Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

  • Falling In

    Pignut. Bitternut. Sweetgum. Creeper. This Virginia Creeper is all up in the business of this Black Cherry’s canopy. Here’s where the vine starts. I assume it was once clasped to the tree itself but came loose as it aged. And damn, has it aged! This has been a long dance.

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  • Last Flurries: November Insects

    From last week. Temperatures plunged in between then and now, really reducing insect numbers, but are set to rise back up to 70 today and tomorrow, albeit with rain, the bane of bugs. (Most of these pictures show the “October Skies” variety of Aromatic Aster, btw, whose flower keeps on kicking.)

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  • Beaver Blood Woodcock Moon

    Tuesday morning’s lunar eclipse. Hand-held camera through the open window as cold air rushed in about 5:20 a.m. I was wearing shorts outside Monday when the temps were in the mid-70s. It was in the 40s Tuesday morning. A cold front like that this time of year should be portrayed on weather maps as being…

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    Uh-oh.

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  • Wood D

    An autumnal Wood Duck. Very, very leery of bipeds… But carefully using a large drooping cherry tree as a blind, I got within 15 or so feet as the skittish bird fed.

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  • Requiem For a Street Tree

    The London Plane across the street was trimmed of its dead branches last week. Here’s the before… with the cherry-picker already scouting out the situation. And after. Over the years, we’ve seen these dead branches in action: as Kestrel perch and Kestrel prey cache; as crow raiding-site (see Kestrel cache); Red-bellied Woodpecker haunt (and again);…

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  • Cormorant Fishing

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  • Oak Adjacents

    Several leafy twigs of a mature White Oak were on the ground last week so I picked them up while scouting for galls. I found these Noctuoidea caterpillars. Still working on narrowing these down even to genus, even on Bugguide, but what a great reminder of all the creatures that live off oaks! [Update: for…

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  • Acorns

    Pin Oak, Quercus palustris, is ubiquitous in NYC. The smallish acorns are all over the sidewalks now. (Palustris means swamp; the trees can take the compacted, anaerobic soils of tree pits.) I enjoy hearing them blonking atop cars this time of year. Other creatures enjoy them for other reasons. Bur Oak, Q. macrocarpa is unusual…

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  • Kestrels Continued

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