Fieldnotes
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Hepatica
A single blooming Anemone in the leaf litter. But more are on the way. Some interesting taxonomic issues raised by this one: The genus name for this spring ephemeral used to be Hepatica and some still think it is. Hepatica, meanwhile, is used as the common name; it’s also called Liverleaf or Liverwort. I’m not…
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Oh, Schist!
I never get tired of quoting that guy in the Times who wrote succinctly that “Manhattan is gneiss, but full of schist.” The bare bones of the little island of Mannahatta are exposed on the upper, upper west side where a ridge of mica schist, the famed Manhattan schist, rises over the flatlands of Harlem.…
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Raptor Wednesday: Red Hook Edition
A friend sent me a picture of a pair of American Kestrels hanging out in Red Hook. Later in the day, I went by and found the female on an antenna on the same building, which is probably the location of, or near, a nest cavity. Evidently, they have been around for years. Locals insist…
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City Lores
I saw my first egrets of the year Saturday, with three Great Egrets and four Black-crowned Night-herons at Floyd Bennett Field’s little freshwater pond, amidst a thunderous chorus of spring peepers. On Sunday, I saw another Great Egret in Inwood, looking here towards the Bronx, with perhaps a bit of Marble Hill in there as…
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Ruins
In the Henry Street Basin next to the old Port of New York Authority Grain Terminal* colossus, there were a pair or Mallards, a Gadwall, and a pair of Red-breasted Mergansers. And then there was this: Some kind of carp. Usually, the members of the Cyprinidae are freshwater fish. Here, next to the Gowanus Bay…
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Skunk Heaven
Hear ye, hear ye! The Skunk Cabbage is up at the Native Flora Garden at Ye Brooklyn Wedding Venue! Symplocarpus foetidus favors wetlands, as this plant demonstrates from mid-gurgle of the stream.Of course, this earliest of spring plants was up already down south weeks ago, but Brooklyn is where I am, so I celebrate it’s…
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Turtle Underground
The great turtle or tortoise holding up the world is an ancient story from China and India — and the New World, whose original inhabitants came from Asia. Less well known is the race of giant tortoises who hold up New York City. Your engineer, the very definition of quotidian, will insist on schist —…
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Scaup
The great rafts of scaup that gather in Dead Horse and Gravesend Bays during the winter will soon be heading to breeding areas in the north. The males are three-toned. The females are brownish with a touch of white on the cheek. I find separating the Greater (Aythya marilla) and Lesser (Aythya affinis) difficult.
Backyard and Beyond 