Fieldnotes
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Top of the Island
Freshkills Park had its second annual “sneakpeak” open house Sunday. On the western end of Staten Island, Fresh Kills, as it was then called, was the site of one of the world’s largest landfills. The last barge of trash was delivered in 2001. Other historic highlights: NYC’s ocean dumping outlawed by Supreme Court 1934; Fresh…
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Six ways of looking at a spider
While I was putting together yesterday’s post and eating three different kinds of New York state grapes from the farmer’s market, I noticed something alive in the middle of the air under my desk. It was slowly descending. And then rather more quickly ascending. She tried several times to crawl up onto the top of…
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Weekend Naturalist
Through the Naturalists’ Gate at 77th Street, past the enormous head of the great geographer Alexander von and under the eagle eye of this AMNH topper I entered the Central Park and rambled in the Ramble in search of the barred owl that had been reported yesterday. The owl remained with Minerva, although the local…
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Tsankawi Shelter
Part of Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico, the Tsankawi Historic Sites surround and top this mesa:Several caves, which 800 years ago were back rooms for the ancestral Pueblo people who lived here, dot the mesa flanks:Inside this one was this extraordinary petroglyph:And this bird nest:Still sheltering, after all these years.
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Whose woods these are…
Being out of town and much occupied with family matters, I missed last Friday’s inauguration of my friend Marielle Anzelone’s City Room series on autumn in a Manhattan forest. The second part of this weekly project, which runs until the first day of winter, comes out today this Friday. You must check it out, and…
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New Mexico
A trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, last week was not, needless to say, without a bit of nature. I explored the Randall Davey Audubon Center, and the Nature Conservancy’s Santa Fe Canyon Preserve, adjacent properties both an hour-long walk from the Plaza, the center of town. A mule deer — check out those big…
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Furry moth
Perched briefly on a window, this moth gives us a nice view of its (rarely seen) underside.
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Backyard and Beyond 