Reviews
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Gotham Unwatered
Ted Steinberg’s Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York is a history of the de-watering of the region. From the Dutch on, but particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, we have have pushed out the borders of the archipelago with landfill. The interior wet places have been drained, filled in, and covered…
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More Book Gifts
Richard Fortey‘s book about his four acres of Chiltern beechwood is just out in the U.S. This is a natural history in every sense, a kind of archeology of an ancient forest whose trees are barely a hundred years old. Sound paradoxical? Read on! “I believe that all organisms are as interesting as human beings,…
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Book Gifts
There’s nothing quite like a book. Erasmus had his priorities right: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes.” Alas, it’s now impossible to send the old boy a gift of a book, but I think you and yours might appreciate the following…
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McCarthy on the Roof, With Wildflowers
Tomorrow night, Michael McCarthy will be speaking at Kingsland Wildflower Roof in Greenpoint, right next to the egg-shaped digesters of the sewer facility. McCarthy’s The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy is just out from NYRB. I intend to write further about the book soon, but suffice for now to say that it is a most…
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The Trouble With Tibbles
Tibbles is right up there in the roll of famous cats, along with Hodge, who has a statue in Gough Square; Mrs. Chippy; and Unsinkable Sam, originally Oskar, who abruptly abandoned the Kriegsmarine for the Royal Navy and then proceeded to survive two more ships going down. Tibbles was the pet of Lyall the lighthouse keeper…
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The Once & Future World
This is a Fragile Forktail (Ischnura posits), spotted recently in Prospect Park. But it has been a lousy year for damselflies. I’m seeing neither the species nor the numbers I’ve seen in the past, particularly in Green-Wood. There, the “waters” are a mess: Valley Water has had no lilies all season; the Sylvan Water is so…
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The Nature of the Beast
Last Sunday, I discussed the enemy. Shall we call it capitalism? In his short book Extinction: A Radical History, Ashley Dawson certainly does. “Our economic system is destroying the planetary life support system upon which we depend.” Is this a controversial idea? I don’t think so, but I suppose it will be met with resistance…
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Fireflies
You know what I like about this blogging project of mine? The fact that there is always something new to learn. It’s the universe, after all, and I will never ever even begin to contain it.For instance, this is one of the Lampyridae family of beetles, the fireflies, lightning bugs, glowworms. But hold on a…
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Heather’s Birds
My friend Heather Wolf’s Birding At The Bridge has just been published. This handsome volume detail’s Heather’s adventures watching and photographing birds in Brooklyn Bridge Park over the course of a couple of years. BBP is where I first ran into Heather. She was carrying her long lens, which is what you really need to…
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P. domesticus
Most overhanging stoplights in the city are supported by these t-shaped structures, and most seem to have a House Sparrow nest on each end. (And everybody knows it: we once watched a crow poking its bill into a couple of them, to see if there was anything to eat inside.) Passer domesticus: the House Sparrow’s…
Backyard and Beyond 