Fieldnotes
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Flushed Apps
What a fascinating life cycle! After their soft and spongy innards are consumed by female Homo sapiens, these indestructible exoskeleton-sheaths journey through the social network of the sewer system. (Males H. not so sapiens do sometimes use them, although judging from HRH Charles, Prince of Wales, only in a metaphoric sense.) Ubiquitous on our beaches,…
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Bark Question
Interesting bark in Prospect Park. I don’t know what kind of tree this is. Any ideas?
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Urban Myth Busting
“Have you ever seen a baby pigeon?” Well, yes, and now so have you. After all, they do not spontaneously rise out of nothing fully feathered as adult birds. I have seen the young ‘uns both in the nest and recently fledged, and, as in this unfortunate case, dead. Yup, the Rock Pigeons (Columba livia)…
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Breakout!
Peekaboo. The magnolias are busting out of their winter furs right now in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
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Spring spider
Last week, on the first day of spring, a spider found itself in the tub.An American House Spider (I think), Parasteatoda tepidariorum. I got close with the camera and somehow brushed a line of silk, so that when I moved away, I inadvertently pulled the spider with me: it danced like a tiny puppet at…
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Sun Print/Blue Print
Yesterday’s lacy skeletonized leaf was so popular it sent me back into my chaos files to find this sun print or cyanotype I made of a leaf skeleton years ago. This particular leaf was 8″ long from tip to petiole end, so you should click on this image to make it fill your screen at…
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Waterfowl
A female Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator) mixes Punk feathers with Goth eyes.A pair of these ducks were hanging out around Pier 5 the other day. Constant diving did not seem to plaster those stiff head feathers down for long.A Red-throated loon (Gavia stellata) was preening between Pier 5 and the ruins of Pier 4.The throat…
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Saw Whet
Of all the many services provided here at Backyard & Beyond, bird identification tops the list. Want to know what kind of owl that is in your backyard? You could look it up, of course, like my friend Zina Saunders did when she saw an owl outside her window. This was in the air/light shaft…
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