mthew
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Young Snap
Four, count ’em four, Red-eared Sliders (Trachemys scripta) were basking in the tiny, northernmost pond on Pier One at Brooklyn Bridge Park the other day. Fools keep releasing these invasive, potentially disease-carrying pet-trade animals. Some do it for religious (!) reasons! The effects of all this can be seen in the water course in Prospect…
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Tanka
Late afternoon Moon rising over Brooklyn Heights ~ I forget the Sun Homeward-bound at end of day Night will never be that dark. I have been reading Bashō’s travel sketches, culminating in his famous “Narrow Road to the Deep North.” I’m moved by the Japanese tradition of making an event of the contemplation of natural…
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Skunk Cabbage Again
The spathes of Symplocarpus foetidus surround a spadix, which produces first female and then male flowers.I’m afraid a fence keeps me from getting closer, but a portion of a grenade-like spadix can be seen here. It’s this that produces the heat, through rapid respiration (burning carbohydrates via oxidation), that give this plant its early spring,…
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Jane’s Walk: A Man, A Plan, Stranahan!
Top-hatted, I’ll be participating in the Jane’s Walk weekend, leading a walk through Prospect Park and into Green-Wood Cemetery on May 3rd. We’ll walk from the James S. T. Stranahan statue at Grand Army Plaza — who, what, where? PRECISELY! — to the Stranahan gravesite in Green-Wood in celebration of the forgotten man behind the…
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And poppin’: Yellow Trout-lily
The Trout-lilies (Erythronium americanum) are amongst us once again. These were in Prospect Park; a friend reports them out and about in the far north of the New York Botanical Garden as well.The flower’s tepals curve back like this on bright sunny days, leaving the anthers fully exposed for pollinators. (There’s still not all that…
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Let ’em rip
Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides). And these Aesculus buds.Like lipsticks against the sky. And down in the leaf litter: Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum). Amelanchier. Time for the shad to blow.
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Raptor Wednesday
The patience of a Merlin (Falco columbarius).And its knowledge of our presence.We walked the wide way around this Ginkgo biloba of a perch in Green-Wood to get this front view.
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Chuck-will’s-widow
Naturalist Gabriel Willow, whom I explored Monhegan Island and other parts of Maine with last year, spotted a Chuck-will’s-widow in Bryant Park yesterday. This Midtown Manhattan park is a remarkable migrant trap, but this was pretty unusual, so word quickly spread. I managed to get to the park around 3:00, where, amid the dozens of…
Backyard and Beyond 