Fieldnotes
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Goldenish Rainy Treethingie
Argh! Tree names! Enough to drive you crazy. The NYC Parks Dept.’s badass-streets-approved Goldenraintree (draught, salt, high pH, poor soils) is Sibley’s Golden Rain-tree (a/k/a Shower Tree, Pride of India, Varnish Tree, Gate Tree), which is not to be confused with Common Laburnum, (a/k/a Golden Chain-tree, Golden Rain Tree). Anyway, Koelreuteria paniculata is blooming now,…
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Up the Creek
Twisty estuary: this is a sculptural map of Newtown Creek’s original watershed. The Creek, separating Greenpoint, Brooklyn, from Hunters Point, LIC,Sunnyside, and Blissville, Queens, was long ago renown for its oysters. It’s now a Superfund site, the result of more than a century of industrial pollution. Sections of Greenpoint itself sit on a underground oil…
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Katydids
Now the nights are ticking with katydids. We have several species in the city: check out the results of the 2009 Cricket Crawl, which listened for crickets and katydids (along with grasshoppers, these insects are all in the Orthoptera order). The clicks, tzips, and “ka-ty-did she did she didn’t” of the night will last into…
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Grapevine Beetle
I found this Grapevine Beetle (Pelidnota punctata) dead on a tree stump, being scouted out by a fly. It’s about an inch long; three spots on each elytron, two on the pronotum like false eyes (these are sometimes absent). The species likes parks, gardens, and woodlands, and are so named because they feed on grapevines,…
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Avian Rarities
Coney Island’s Grey-headed Gull, which has made the big time, reminds me of some other rarities that have shown up in NYC in the last few years: Boreal Owl ~ 1/05 Central Park (Origin: Northern Canada)* Western Reef Heron ~ 7/07 Calvert Vaux Park (Africa)** Scott’s Oriole ~ 1/08 Union Square (Western U.S.) Black Swan…
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Twitching: Grey-headed Gull
A Grey-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus cirrocephalus), native to the South America and Africa, has been spotted on Coney Island. Where else? It’s been there several days now, often hanging out in front of the WonderWheel and living on the castoff of beach-goers. This may be only the second confirmed sighting in the U.S. As a result,…
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Earth Space
I know there’s plenty of gnashing of teeth over the end of the space shuttle program, a sort of a low-earth-orbit FedEx, but I invite the star-crossed to look around them down here with more attention. There’s so much yet to be discovered here on Earth. For instance, I was going through some photos, and…
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Jamaica Bay Update
Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) and Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) on the East Pond at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.Through the blind at Big John’s Pond: Black-Crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax, a juvenile), Glosy Ibis (Plegadis falcinellus), and Green Heron (Butorides virescens). Three Wood Ducks (Aix sponsa) were in there as well, but not visible here.…
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Real-Time Urban Evolution
Not so long ago, we were picnicking in Father Demo Square in the West Village of the Inner Borough. The square is really a triangle bordered by 6th Ave, Bleecker, and Carmine. It underwent a major redesign a few years ago. We’d picked up a few noshes at Murray’s Cheese Shop and parked ourselves on…
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Last of the Curlews?
The last, the very last, Passenger Pigeon died in captivity (1914). So did the last Carolina Parakeet (1918). The last Heath Hen, named Booming Ben, died in the preserve set aside for the species on Martha’s Vineyard (1932).But we don’t know where or when (or even if) the last Eskimo Curlew died. The species, Numenius…
Backyard and Beyond 