Fieldnotes
-
George Bird Grinnell and Others
I went up to Woodlawn Cemetery to visit the grave of Herman Melville, and I stumbled upon George Bird Grinnell. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn and tutored by Lucy Bakewell Audubon, widow of John James, at the Audubon home in upper Manhattan. He started the first Audubon organization, believing the name should live on. Bird…
-
All Gape
I spotted this nestling, a bird still too young for its eyes to have opened, earlier today. This is probably an American Robin, and would seem to be a second brood for the season. In early spring, birds this young need to worry about being too cold. That wasn’t an issue in today’s tropical, pre-hurricane…
-
Herons
Great Egret (Ardea alba) and Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) aligned in Woodlawn. The Great Egret was quite vocal when it flew: a guttural barking. No songbirds these. Note that these two birds are in the same genus: “egret” and “heron” are basically synonyms; the Latin “ardea” means “heron.”In Green-Wood. The correspondence between the white…
-
Local edibles
I’ve eaten a lot of rhubarb in my time, usually with strawberries. I’ve never seen it gone to seed, though, before now. Rheum rhabarbarum.In the same community garden, Red Currants! Ribes rubrum.Elsewhere in the borough, High-bush Blueberry, almost ripe! Unfortunately, gleaners usually pick these too soon, cheating themselves (and me!). Vaccinium corymbosum.
-
Dragonfly Days of Summer
Male Common Whitetail (Plathemis lydia). Very distinctive. Here’s another view of another:The tail is slightly bluish, actually. Great example of pruinosity, the waxy bloom (can be blue, gray, or white) on mature odonates, especially males. Dragonfly season is upon us. During this weekend wanderings in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Green-Wood Cemetery, and Woodlawn Cemetery, I saw…
-
Two Monhegan Cairns
Lobster Cove: sharply-edged fragments of igneous gabbro. Pebble Beach: sea-smoothed granite “pebbles”.
-
Juneberries
So much depends upon a Juneberry, glazed with rainwater.Beside the cold Crème Anglaise.
-
More Sumac
Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina) in exuberant fuzziness.
-
Lady-like
The Catalpa trees — both the Northern Catalpa (C. bignonioides) and the Southern (C. speciosa) are found in the park — are ladybug magnets. The large heart-shaped leaves are often sticky, perhaps from the excretions of aphids, a favorite ladybug food. Right now, the nymph stages of the lady beetles, these small but frightful looking…
-
Fish
Gasping at the surface near the pier, this fish was in trouble. Or so I thought. But it seemed to successfully dive back into the deeps, so it might have been feeding at something I couldn’t see on the surface. About 14″ long: what is it? And here, soon after low tide way up the…
Backyard and Beyond 