mthew
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Chippy
The forecast is calling for a foot of snow. Quite a rollercoaster of weather we’ve been having. Last week, it was up 60 degrees F. The Chipmunks (Tamias striatus) were busy in the sunshine. Don’t let the cuteness fool you: these are pretty effective predators as well as gatherers. They will definitely raid bird nests,…
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Sprung
Tossing their pollen into the air… Scott Pruitt, the oil and gas industry operative given the hammer to destroy our environmental protections, claims that physics and chemistry are bunk. (Such a good lesson for students, but, then, the person put in charge of education doesn’t even know what education is; she thinks it’s a fundamentalist-infected…
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Hope is a Thing With Feathers?
Do Baltimore Orioles hope to find the material necessary to build their woven nests? I think not. They’d probably be extinct if they did. Instead they do: they seek out dried grasses and rushes and other fibers. In this world, they also find string, rope, ribbon, and bits of this and that to be useful.…
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Nature Morte
Check out Zane York’s Nature Morte at The Arsenal Gallery, The Arsenal, Central Park, NY NY, through April 27. We can chortle all we want to at the French, a la Groening’s Law — if I remember my graduate school days correctly — the French are funny, sex is funny, and comedy, obviously, is funny,…
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Great Blue & the Democracy of the Heart
Lo and behold, on a recent day I scanned the little islet in the midst of the Sylvan Water and found this Great Blue Heron. Had the bird stuck around all winter? (We’ve have very few days with frozen water). I did see a GBH sail across the Sunset Park plain back in January, heading…
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Thoreau Thursday
Yesterday in Prospect, the rites of spring were springing. An astonishing twenty-six Wood Ducks were to be found on the Pools. Chipmunks and turtles were out and about in the unseasonable warmth. Behold, two European Goldfinches, far from home. The first Mourning Cloak of the year, velvet over the sere leaves. A pair of male…
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A Day Without Women
The Gentlemen’s Auxiliary will be wearing red today in solidarity with the women’s strike.
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Books of a Feather
I grew up with Roger Tory Peterson’s field guide in the house. I was not a bird watcher then (“birder” with its exciting, action-orientated flavor, had not yet taken over the lingo). My mother was. I didn’t get it. I could definitely identify a Northern Cardinal. When I started to watch birds I decided to…
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Pod
Variation on a Kentucky Coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus) pod. “Listen to them! The children of the night. What music they make.” Ok, Bela Lugosi’s Count D is talking about the Transylvanian wolves, but Brooklyn has some interesting early spring night musicians, too. Join me on a Brooklyn Brainery expedition to the edges of the borough to…
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Oak Galls
The mighty oaks and their galls are an endless source of curiosity. This particular type, a hard, fruit-like structure, is created by a tiny wasp, which essentially irritated the tree into making them for their larva. Clever boots! The trees are Swamp White Oak (Q. bicolor), according to the Street Tree Map. (I’m waiting on…
Backyard and Beyond 