Fieldnotes
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Microbiome Valentine
Once we were thought to be the mirror of perfection, created in God’s image, made to rule the planet, separate and unequal from all the other critters. (I speak of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the one I know best.) This was before we discovered how hybridized we are, how interconnected, how evolutionary. Instead of created in…
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Brooklyn Bridge Park Panoramas
Salt marsh and Pier One. [Click to open for wider images.]View from Promenade.
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ABDs
The American Black Duck (Anas rubripes) is often found with Mallard Ducks (Anas platyrhynchos), looks somewhat like the female of that ubiquitous species, and sometimes interbreeds with our most recognizable duck, making for hybrids that mix characteristics of the species. This pair looks relatively un-hybridized, with dark orange legs, dark feathers, strong eyeline, olive-yellowish bills.…
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Galls in Winter
The leaves of this White Oak in Green-Wood have refused to fall. They held up to Sandy, the Nor’easter a week later, and all the rest of the winter so far. Actually, some oaks are tenacious leaf-holders, only shedding them just before, or just as, new leaf growth begins to bud.So I got to take…
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Ice, eagles
Yesterday morning, on a blustery cold day in Columbia County, New York, we listened to the ice moving down the Hudson. This wasn’t a very loud sound, but it was hypnotic hearing the crinkle of ice folding into itself, the cristle of it moving south with the current. (Excuse the smudge of my frozen finger…
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Watering Hole
An open patch of water in Prospect Park’s Lake attracts everybody. The Ring-billed gulls — of which there were hundreds on the ice — had just taken off, leaving the Mute swans in charge. The crowd meant more fowl were on-shore and close to the path, grooming and resting. This allowed me to get up-close…
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First Horseshoe?
We approach the first anniversary of my now constant companion, the distinguishing identifiable feature of my corpus, my horseshoe crab tattoo. So I was most pleased to notice this detail in the book, Natural Histories, I reviewed in my last post. In 1590, Theodor de Bry’s opus America presented some of the first images of…
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Cold-schmold!
The Monk Parakeets, also known as Quaker Parrots (Myiopsitta monachus) in Green-Wood Cemetery were celebrating the return of (barely) above freezing temperatures yesterday with their usual racket. Once, long ago in Green-Wood, with my bins in hand identifying me as a weirdo, a couple came up and asked if I was there to look at…
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Brooklyn Raven
Winter, especially at the tail-end of a bona fide cold snap like we’ve had most of the week, generally presents few surprises for the nature watcher. But this morning, as I wandered about Green-Wood Cemetery, I watched a Common raven (Corvus corax) and a Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) contest the airspace overhead. The Red-tailed was…
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Death and Life on the Gowanus
The northern, terminal end of the Gowanus Canal. Where we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On Friday, a dolphin ended up in the canal, causing a media frenzy, including, evidently, a helicopter overhead, and the usual circus of social-media-alerted gawkers. (I was blessed to have missed it all.) The animal died in…
Backyard and Beyond 