Dandelion/Taraxacum Common Groundsel/Senecio vulgaris Fingered Speedwell (Veronica triphyllos); rare in the city. (Most of these early bloomers are introduced species.) Henbit Deadnettle/Lamium amplexicaule Red Maple Woodsorrel/Oxalis Hairy Bittercress/Cardamine hirsuta Ozark Witch-hazel/Hamamelis vernalis (indigenous, but also also introduced to the city) Persian Ironwood/Parrotia persica Red Deadnettle/Lamium purpureum First insect/flower interaction I’ve witnessed this year: Honeybee on…

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Fallen from a Pin Oak.

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At low tide, you can walk around the western end of Coney Island. There’s also a lot more of Coney Island Creek Park, seen here from adjoining Kaiser Park, at low tide. Those posts are part of the ferry dock that isn’t. There were a couple homeless people’s fires in the dunes, filling the air…

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The long-time feeder hanging in the Callery Pear tree above Sylvan Water lost its home when the tree was cut down this winter. The feeder was moved to a pine nearby. Here are highlights of some ten minutes watching of the rapid-fire action among half a dozen Tufted Titmouses, Three White-breasted Nuthatches, one Red-breasted Nuthatch,…

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Blue Jays in an absolute frenzy led me here. Big bird. Even bigger is the Eurasian Eagle Owl (with one of the great binomials: Bubo bubo), one of which has escaped the Central Park Zoo and is at liberty in Central Park. Also in unnatural wild news: an 4-5 foot (reports differed) American Alligator was…

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Some sightings this month…

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On January 1, 2015, I saw two Common Ravens canoodling at the end of 39th Street. (Down beyond 1st Avenue; let’s call it O Avenue.) They mated, nested, and raised a brood that year, for the first time in Brooklyn in I don’t know how long. Since then, Common Ravens have become a relatively common…

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In the Whiteness of the Whale chapter of Moby Dick, Melville asks, “Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?” Pshaw!

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The war on nature, which is of course also a war on that familiar component of nature—ourselves—is never ending. Most battles are local, often small-scale and unknown to outsiders: this sliver of green, that corner of wetlands, the lakeside trail, the “empty lot,” but they’re all quilted into the larger fabric.  Friends of B &…

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