Fieldnotes
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Two birds
Near the dog bathing beach at the Upper Pool in Prospect Park, I found a couple of noteworthy birds the other day:The most common bird species in the park is surely the American robin, Turdus migratorius, which you can find on the meadows and in the woods and everywhere in between. This particular one stands…
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Tentative IDs
Wildness forensics continues: we found this skull in a kettle pond on the top of Highland Park. I think it’s raccoon: note those molars and check out this PDF to see what you think. On Cypress Ave, we found another mammal, this time definitely a raccoon, that was road kill. In nearby Machpelah Cemetery, where…
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Field Trip: Our Sunken Forest
We took our first trip to Highland Park and Ridgewood Reservoir last weekend. Straddling the Brooklyn/Queens border, the park and accidental nature preserve deserve to be better known outside of their surrounding neighborhoods. More about our discoveries in Highland will be in my next post. But what’s all this about a Reservoir and accidental nature…
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Save the dates
May 1 The Listening Tour. I will be leading a Proteus Gowanus event on May Day at 6:00 a.m., as part of the interdisciplinary gallery and reading room’s Paradise exhibition. We will meet at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. Then we’ll SILENTLY walk through Prospect Park at the crack of dawn to…
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Meet a beetle
Ah, spring, when a nature nerd’s fancy turns to whatever is found crawling on the inside door frame. This is a varied carpet beetle, Anthrenus verbasci. It is one itty-bitty member of the mighty beetle order, being a hair under 1/8″ long. It was devilishly tricky to shoot, with the macro feature and a 15x21mm…
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Starlings
A pair of starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, on the Nethermead were locked in combat the other day. Literally locked, as one had the other’s legs in its grasp. The fight went on and on, until the captive one either broke free or the captor relented. Then they flew off in the same direction, and it looked…
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Shifting baselines
Here at Backyard & Beyond, we get excited by a woodchuck, some muskrats, and a dozen cattails sprouting from a roof. The return of seals to New York Harbor puts a spring in our step. Yes, we celebrate, but that’s because we’re starving, and starvation, the best of all sauces, makes every scrap at the…
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Painted Turtle
The seasons turn. The years go ’round. Last March, I photographed a painted turtle, Chrysemys picta, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Japanese Pond. It was surrounded by numerous eastern red-eared sliders. This past Saturday, I found the same — or, hopefully, another? — painted turtle in the same area of the Pond (where the rocks…
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Look Down
One of the speedwells. I think it’s Persian speedwell, Veronica persica. One of the chickweeds. As with the speedwells, there are numerous species. Found both of these in Green-Wood last week.
Backyard and Beyond 