kings County has to…

European Paper Wasp, Polistes dominula. Note the diagnostic orange antennas. It may look like a Vespula ground yellowjacket in its black and yellow finery, but these antenna instantly mark if off as something else. As its common name suggests, this is an introduced-to-North-America species. What comes as some surprise to me is that they only…

The American Bullfrogs in the Dell Water are canny. They jump for watery cover before you see them. I suppose with Great Egrets and Green Herons occasionally stalking this strange little waterbody, they aren’t waiting for introductions. Strange in the sense that it’s a bit of a cut-de-sac. There’s no way for them to get…