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.”

  • Melee

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  • Fall Colors

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    Fall Colors

  • Scaup

    This is the first Greater Scaup I’ve seen so close-up. Usually, they’re off-shore and you’re battling the sea wind to see them. This one was on Sylvan Water, a freshwater pond, in Green-Wood Cemetery the other day.

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    Scaup

  • Etymology

    On first looking into Chapman’s Homer, or rather, let’s be real, a quotation from it in a third party, my eyes slid home on this: All done, he all to Thetis brought, and held all up to her./ She tooke them all, and like t’ hawke (surnamed Osspringer) This is the at the end of…

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  • Obligatory

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    With bonus crows…

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    Raptor Wednesday

  • Crustaceous Tuesday

    I can’t get enough of these Mud Fiddler Crabs/Minuca pugnax of the Gowanus Canal.

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    Crustaceous Tuesday

  • Woodpeckers

    Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in the same tree as a Downy Woodpecker. The Downy was doing some serious excavation. This is a Kentucky Yellowwood, which I’ve found these little woodpeckers on before digging hard for some kind of prey in there.

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    Woodpeckers

  • Predation

    This young Red-tailed Hawk just scooped up an American Woodcock off the ground. I caaught this iamge because I’d seen the Woodcock land down below and brought up my camera just as the bird flew again to land about 20 feet awy. That’s when the hawk swooped in, from I don’t know where. Then the…

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    Predation

  • Woodcock Feathers

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    Woodcock Feathers