Fieldnotes
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Winter Walk
A return to Squam Swamp.While silvery gray predominates this time of year, there are other colors of note: A scrim of ice over autumn’s leftovers. Blue-green stained wood, caused by a fungus. Moss gone wild.
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Fleur de sel
I run my finger along an exterior surface of the M/V Eagle (a.k.a. the “slow boat”) that crosses Nantucket Sound and pick up this residue.It’s sodium chloride and other minerals, or sea salt, dried out from the constant spray that lands on the boat as she makes her six daily crossings this time of year.…
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Glazed oysters
Water spilling off a tree stump had coated and frozen around these mushrooms, giving them a glaze. I believe they may be Oyster Mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus), or another Pleurotus species. The gills make a pleasing pattern:
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Bleech!
The American Cockroach (Periplaneta americana), a.k.a. American Waterbug, and, incorrectly, as the Palmetto bug. The “American” is also a misnomer; they originated in Africa and been here since the 17th century. They are FREAKIN’ HUGE. (Sorry, my entomological sympathies are strained by the Blattodea.) 4cm or 1.5″ long. Distinguished from the smaller house invader commonly…
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Preen on
Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) preening. Feather maintenance is of course vitally important to birds. One of the things they have to worry about is feather lice, which, without regular bathing and preening, could become a problem. Interestingly, feather lice species have evolved over time to associate only with “their” species of birds. There is an analogy…
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Cycles
If you’ve been following this blog a while, you’ve seen this before. Not this photo, not this example, but similar. For nature follows cycles, and so too does this blog. Pieces of the past summer’s Bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) nests, now abandoned by the generation of 2012, get blown out of trees this time of…
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Just winter
Even in the cold, all muffled up, we should be far from senseless.Look out for the textures, juxtapositions, paradoxes, and above all, in these quiet, near monochromatic, months, the subtleties. Isn’t life always in the details?Isn’t life always in the budding? The Catskills across the Hudson, and more shades of grey than we could ever…
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The Case of the Headless Mouse
It was as cold as a Titmouse on a bare oak branch that morning. The call came in from the Mammal Division. I’d fallen asleep in my suit, Kirkegaard propped against my noise. My tongue felt like it had been ground up for dog-food and probably smelled like that, too, but I shook off my…
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Lord of all it surveys
A familiar silhouette. This Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) was on a mound of dirt and rubble near Pier 3 in Brooklyn Bridge Park’s still under-construction section the other day. As with all things, the more you practice, the better you get, and in this context it is looking and identifying birds. The raptors can be…
Backyard and Beyond 