mthew
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Ardea Duo II
A week later on another of Green-Wood’s “waters.” Great Egret and juvenile Great Blue together again. The Great Blue did a lot of preening. So many feathers, after all. And such long ones! Great Blue primaries are 14″ (36cm) long.The Great E hunted right up its belly. The bird grabbed three small fry. The frogs,…
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Ardea Duo
Ardea herodias and Ardea alba. As a rule, the Great Blue Heron, on the left, is a larger bird than the Great Egret on the right. This GBH is a juvenile, so perhaps not up to full size, and, of course, the GE is closer. Speaking of closer. The Blue walked towards me. I was…
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Raptor Wednesday
Just a short distance from a new parking lot in the Bronx, young Red-tailed Hawks continue to raise a ruckus. *** Reading against fascism. Where I reacquainted myself with this quote from Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction…
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BBG Treehouse Razed
It’s evil tidings Tuesday, evidently. Yesterday, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden removed the last of a beloved London Plane tree. Most of the giant old tree had been cut down earlier. Left until yesterday was a viable, hollowed-out stump, continuously, gloriously sprouting at the top. It was known as “the treehouse,” a quirky landmark that quickly…
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Pesticide Terminal
What is the Parks Department thinking here just above the salt-water marsh?According to this, they’re applying Triclopyr by “hand placement” for the control of Cottonwood (Populus deltoides). But if they’re doing it by hand, why don’t they physically weed out the potential trees instead of putting another biocide down? Yeah, Cottonwood is a bear: a…
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Mammal Monday
Half a dozen Greys were around or up inside this tree. (Some kind of walnut, I think; fruit looked pecan-y but leaves didn’t.) Also I wasn’t sure if the nuts raining down upon me were intentional. Poetic fallacy and all. The tree certainly makes the animal work for it. Update: We ran into Daniel Atha,…
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Three Books: Paths Not Taken
“One could be an environmentalist, or a social activist, but not both, and the recent rise of environmental justice helps underscore just how little justice has historically meant to environmentalism.” Daegan Miller’s vital This Radical Land: The Natural History of Dissent explores the paths not taken since Henry David Thoreau mixed it all up. Thoreau…
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This Used To Be Lawn
“Now it’s all covered in flowers.”And grasses. Good riddance! This hillside in Green-Wood, near the 5th Avenue entrance, has been converted into meadow. From turf, fertilizer- and chemical- warfare dependent turf, nasty turf, to this riot of life. Yes, it’s “messy,” gloriously so! It’s only a tiny portion of the cemetery, of course. Too many…
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Leaf-cutters
Here’s a Megachilidae family leaf-cutter bee. Even if you’ve never seen one, you may very well have seen their sign.These solitary nesting bees gather pollen on the underside of their abdomens, unlike bumblebee and honey bees who pack it around their hind legs. They are fabulous pollinators and generally quite uninterested in you. They’re too…
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Backyard and Beyond 