mthew

Epiaeschna heros is our largest local dragonfly. They’re usually zipping around, making them difficult to photograph, but occasionally they will hang like this. I’ve seen them a few times clinging to buildings and other structures. This one was at eye-level!

By early August, most local breeding birds are done. But I saw this mewling Gray Catbird fledgling a couple of days ago. Here’s one of the parents, being kept busy shoveling food into the youngster. Could be a part of a second brood.

A pair of Osprey circling above 1st Avenue. A closer look at one of them:

I’ve mentioned before how I don’t ever find any current Organ-pipe Mud-dauber nests in Green-Wood, whose mausoleum exteriors, with all their nooks and crannies, are full of evidence of old nests. But here’s a trio I found on Saturday. Hurrah! Any haunter of mausoleums is bound to see metallic blue-green cuckoo wasps (Chrysididae) like these…

From somewhere nearby, the female Organ-pipe Mud-Dauber gathers a ball of mud. She flies back to the nest, where the male can just glimpsed inside the developing tube. Rather unusually, the male of this species stick around to protect the young. There are parasitic flies and wasps eager to get into the spider-stocked chambers within…

The very distinctive organ-pipe like mud tubes built by Trypoxylon politum, the Orang-pipe Mud-dauber Wasp. The ones with holes are previous years. These are this year’s. In fact, the darker mud on the top shows it’s still in the works. I see these tubes much more often then I see the actual wasps. In fact,…

Paper. Looks the aborted nest of a Dolichovespula wasp, probably a Bald-faced Hornet. Mud. Looks like the work of an Eumenes genus potter wasp. Paper. Polistes, probably the ubiquitous European Paper Wasp. Mud. The bare leftovers of the mud tubes built by Organ-pipe Mud-daubers/Trypoxylon politum. Looks like some even older ones above the two in…

One month ago. Three days ago. This huge antenna at 10th Ave and 20th street is across the street from Green-Wood and a few blocks from Prospect Park. The tallest thing around, it commands the raptor heights.

Foraging and depositing eggs on Swamp Milkweed. A week later, another (?– it wasn’t so far away) depositing eggs on Common Milkweed.

A month ago in Ohio, I spotted this boldly indigo sharpshooter. This week I saw one here in Brooklyn. This turned out to be what seems to be the first iNaturalist observation of this species in New York state.