Wowsa! Close-up of the pores in Northern Cinnabar Polypore/Trametes cinnabarina. (This one was already broken off.)

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If you look closely, you can see the eggs underneath the foamy, spongy covering Spongy Moths/Lymantria dispar coat their egg-masses with. These used to be known as Gypsy Moths, but the common name was changed a couple years ago for obvious reasons. They were introduced to the U.S. in 1869 by some dude who thought…

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These are the infernal train yard lights my neighbors complain about. About three blocks away from the vast subway yard, they require blackout curtains to stop the glow. (We face a different direction, thankfully.) This light tower with a male American Kestrel atop it was on a distant part of the yard. Along with the…

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A low-flying Great Egret about to go over 5th Avenue, presumably on the way to Sylvan Water.

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I don’t know who this bee, but this bee sure is workin’. Another Margined Calligrapher Fly.

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Lots of Virginia Spring Beauties/Claytonia virginica, including some intensely pink ones. After a stormy night, with temps rising into the 60s, there was a little bit of pollination going on. An Andrena genus mining bee… is it the fabled Spring Beauty Miner? Stay tuned. Figure the pollen on this Margined Calligrapher Fly is Virginia Spring…

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Everybody’s gone snailin’/across the USA. Well, a dozen of us, anyway, gathered for last week’s Earth Day Snail Safari in conjunction with David Colosi’s exhibit Snaileidolia at Open Source Gallery. [Link includes a reading of David’s snail fiction and a intriguing globe-spanning discussion on Zoom.] Above is a Common Periwinkles (Littorina littorea) found by one of…

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Look at plants through various magnifications (10x in the above pic), and you start see a lot of hair. As it happens, this is the underside of a fresh Mockernut Hickory leaflet. These are particularly hairy; in fact, Carya tomentosa is named for its leaflet undersides being covered in dense short hairs (from the Latin…

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The small, legume-family (Fabaceae) flowers of Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) are nectar mines. Here’s a long-tongued Golden Northern Bumble (Bombus fervidus) going for the gusto. Here’s what I think is a Brown-belted (Bombus griseocollis), even though the “belt” isn’t very brown. And an Eastern Carpenter Bee/Xylocopa virginica.

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