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.”

  • Monarchy Monday

    Double-plus platinum jubilee edition….

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  • Around Town

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  • Swifts

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  • Flying

    Just hearing about the comment period for the East and West Pond Stewardship Plan at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Comments accepted until the 7th. Yikes! Unlike the typical National Wildlife Refuge, run by U.S.Fish and Wildlife, JBWR is a National Parks Service operation, part of the Jamaica Bay National Recreation Area. (That’s right, it’s not…

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  • Azure Bluet

    Other Odonates seen so far in NYC: Common Green Darner, Fragile Forktail, Black Saddlebags, Eastern Forktail, Blue Dasher, Familiar Forktail (tentative ID), Painted Skimmer, and one of the Pantala gliders.

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  • Raptor Wednesday

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  • Green Beetle Hanger

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  • Mammal Monday

    *** This Memorial Day, I’m thinking of my mother’s mother’s older brother, who lies buried in the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France. He was an artillery wagoneer, killed just a few weeks before Armistice Day in 1918.

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  • Beetlemania

    Beetle-finding partially funded by you… *** “The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily,” wrote Gary Wills after Sandy Hook in 2012. Still heartbreakingly, tragically true, only more so. Firearms are the leading cause of death of American children. This is a savage republic with more guns than people, a nation held…

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  • Hunting Billbug

    News: I’ll be a leading a Brooklyn Bird Club insect walk on June 25. Sign up period is 6/19-/6/23, with priority given to BBC members.

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