mthew
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In The Kingdom of Kinglets
Golden-crowned Kinglets were raining down on the city this week. This one got to within two feet of my shoes hopping and flitting and carrying on, while half a dozen others worked over the ground and branches of some ornamental cherries. Their calls are like whispers.Regulus satrapa, the little king ruler: a bit redundant? Not…
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Skipper
Tongue-of-a-skipper — my new all-purpose exclamation — but some of the Hesperiidae family of critters are hard to identify. The ones that perch with wings half-cocked, looking like jet fighters, are the folded-wing type in the Hesperiinae subfamily, the grass skippers. Wings are more moth-like than butterfly-like; antennae are generally hooked. They just don’t really…
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Hatchin’
To be absolutely honest with you, I could follow the sounds of nuthatches all day long, from tree to tree. You won’t always see them as they scurry about pines and hardwoods searching nooks and crannies, but they pack a lot of voice in their small bodies. What they’re looking for in the crevices of…
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Details
Same patch, same day.Crab spider lurking… Another generation of something arthropod…
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Mammal/Mushroom Combo Monday
A melanistic variation on the ubiquitous Eastern Grey Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis. These darker ones are said to tolerate colder weather better. Another notion has it that urban environments, with less predators, are also more likely to see greater numbers of both black and white variations of S. carolinensis. Our first example is digging up a…
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The Overstory
“What use are we, to trees?” Richard Powers’s novel begins with Roots, separate stories, capsule biographies. These are illustrated at chapter start with leaves of the trees prominent in each story. In one case the tree isn’t named, since the character is oblivious to this tree, but the description is more than suggestive and the unique…
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One Giant Spreadwing
The largest damselfly in the Northeast is a Southwestern species that has been expanding its range our way for the last century. The Giant Spreadwing Archilestes grandis can be up to 2.4″ long, as big as a medium-sized dragonfly. I spotted two males in the Bronx and had a very hard time getting a usable…
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Meadows
The protected grasslands at Floyd Bennett Field are looking fine in autumn.You can fill your screen with these by clicking on them. *** Much less of a pretty picture: on the rise of illiberal democracy there and here.
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Mushroom Heaven
There was a lot of rain in September. That made the fruiting bodies of fungi very happy. This one was found like this. I don’t suspect Andy Goldsworthy….Deep under a beech. Very hard to reproduce their (fungi are more closely related to animals than plants) purples, at least as seen by my all-too-human eyes. ***…
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Transitions
It’s that time of year. Birds are on the move. Most are passing through NYC, but some are coming for the winter from further north. White-throated Sparrows and Dark-eyed Juncos are back in town. This is their Miami (the bagels are better). On Saturday, they were mixed up with warblers, flycatchers, and others migrating further…
Backyard and Beyond 