mthew
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Hackberry
A hackberry drupe. Can we call it a “hack”? It is surprisingly smooth at this stage of unripeness, and extremely difficult to photograph. This is through a 10x loupe. Other names for the tree include nettletree, sugarberry, and beaverwood, but why hackberry? One source says the Scottish “hagberry,” for a Eurasian bird cherry (Prunus padus),…
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Papilio glaucus
Enjoy these images of an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail — which spent a good deal of time drinking (?) out of the surprisingly fecund cracks between the bricks in Prospect Park — as I slip out this morning from behind the Backyard and Beyond desk to get married.“Arrival is the culmination of the sequence of events,…
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Nycticorax nycticorax
The cosmopolitan Black-crowned Night Heron.That binomial means “night crow night crow,” named for the squawking sound they make at night, which was supposed to remind someone of a corvid.But they do some good work in the day, too. Although you’ll often finding them like these two, waiting for the darkness.A juvenile.
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150 for 150
An informal group of us are getting together today for a micro-mini bioblitz in Prospect Park. We’re going to see how long it takes us to identify 150 species — including plants, fungi, insects, reptiles & amphibiansbirds, & mammals — in honor of the park’s 150 years of vital importance to the non-human. (Samples for…
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Puffinmania
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: You never forget your first Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica). Mine was, alas, quite dead, a veritable ex-Puffin, gone to join the Choir Invisible. It was being inquisitively pecked at by a Herring Gull on Nantucket’s South Shore. The scavenger was put out and aloft by my approach, and the…
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Large Piece of Turf
Homage to Dürer. * A lesson of Jeremy Corbyn’s near victory against the dead center of his own party and the vicious opposition of the Murdochian sewer of Britmedia? Don’t let the bastards get you down.
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Let’s Hear It For Humility
“Area Closed/Protected Natural Area.” Just being a fan of the natural world’s beauties doesn’t mean you’re a friend of nature. Some people think their photography or their bird lists are more important than anything else. But no, they aren’t, not by a long shot. Primary is the care, caution, and respect we pay to the…
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Ladybugs
The first four photographs were all from on the same patch of milkweed (Ascelpias syriaca), not yet in bloom but already festooned with aphids.Multicolored Asian, Harmonia axyridis. There were several. Checkerspot, Propylea quatuordecimpunctata. The only one noticed. Two-spotted, Adalia bipunctata. Counted four. Getting busy and laying eggs. This is one of two egg clusters on…
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A Bit of Prairie Or My Shirt?
It’s definitely blue and it’s definitely flax, but is it (Wild Blue, Lewis, Prairie) Flax ( Linum lewisii, Linum perenne, Linum perenne lewisii are all synonyms) native to the other side of the Mississippi? Or is it Linum usitatissimum, native to Eurasia and the Middle East and for thousands of years cultivated as a source…
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Gracklettes
With their parents noisily thrashing in the leafy underbrush nearby, a trio of young Common Grackles (Quiscalus quiscula) were doing some of their own foraging in the grass. Still being fed, but also learning to do it for themselves. I was curious to see what would happen as a Great Egret approached one of the…
Backyard and Beyond 