Fieldnotes
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Exuviae
Wait… what? This Rambur’s Forktail damselfly is perched on the exuviae of a dragonfly.Another view of the male Rambur’s green-blue color pattern. Dragon- and damselfly eggs are laid on or near water. The larval stage is aquatic. After a season, or a year (or more depending on species and location), the aquatic nymph crawls out…
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Raptor Wednesday
The #BrooklynKestrels. Mother and daughters. The young ones tend to look plumper than she does, but I can’t see this in this particular picture. She’s still bringing them food — and this roof is still a larder. They fly down to it, out-of-sight, and come up with a pice of something. There have been some…
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Great Egret
Ardea alba have even been known to show up in small backyard goldfish ponds. If there’s food… and they do seem readily habituated to the presence of similarly long-legged hominids.One of the bird’s long plumes, or aigrettes. These are breeding plumage feathers; this one about 18″ long. They’re the reason these birds were nearly hunted…
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Quiscalus quiscula
Now, there’s binomial! Doesn’t really help to translate it, however, since it basically means “quail quail.” Well, then, my favorite quail… anyway, as long as we stay away from the Middle Latin-to-English thing and just let Quiscalus quiscula ripple off the tongue. What I’m trying to suggest here is that “Common” Grackle is simply unfair.…
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Raptor Wednesday
Monday morning dawned and lo and behold there were two female American Kestrels on the Solar Building! The one on the left had the tell-tale head fuzz of a fledgling. Just like that, voila! So there was another Brooklyn Kestrel in the house!Was there only one? Within the hour that Monday morning: there were three…
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The Membrane-Winged
An Eastern Carpenter Bee working the milkweed.This is one of our biggest bees, so note the tiny little critter to its right in both pictures above. Didn’t see this one while photographing. Not sure if its a bee or wasp. One of the leaf-cutter bees stuck to a Drosera filiformis, thread-leaved sundew. This carnivorous plant…
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Spotted Dweller of the Coast
A very vocal shore bird this time of year makes you think there’s a nest nearby.Spotted Sandpipers are the shore birds you’ll see inland. In Brooklyn, that means the edges of Prospect Lake and Sylvan Water in Green-Wood host them during migration. Teeterbird is one of their common names, for their habit of bobbing their…
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Question Marks
Polygonia interrogationis , the Question Mark butterfly. The wings need to be closed to see the mark in question. I think it’s more of a semi-colon. The similar Comma (Polygonia comma) has the “comma” mark but not the dot. Mud-puddling. Everyone does it, but butterflies are so conspicuous they get noticed doing it. Insects need…
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Beach Patrol
An old map I once saw named this section of Staten Island’s southwestern shore “Red Bank”. Herring Gull. One of the Raritan Bay channel markers (“red-right-return” to the sailors) had an even bigger gull on it. Indeed, the world’s biggest: a Greater Black-backed Gull, who made a sortie after a fish-laden Osprey. The Osprey held…
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Various Insects
Polished Lady Beetle. The gloss on these things! You can see the trees overhead reflected in the elytra*.Red-banded Leafhopper. You must get close to this little one to see this wild pattern.Invasive European Wool Carder Bee. They hover very much like flies and are quite territorial. All over now, they were first detected in New…
Backyard and Beyond 