mthew
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Serious Moonlight
As part of the Macaulay Honors College Bioblitz in Green-Wood this weekend, I got to go inside the cemetery after dark. Under a gravid Moon, Chimney Swifts scoured the air. A trio of ultraviolet moth stations were set up around the Crescent and Dell Waters. After sunset, two Common Nighthawks flew into view amidst the…
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Location (3)
Still at Shawangunk. There’s one of those perma-porta-potties, thick with Drain Flies, and an observation gazebo. Mud-daubers and paper wasps appreciate the dry, sheltered spot. Seemed like everywhere you looked up there were old or current Polistes nests. There are… a number species of paper wasps in the Polistes genus in the northeast; 11 by…
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Location (2)
The Shawangunk Grasslands NWR, that is. This Ulster Co. area is best known for its winter raptor scene, but the grasslands are at their peak in late summer. A distant Red-tail and a closer Cooper’s Hawk were the only raptors in sight. But the invertebrate situation was fine indeed. Yesterday, we had some grasshoppers on…
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Location (1)
Here’s a fine essay on paying attention, listening, noticing, watching, the natural world. A cicada sounds as I type this. Two mornings in a row the only sound around 5 a.m. has been a cricket outside. The boom of bombastic car stereos, the revving of little men’s big engines, and tear and crash of garbage…
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Raptor Wednesday
First off: we’ve had near daily American Kestrel sightings or hearings here at the H.Q. But today’s specimen sightings come from Green-Wood Cemetery. A female atop what may be the largest obelisk in a cemetery full of them. (Curious how Christians went in for this paganism in Victorian times.) Now here’s a male atop the…
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Locations
The meadow at Green-Wood. With outlaying outposts. This area has been hopping, throbbing, buzzing, stirring with life this summer. They got rid of the monotonous deathscape of grass, hard to maintain on this slope anyway and bought in the Rubeckia, Monarda, Solidago… and with these came the animals. As clear an example of “if we…
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So Many Insects, So Little Time
Agapostemon splendens, obviously. Looking like something out of 1950s science-fiction, the Tersa Sphinx. Shining flower beetles. Spittlebug nest. Sumac leaf wrapped around… something invertebrate. There are leaf-folders and leaf-rollers; perhaps a tortricid moth caterpillar did the work here. There’s another in the background, too. Pondhawks are known to be voracious predators. This female was eating…
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Paulson on the Odonata
Dennis Paulson’s new Dragonflies and Damselflies: A Natural History‘s is a great introduction to odonating. Paulson has written the standard field guides to American/Canadian odes as well as dozens of journal papers on odonates. The pictures in his field guides are too small; that’s these guide’ principal fault. But consider: there are 461 species to…
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Blue-winged Wasps & Flies
Scolia dubia, the Blue-winged Wasp or Blue-winged Scoliid Wasp, with two i’s. “Two eyes” may be a good mnemonic for this one with the two orange marks on their reddish abdomen. When they are gathering nectar, they’re easy to spot. But I’ve seen two bunch of them patrolling what I thought must be a courtship…
Backyard and Beyond 