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.”

  • Various Things

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  • Gothic

    Ye olde Double-crested Cormorant. The double-crests are breeding plumage curlicues, infrequently seen. Phalacrocorax auritus literally means bald crow with ears.

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  • Just Another Hole In The Wall

    The stone retaining wall of the Dell Water in Green-Wood is largely exposed this time of year. I was looking over the pond recently when I noticed a bumble bee fly towards the wall below me. And tuck right into it out of sight. Oh, hey! Both of these gaps in the masonry seem to…

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    More than a week after spotting three nestlings bursting at the rusty seams of their cornice nest, and then, later that same day, a female at close range on 5th Avenue, I was only seeing a total of three American Kestrels in the ‘hood. Two males and one female. I presumed it was the parents…

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  • Red-winged

    Circling a cat-tail ringed water-body to the sounds of aggrieved Red-wing Blackbirds. Whole families up in wings. I know someone who was chased by a RWBB at the point of a bill. They are not fooling when it comes to the defense of their territory.

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  • American Chestnut

    Being an arboretum as well as a cemetery, Green-Wood hosts a few American Chestnuts. This gives one the opportunity of glimpsing what was once one of the great trees of eastern North America. Castanea dentata was wiped out by the chestnut blight starting a little over a century ago. You can still find stumps that…

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  • Orange Bluet

    Hard to get damselflies in focus at this scale and angle. I usually get the face and thorax crisply focused. But here, the distinctive 9th segment, all orange, comes through the sharpest. There are ten abdominal segments on a damselfly, and patterning on them can be key to identification.

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