mthew

This Red-tailed Hawk is Class of ’23. The red tail feathers won’t come in until next spring/summer.

The Little Blue Heron/Egretta caerulea is white during its first months. The slaty blue starts coming in in the spring. Jamaica Bay is generally the place to see them within the confines of NYC, but this one has been hanging around Green-Wood and Prospect Park lately. There is already some darkening around the shoulder. This…

First you have to chew off the coating of this black walnut, then break through the shell.

I can count the Monarch caterpillars I’ve seen this year on one hand, and one of them was dead. This is one of the four live ones. Will these two eggs, seen laid on September 11, get as far as big fat caterpillars about to pupate? Also that Monday, a pair were mating.

Four individuals above. More shots of them below:

There’s a new mud-dauber in the mix: Sceliphron curvatum. Indigenous to the submontane regions around the great Asian mountain chains, it is now invasive in Europe. They were introduced to North America around a decade ago. They just made it as far west as Minnesota this year. I’ve only seen one of them, and not…

August 29: first Merlin I’ve seen in Brooklyn since March. On a perch usually favored by American Kestrels.

A cool morning found several Two-spotted Scoliid Wasps unusually still. Common Eastern Bumblebee, too. There’s also little black and red beetle in the flowers that I didn’t notice at the time.

The larval stage of Acronicta americana is more spectacular than the adult moth. These can be white-haired as well as yellow, but the long black setae are found in all forms. (Anything so extravagantly attired should be expected to be irritable to the skin.) They’re generalists and find ash, elm, hickory, oak, willow, and several…

Try as it might, this Double-crested Cormorant could not swallow this Summer Flounder right off the edge of Lower Manhattan.