Fieldnotes
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Stain? Ghost?
Searching to find out why leaves makes these stains on concrete, I find a lot of webpages dedicated to getting rid of them (bleach, blech!). I love the things! And find them deeply satisfying. In a cursory search, I didn’t get much further than the organic pigments in the leaf become embedded in the concrete’s…
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Shorewalk
“Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the products of sea-slime.” H.D. Thoreau on Cape Cod. I walked from the Lemon Creek Fishing Pier to Conference House Park along the Raritan Bay shore of Staten Island recently. The red glacial till of the…
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Common Green Darner
A male Common Green Darner (Anax junius), one of our largest species of dragonfly. You should really click on the picture for a larger view, since there is some great detail here because this one perched quite a while below eye-level, allowing us all good looks as he rubbed his front legs over his eyes.…
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Friday’s Feet
“The angels wanna wear my red shoes,” sings Elvis Costello. Common Terns (Sterna hirundo) don’t often swim, but they can.
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Swift Dispatch
This Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) gobbled his fly prey up with startling swiftness.
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Incoming!
A Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) was raising vocal hell. Then it started to fly straight at me, arrow-like. I instinctively flinched as it passed over head. No fool I. The bird spun around, and returned for another strafing. I’ve been here before. This kind of dive-bombing is classic nest protection strategy for terns; that little…
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Osprey Appeal
Did you know you can help fund the satellite tracking of a Jamaica Bay osprey on his return trip to Latin America later this year? And, come next spring, if all goes well, the bird’s return trip up the coast back to Jamaica Bay? The Osprey’s Journey Project is fundraising to keep that uplink going.…
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Gnawy
Bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) cutting away at the black locust hand-rails at the Native Plant Garden at NYBG.Look at those mandibles! Several hundred workers in a colony will build up those football-sized nests so beloved by nature bloggers from wood pulp and saliva; it looks like a lot of work, because it doesn’t seem like…
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Killdeer
A Killdeer blends in nicely with these beach pebbles along the southwest shore of Staten Island.But note this binomial: Charadrius vociferus. I heard three of them long before I ever saw them.
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Pollen Bumble Rumble
Flying between these absurdly large flowers of hybrid rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), this bumblebee was practically glowing yellow from all the pollen.But note how the wings remain mostly clean. Bees are hairy, the hairs statically charged to help pollen stick to them. Of course, you wouldn’t want your wings to be laden with pollen or…
Backyard and Beyond 