Fieldnotes
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Mystery Sign
A living creature is behind this paw-like pattern, a shadow thrown through water. What do you think is going on here? (Your answers will be posted later today, along with a picture of the culprit.) Voila! Hey thanks for playing! Most you were in the right place; a shadow cast by a water strider, in…
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Cross River Crawdaddies
Decapoda use their tails to scoot backwards underwater. This one actually back-jetted into Karl’s hands. (It was returned unharmed, if discombobulated by all the media attention.)Cross River, running through Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, is a-crawling with crayfish. This was one of the smaller ones. The others were much less red. Perhaps this one had just…
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Plathemis lydia
Male Common Whitetail.Female. The male above is actually a young one. He won’t get his chalky white “tail,” or abdomen, until he gets a little older. When that happens, they do stand out. Here, from the archive of summers past, are some of the males in all their obviousness: This of course assumes that our…
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Northern Rough-winged Swallows
That’s a mouthful of a common name, but then Stelgidopteryx serripennis is a binomial tongue-exercise as well. We found five fledglings perched over the water. They were being fed at their perches and in mid-air, with the older and/or bolder siblings flying out to meet their busy parents. You can see the cinnamon color on…
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Ravens!
The Common Raven (Corvus corax) family of Brooklyn numbers four. The first I heard of them was near the end of May, when the City Birder spotted them in Green-Wood Cemetery. I first saw them on June 9th. It was 6:15 a.m. and they were turning a floppy right over the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal…
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Long-legged Fly
One of the genus Condylostylus long-legged flies. A little jewel. Same specimen: the light does wonderful things with the metallic sheen. There are more than 30 species in this genus north of Mexico; they usually feed on smaller insects and mites.
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Galls
A tell-tale growth. Turn the leaf over.The gall of it all! I am fascinated by these things. Galls are created by the plant in response to the agitation of a wasp, mite, or something even smaller. For instance, insects lay their eggs on or in the plant, the plant is stimulated to build up over…
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Solstice
I know the sun can rise as gloriously as it sets, but the windows here on the top of the Harbor Hill Moraine face north by northwest across Upper New York Bay, to Bayonne and the ridge of the Watchung beyond.
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More Adalia bipunctata
This spring, I’ve spotted Two-spotted Ladybugs all over the place in Brooklyn. Down the street. In nearby Green-Wood Cemetery. In Greenpoint. And most recently inside my apartment! The beetle was on the inside of a window. I captured it by maneuvering a stiff postcard under it — that is, getting it to walk onto…
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Diospyros virginiana
American Persimmon sex parts brought down during Saturday’s downpour. (I didn’t notice that bumblebee until looking over the photo.)These are the male flowers, rather fleshy bell-shaped things with recurved lobes. And a fruit that’ll never be.
Backyard and Beyond 