Fieldnotes
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Raptor Wednesday
I’m going to bet this isn’t the only American Kestrel nest above a New York City bus stop. Falco sparverius love these old decaying wooden cornices, one of the reasons they have taken so well to the city. Falcons are spartan: the nest is pretty sparse inside, evidently, with little or no nesting material used.…
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Chesapecten
These are fossilized shells of extinct scallops found on the Piankatank River in Virginia. They’re in the genus Chesapecten, all of whose members no longer live upon this earth. Such mineralized remains are dated from the early Miocene period to the early Pleistocene. Here’s more detail about the rich fossil world of the Chesapeake. *…
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Look No Further For Groundcover
Where have all the flowers of spring gone? Long time passing…. Pier 1 at Brooklyn Bridge Park has a rather spectacular understory layer in its seventh year. From the top left: Celandine-poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum), mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum), and wild ginger (Asarum canadense). And hiding their lights under their bushel of leaves: Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum). * I like…
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Bipunctata in Sunset Park
Two-spotted Ladybug (Adalia bipunctata). Back in 2012, I reported to the Lost Ladybug Project that I found some of these critters in catalpa trees in Brooklyn Bridge Park. From the LLP, I learned that mine was the third New York State record for this species, and the only one in NYC. There was much rejoicing.Yesterday,…
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Other Rooftops
Atop Kingsland Wildflowers recently, I couldn’t help notice that it wasn’t the only rooftop garden in the area. These neighbors seem to be volunteers, blown in by the wind, deposited by birds, etc. I saw some mosses, perhaps they showed up first? I don’t know what any of these plants are. I’ll take a better eye…
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Vigilance Against Poachers
Yesterday, some bird poachers were interrupted in Prospect Park by Park Rangers and park staff. Earlier, one of the poachers actually walked through a group of birders with a caged American Goldfinch in one hand and a glue stick (used to trap birds, a variation on bird lime; very nasty stuff) in the other. It’s…
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Cyanocitta cristata
Blue Jay. Called by Linnaeus Corvus cristatus. Still a Corvidae. In his five volume Ornithological Biography,* written to accompany The Birds of America, Audubon begins the Blue Jay section with “Reader, look at the plate in which are presented three individuals of this beautiful species, — rogues though they be, and thieves, as I would…
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Raptor Wednesday
This Red-tailed Hawk remained perched as four of us walked underneath it on the path.We’re probably too big to eat.And from the other side. That’s an Osprey on the upper right in the distance. * Timothy Snyder’s pamphlet On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century should be distributed to motel rooms. Or posted on the…
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Trilliums and Trilliums
These were some of the native trilliums in the New York Botanic Garden earlier this month. The seeds of these plants are distributed by ants, who are attracted to the lipid- and protein-packed elaiosomes (“oily body”) on the seeds. Like all wildflowers, these beauties are best left alone. Picking the flower can kill the whole…
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Not Just The Legs
It’s a long stretch from the edge to the water.Yet this Green Heron (Butorides virescens) not only got this frog but dipped it back into the water over and over again until a car flushed the heron and it flew off with its hominid-looking prey. That’s a long neck. And the dipping? Making lunch easier…
Backyard and Beyond 