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.”

  • No News Would Be Good News

    At lease 46 people were killed in the region when the remnants—the remnants, mind you—of Ida poured through Wednesday night. So far, that’s a higher total than in Louisiana. Historic amounts of rainfall resulted in people drowning in their basement apartments; and the NYC subway system shutting down. Physics: a hotter atmosphere is a wetter…

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  • Not An Editorial

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  • Roundish

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  • An Editorial Pause

    The sheer awfulness of Susan Collins rings out in her speech on her vote for alleged rapist Kavanaugh “In short, his views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly.” Not that I’m going to spare the execrable Joe Manchin, the only Democrat to…

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  • The Rainpool Gliders, Ladies and Gentlemen

    These two species are usually seen in flight, meaning barely seen at all as they zip around, but I found two Wandering and one Spot-Winged perched in the same patch on a recent overcast morning.

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  • The Ovipositor

    A Long-tailed Giant Ichneumenon Wasp (Megarhyssa macrurus) female. She is sniffing (antennae-ing) out the hosts of her young. She uses this long ovipositor to tuck into dead wood after the larvae of Pigeon Horntails (Tremex columba), another good-sized Hymenopteran. I’ve only seen a Tremex here in Brooklyn once. Here are two males. They were nearby,…

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  • On This and That

    I have lately seen a few things on social media about the importance of street trees. The various “services” they provide: shade, clean air, beauty. Nobody ever mentions that even a tree stuck in a hardpan pit surrounded by concrete and pissing dogs is also an ecosystem, a microcosm. Ants running up and down the…

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  • Butterfly Expo

    Backyard and Beyond accepts donations to defray the cost of hosting all these beautiful images.

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  • Tern, Tern, Tern

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  • And now the other one:

    Following up yesterday’s Common Aerial Yellowjacket, here’s a more common-around-here Bald-faced Hornet devouring a skipper. Everything but the wings. The big mandibles of the Dolichovespula can scrape up the wood fibers they use to build their paper nests, and then dismember prey lickety-split. I see Bald-faced Hornets hunting all the time, but this is the…

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