Fieldnotes
-
Case in Point
Coney Island Creek this morning before the sun came out. Old barges … a home-made submarine, shopping carts, toxic muck. Pigeons: check. Rats: check, a longshoreman-sized one amid the rocks who turned around to give me the beady eye. But also Common Loons, a Great Blue heron and Black-crowned Night heron on the rotting wood…
-
Deadly Toll
Domesticated cats that roam outside kill vast numbers of birds and mammals. Over a couple of days during Thanksgiving in Bradford, Massachusetts, one of the locals presented, in that feline way, an inadvertent survey of rarely-seen mammals. Above is the head of something rodenty; the viscera were left as well. The rest of these were…
-
Insectarium
Montréal’s Insectarium is located next to the Jardin botanique. Admission is included with the garden. And here’s a jump back to some of the beetles.
-
Jardin Botanique
The Jardin botanique de Montreal is reported to be the third largest botanical garden in the world. The middle of November, however, may not be the best time to visit. But there I was, so I couldn’t miss it.A very light dusting of snow on the grounds could not daunt these well-named Arctic daisies, Arctanthemum…
-
Bright in November
Some of the last leaves standing in the city are on the Callery pear trees, Pyrus calleryana. (And by “city,” I mean NYC, in case you’re confused by my bi-metropolitan posting of late.) The Callery, especially in its Bradford variety, is a fairly common street tree here. The tree really shines this time of year,…
-
Musée Redpath
The Redpath Museum, on the McGill University campus, is a natural history potpourri, a wunderkammer writ large.Exhibits on zoology, mineralogy, paleontology, and, um, ethnology, fill the place, which is the oldest building built as a museum in Canada. It was completed 1882, and has a very Victorian feel (but lacks the requisite dust and must).La…
-
November Camellia
Following in the blogsteps of my neighbor, the 66 Square Footer, I walked by the confused camellia around the corner. Normally a very early spring bloomer, this is blooming now. On Monday, it was 70 degrees F, the warmest November 26th on record here in NYC.Today it’s a relatively cool 57, some fourteen degrees higher…
-
Oh, Canada
Montreal’s maples were frequently spotted like this. I think it’s a tar spot fungus in the Rhytisma genus, mostly harmless but cosmetically challenging.
-
Mont Royal
A big lump of magma long exposed to erosion, Mont Royal rises above the island of Montreal. A good place for a park, no? Frederick Law Olmsted — who I inevitably call Frederick Lawn Olmsted, with a nod to James Joyce’s “Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet” — evidently thought so, too. After the triumphs of Central…
-
Three for Thanksgiving
A trio of things found in a southeastern New Hampshire garden this summer by our Thanksgiving dinner host. Burying beetle, Nicrophorus orbicollis. Gray lancetooth snail, Haplotrema concavum (I think). Six-spotted tiger beetle, Cicindela sexguttata. Let’s take a closer look at the latter:The elytra are parted to reveal the underwings.
Backyard and Beyond 