Fieldnotes
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Stump
When I spotted Brian Nash Gill’s Woodcut recently, I was intrigued. A few days later I came across this character-laden stump in Green-Wood. Of course, this isn’t a print, it’s just a picture with the “Noir” filter on my iPhone camera.
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The Dragons Are Hunting
The shed exuvia of an Odonata. Dragon- and damselflies spend their larval stage underwater. These voraciously predatory nymphs climb up on reeds and other vertical structures, anchor themselves, and begin to break out and unfurl their wings, harden off, and then take to the air, leaving these ghostly husks behind.A male Eastern Amberwing (Perithemis tenera), our…
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Bull
…Frog (Lithobates catesbeianus). And bull! too, to the repulsive display of nativism, racism, ignorance, and unparalleled mendacity at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
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Milestone Shell
A milestone: after six and one half years of blogging, I have reached WordPress’s 3GB maximum of free image storage. This is at least one picture a day, probably more on average, for some 2375 days. Wow! Feel free to wander about in the voluminous archives, loosely cataloged by subject… But now I have to…
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Pokemon Go This
If I understand it correctly, the children (of all ages, horrifyingly enough) playing this game are “capturing” virtual cartoons in “real life.” I can’t say I see the appeal. There is entirely too much life to explore in this life, on this world, in this neighborhood. You can’t see the detail in the picture here,…
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Cicada Season
Last Sunday I heard my first annual cicada (Tibicen species*) of the year. It was just a quick stridulation in the native flora garden at NYBG. We didn’t hear the bug again during the hour we explored that summer wonderland. This week, I’ve heard a few cicada bursts in Green-Wood and in Sunset Park, across the…
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Water Birds
A Great Blue Heron in up nearly to its knees. In birds, the knees are very close to the sternum; the next joint down the leg, which most people probably think is the knee, is actually the heel. What you can’t see here are all the dragon- and damselflies going about their business as the…
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Lurking in Plain Sight
Harvestmen or Daddy-longegs (Opiliones).
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Damsel
Actually, it’s the tiny fly (?) this male Orange Bluet (Enallagma signatum) has just devoured who was the subject in distress. You can see a tiny-wing leftover.
Backyard and Beyond 