Fieldnotes
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Does This Komodo Make Me Look Fat?
There’s a giant monitor lizard on the loose at Atlantic Ave and Henry St. It’s about five feet long and looks hungry. I’ve called 911 and the ASPCA and the tabloids. Traffic snarled, people freaking out, dogs hiding. If you’re in the neighborhood, for God’s sake, stay indoors!
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Dire Ox
By now, a lot of you know about the abandoned brick-arched train tunnel underneath Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. But I’m guessing far fewer of you are aware of the caves honeycombing what the geologists call the “Heartland Formation” “Ravenswood Granodiorite” under Brooklyn Heights. I had a rare opportunity to go there recently with the Brooklyn…
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Zoo-ology
The very rare and endangered North American Bare-Faced Feathered Cobra, Pseudobitis clementins, rarely stirs in its thicket at the Bronx Zoo. But it’s overnight escape into the wilds of Van Cortland Park has stirred something in this jaded city’s breast. A Facebook page and fueding Twitter accounts (@BareFacedCobra, @RealBareFaceCobra, @CobraAmI) allege to chart the animal’s…
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A Mystery
This is brand new Tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) leaf, pinky-nail-sized, still to unfold into its characteristic mitten-like shape. That was the extent of early spring growth on these giants of our forest one weeks ago, so when I noticed a patch of rich green way up on a branch of a mature specimen of this…
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The Darling Buds of… March?
The two crab apple trees on my block are now blooming. Title riff: “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” ~ Shakespeare, Sonnet 18.
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Ouroboros
Every twenty years or so, my dander gets up and I write a letter to the New York Times. In the mid-1980s, I did it to spank Edward Teller, who poo-pooed the concept of nuclear winter in an Op-Ed, with a reminder of the global climate effects of “Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.” That…
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Long Horns
Sometimes you don’t notice the details (or the scandalously narrow field of focus) of a macro shot until later. Check out these great big antenna, like something you’d find on long-horned cattle. This worker ant is busy on that understory delight Spicebush, Lindera benzoin.
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Lifelines
The usual notion of a tree root is that it has a large root mirroring the trunk, running as deep underground as the trunk runs up into the sky. Or, like Tobin’s sculpture, it has a series of deep roots, but that’s his artistic license, not to mention a practical way of allowing people to…
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Inner Magnolia
Like sea anemones, the hearts of magnolias. And from my archives, a shot from the NY Aquarium:
Backyard and Beyond 