mthew
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An Inordinate Fondness
J.B.S. Haldane is supposed to have said that the creator must have a special fondness for stars and beetles, because there are so many of them. And some of them — the beetles, not the stars — are awfully small. There are 350,000-400,000 species of beetle — the exact number is probably impossible to know…
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Non-compliance, no enforcement
Fishing garbage found in the Lullwater. No hooks on this mess, luckily, but we’ve all seen the damage this shit does to birds and mammals right here in Prospect Park. We gathered it up and canned it, since the fish-torturer was too much of an asshole to do so. Signs are a joke without enforcement:…
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Raptor Wednesday
An all-Peregrine edition: a Working Harbor tour leaving from Manhattan’s Pier 11 gave me an opportunity to walk by 55 Water Street, where four little falcons continue to get their wings. Sitting on the cam was one of the scrape’s adults. Then, as we waited for the Hamilton Avenue drawbridge to open up and let…
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Strange Cries in the Night
The other day, I woke up at 4:44 a.m. to a weird sound in the backyard. It was just about time for the local Northern Cardinal to start up with his “what-cheers,” the regular crack-of-dawn soundtrack around here since way back in late winter, but this was nothing I’ve ever heard before and if it…
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Squirrel in the Garbage
Some may find this a textbook case of cute, not to mention the adaptability of some animals to live off of our garbage, but all this processed fat and sugar can’t be very good for the animal. After all, just because you like to eat something doesn’t mean it’s good for you, as many of…
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Edge of Brooklyn
Marine Park Nature Center. Willet (Tringa semipalmata).Great Egret (Ardea alba).Yellow-crowned Night-Heron (Nyctanassa violacea), a bird that does not penetrate the city as much as the Black-crowned Night-Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax), but can be found along its edges. The western strip of Marine Park was not restored when the grasslands and salt-water marsh was done. It’s a…
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And the jellies shall inherit the Earth
One of the few things to survive our destruction of the oceans are the jellies. They thrive in the desolation we have made for them. I wrote about this last year in reviewing the book Stung!
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Rodentia
There’s a debate around here about which of our rodent friends this young’un is. There were at least ten of them strung out along about thirty feet of paved path in Prospect Park recently, most of them with their eyes still closed, some not moving, others scurrying regardless of their eyelids. I don’t know what…
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New Robins
Out of the nest, still being fed by the parents. Fledged, but less a flier than a hopper and a climber at the moment. People often think birds need help at this stage — can’t fly, looks helpless, no sign of the parents — but they usually don’t. The parents are near, but keeping away…
Backyard and Beyond 