mthew
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Cocktail Hour
Is this too much John Cheever-John Updike, drunken wasps getting it on? Above are Thread-waisted Wasps (Eremnophila aureonotata) mating on that pollinator-magnet mountain mint (Pycnanthemum). Like many wasps, the adults eat nectar, but feed their larvae flesh. (OK, now we’ve entered Stephen King territory) These provision their young with caterpillars. Blue-winged, a.k.a. Digger Wasp (Scolia…
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Two of Our Smallest Butterflies
Eastern Tailed-Blue (Cupido comyntas). Nice to see the pale blue here, for it usually perches like this:This is a male. Females are browner. I must say, my field guide suggests a much darker blue, but the harsh sunlight here is bleaching everything out. The tiny trailing “tails” can be seen emerging just below the lower…
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Color of Light
Same Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), same camera/settings, different light.
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Legion of Raccoons
Late afternoon in Green-Wood, a crusty old bandit walking like a old cat. Elsewhere: one of two young and a mother who were just crossing the street then they saw us. They climbed back up the tree they’d come down.The youngsters seemed very curious.
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The Real War
The great Bill McKibben is urging us to declare war on climate change, mobilizing like Americans did in the Second World War against the enemy. But is his enemy the right one? We know how stunningly disruptive climate change is, and how much faster it is all happening, and how quickly the bad news piles up. But…
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Maryland Monument Dasher
Two hundred and forty years ago today, the British and their Hessian swine-mercenaries walloped the still-loose conglomeration that was the Continental Army in Brooklyn. There’s a memorial in Prospect Park to the Maryland 400, troops who held the Old Stone House (the existing structure in J. J. Byrne Park is a recreation) down in the…
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Megachile on Asclepias
Leaf-cutter bee on Butterfly Weed. You can’t tell this when they’re in the air, or, frankly, very easily when they’re still, but bees have four wings (flies have two). In this photo, however, you can just see the smaller hindwing underneath the forewing on the right side here.
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Red-Tailed Hawk Stalking
A young Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) patrolling the 5th Avenue entrance of Green-Wood. I would hazard to guess that it is wondering where that Eastern Grey Squirrel went.
Backyard and Beyond 