mthew
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The Anthropophiles
Some animals have learned to live and even thrive alongside the greatest ecosystem engineers on the planet. In Darwin Comes To Town, Menno Schilthuizen tells some their stories. On the basis of the non-ant animals that live inside ant colonies, called myrmecophiles as a group, Schilthuizen uses the term anthropophiles for those animals that adapt…
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Wasp Tunnels
Of course, the giant wasps are going to get your attention, but the fresh dirt is also a good sign.I’ve seen Cicada Killer Wasps dig into the bare, hard-packed dirt of tree pits, but I’m guessing a gentle, grassy slope is more favorable.Sphecius speciosus excavate long tunnels, which they then provision with paralyzed cicadas. (How…
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YCNH
This Yellow-crowned Night Heron was belying its name and hunting during the day. Fiddler crabs were the bird’s target. Stalking oh-so-slowly until the final jab with this heavy bill. The crabs were swallowed whole. Watched half a dozen meet this fate over ten minutes. These herons nest here in the city, usually at its edges.…
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Raptor Wednesday
Anticlimactic: that’s what the post-fledgling scene was for the #BrooklynKestrels. Two months of cornice work, followed by two weeks of sightings of a trio of fledglings. Then nada. Well, not quite true. The male parent has been spotted sporadically on the large car service antenna one long avenue block from the nest site. This is…
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Brooklyn Botanic Axes Arborist
Two Monday’s ago, the management of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden cut down a quirky and beloved tree. Staff and community opposed the arborcide. The garden’s own staff didn’t think the gloriously stumpy “BBG Treehouse” needed to come down, so, like some capo di tutti capi, the institution got outside contractors to do the killing. Then,…
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Monday Prep
A selection of recent sightings in Brooklyn and the Bronx to rev up your Monday morningI don’t think I’ve ever gotten a good picture of a Gray Hairstreak with wings open before.
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Mockingbird Tales
Over the course of a couple of hours at a single vantage point, amidst many other sights and sounds, we watched Mockingbirds do their thing. Which is noisy territorial policing. In the distance, a Mockingbird chased a female Kestrel. (This also happened quite a bit with the local #BrooklynKestrels after fledging; a Mocker seemed to…
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Park-ing
Did you know the verb parking originally meant setting up strips of park, often with trees, in the center or the edges of roads? Then those trees along the road were roped into being used to tie up horses. The meaning of parking thus changed: it became what you did to your horse. From there…
Backyard and Beyond 