Fieldnotes
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Dragonflies
Brooklyn Bridge Park is now open at its northern end, in the shadow of the great bridge. Here small pools and streams, part of the park’s landscaping and drainage system, are newly planted with a host of plants. And what freshwater body is complete without dragonflies? Recently, under a hot sun, I watched twelve-spotted skimmers,…
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Waste spaces
A differential grasshopper, Melanoplus differntialis, on some kind of smartweed. This clump of waste space-favoring weed was found on a downbeat block of Pacific Street in Boreum Hill, and just goes to show what happens when you look closely at even the commonest things.
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Elegy for phytoplankton
It’s too bad the microscopic organisms that make up phytoplankton don’t have faces. These creatures live in both fresh and salt water and are the basis of aquatic food webs. There are numerous types, and there are bejillions of them. The trouble is that there used to be even bejillions more of them. According to…
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On The Raunt
Recently, we ran into a fellow birder at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge’s East Pond. He alerted us of a rare marbled godwit located at “the Raunt.” In late summer, the JBWR is the place to go birding if you’re in the city. Migrating shorebirds heading south stop by by the dozens, hundreds, and, for some…
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Bestiary
Found recently at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge: Fall webworm, Hyphantria cunea. A potential defoliator, known to munch on 400 species of woody plants. It’s also host to over 50 species of parasitic wasps and flies. Leopard slug, Limax maximus. Invasive, imported from Europe. Approximately 4” long. The main body of this web was over a…
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Clam clamor
Much of my project here is about looking at things in the natural world. Looking, and discovering, and sharing. This is just a fragment of clam shell that I picked up at JBWR last weekend, but I was delighted by the detail. Click on the image to open it up: you can see the animal’s…
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Blue-themed
The beach plums are ripe out at Jamaica Bay. My mother used to make beach plum jam, but I’m afraid I wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate the stuff. I was crazy for the strawberry jam she made, though. Which of course ruined me for life, since now I know what real jam tastes like, and…
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Park Lobster
Crayfish, actually, and only related to the lobsters — but a little B-52s reference does get the Sunday morning heart a-pumping. With the camera flash, this fearless crawdaddy sure does look like a cooked lobster. When it saw me, it reared up, all three inches of it, to let me know that it was a…
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Cicadas. Part III.
Found on the Cobble Hill sidewalk: the forewing of a dog day cicada. (Earlier posts about cicadas are here and here.) The size (1.5″ across) and green color identify it. You will, I believe, be pleased if you click on the image to open it up to see it larger. Cicadas, like most bugs, have…
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On the F train last night: Kid: “Mommy, the sun is red!” Mom: “Yes, honey, it’s setting.” Kid “Is it tired?” Roasted and toasted, more likely. Tonight, in the sky, look for the Perseid meteor shower. And listen for the katydids. In case you missed this, my first posting on HuffPo is about the history…
Backyard and Beyond 