Chambered light brown pith: Eastern Black Walnut (Juglans nigra). Chambered dark brown pith: Butternut (Juglans cinerea). Walnut/Butternut. Pith description detail from Woody Plants in Winter by Core and Ammons. Chambered pith is unusual. Here’s a White Oak (Quercus alba) twig for comparison. Core and Ammons describe Quercus as having “pith moderate, continuous, star-shaped in cross…

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Note the hole. The branches of this Kentucky Yellowwood were well-mined. It took about four minutes of pecking and pounding to get inside the twig in this particular case. Now, these branches are live wood, but it looks like something has hollowed them out for growing/pupating. But what?

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The petiole of the compound leaf of Yellowwood, Cladrastis kentukea, also known as Kentucky or American Yellowwood. As all the leaflets had already fallen off the leaf and the petiole’s days were numbered, I detached it to see the fresh leaf scar. The bud was waiting within. In many trees species, buds will be next…

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Under a European Beech. A Cooper’s Hawk on the ground surrounded by Northern Flicker feathers. This tree also sheltered two American Woodcocks, unseen by me until they bolted one after the other as I sidled up behind the great bulk of the tree to take these photos. Probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to one…

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Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava). This may be the first one I’ve ever seen sprouting. Horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). Looks delicious, doesn’t it? But don’t eat ’em, they’re toxic. Don’t confuse them with the sweet chestnut, e.g. marrons glacés.  The Horse-chestnut is a non-native tree planted everywhere as an ornamental. These big seeds are the originals used…

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House Finch male in an exotic Sweetgum. Purple Finch female in the White Ash samaras. She has to bill-worry the seed out of the wing. Flatbread and Starling. And House Sparrows. The obscure red belly of a Red-bellied Woodpecker. Yellow-rumped Warblers with prey. It’s the season of periodic flocks of Robins. A hollow in this…

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Oak Rough Bulletgall, made by the wasp Disholcaspis quercusmamma on Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor; although this tree is actually a Swamp White cross with another oak species, as engineered by Cornell U.) That’s the critter’s exit hole. And an entrance hole for other critters. I watched this ant, identified on iNaturalist as a subgenus Myrmentoma…

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With the recent influx of Tufted Titmice, including on my block, I thought to myself, so where are the Black-capped Chickadees? Well… Saw a few on Governor’s Island recently. And in Green-Wood. I have a new Medium piece up, on discovering Balzac, nought, however, about natural history.

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And the nuthatch-blue of the lower bill.

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A couple of Northern Italian Wall Lizards from November 7th, when it got into the mid 70s F. These rest of these pictures are from earlier this fall: This one lost a good bit of tail somewhere along the way. This one was keeping an eye on me and the two American Kestrels atop the…

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