Fieldnotes
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Raptor Wednesday
Every once and a while, an Osprey scouts out Green-Wood’s Sylvan Water, the largest body of water in the cemetery. Just in case. There certainly are fish in there. This one is entirely too small for an Osprey, but intriguing nonetheless. What is it? Of course, that fish is perfect for a Kingfisher. This one…
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Heather Lady
Do you see it? A small lady beetle. Chilocorus bipustulatus: Bugguide goes with “Heather Lady Bug”; iNaturalist with “Heather Ladybird,” its English name. Glossy enough to see my silhouette in its elytra. This species is native to western Eurasia. According to Bugguide, it’s been introduced around the world to combat scale insects. These beetles are…
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Parkesia motacilla
Louisiana Waterthrush. One of the 80 or so observations I entered for the City Nature Challenge on Saturday morning. Most of these were old friends. I’ll share one of the new ones tomorrow.
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Some Trees a-Leafing
Shagbark hickory. Walnut. Gutta-percha tree. European beech. Black willow. Pin oak. Willow oak. White oak. Not sure which oak…perhaps swamp white or black. Northern red oak. Pignut hickory.
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Naked Branches Budding
The branches of Kentucky coffeetrees look dead in winter. No buds. Gnarly indecipherable leaf scars. But they are showing signs of life now. Gymnocladus dioicus: the binomial tells you a lot of what you want to know. The genus means “naked branch,” referring to the stark lack of twigs. The species name means the tree…
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Hoppers
The grasses erupt with tiny jumping things. They don’t go far. Finding one isn’t easy because they’re so small. They’re leafhoppers. iNaturalist members say this one is is in genus Dikraneura. And one, even smaller, with no common name, Kosswigianella perusta. Indeed, this wasn’t even a species in the iNaturalist database. Gray Lawn Leafhopper (Exitianus…
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Raptor Wednesday: Earth Day Edition
In April 1970, at the time of the first Earth Day, there weren’t many Bald Eagles to be found in the Lower 48. Your chance of seeing one over Brooklyn, of all places, was extremely unlikely. Practically fabulous. That they might breed within the city’s limits was an equally outlandish notion. Even before DDT brought…
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Pandemic Notes II
This April has been cooler than March. More rain, too. Or so it seems. The cruelest month? “Breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land” wrote Eliot, ladling out more metaphor than botany from his chilly Modernist citadel. The NYC death toll is now over 13,000. I can’t keep up with the tally. In addition to the…
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Orange Pollen
Little flower, big bee. Long tongue into the nectar, anther against the forehead. This Lamium isn’t letting the bee leave town without some pollen. But wait just a minute. This bee has a white face. The only white-faced bee I know is the male Eastern Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa virginica), but this one was rather too…
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Small Birds
Palm Warbler. Golden-crowned Kinglet. Yellow-rumped Warbler variations. Pine Warbler. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. Here’s a special one. Yellow-throated Warblers breed to the south of us. So they’re rarer up here, having overshot their migration. Note the lores here. The spaces between the eyes and the bill. That line is white in this case. This makes this one…
Backyard and Beyond 