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.”

  • The Fisher

    The patience of a heron inspires me to wait patiently for the bird to come my way. Both Great Egrets and Green Herons tend to patrol the edge of Sylvan Water in a similar fashion, moving slowly around the edge with periodical pauses before quick, lunging thrusts of their bills into the water. Sometimes, when…

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  • Miscellany

    Two Red-eyed Vireos seen in close proximity to each other, and no territorial tsuris between them, suggesting nesting. Dark Paper Wasp. House Wren. Sylvan Jumping Spider. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker holes on a tuliptree. In Brooklyn, I’ve now found the sign of these birds on 27 tree species I can name and three I can only get…

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    Wet and harried by Blue Jays.

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  • Old Home Day

    A periodical cicada sighting in Prospect Park on iNaturalist brought me to my old stomping grounds. I searched the Vale, where the sighting was made, and the Midwood, but found neither sight nor sound of any. There was much else to see, otherwise, of course, including all the Chipmunks. (Green-Wood doesn’t have a large Chippy…

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  • Other New Jersey Sightings

    The first ever Spotted Lanternfly I’ve come across. This was in Princeton, in Mercer Co, NJ, which is one of the counties in that state under a state quarantine in an attempt to stop their spread. This is the early nymph form. They scurry. This dreadnought of an ant, a Ferruginous Carpenter (Camponotus chromaiodes), is bigger…

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  • Yes, More Cicadas

    Robert Evans Snodgrass’s Insects: Their Ways and Means of Living, first published in 1930 and then republished by Dover, has an excellent chapter on the periodical cicadas with some fine illustrations. Turns out the abdomen of the adult is mostly hollow. The newly emergent adult cicada has to harden off and darken over a few…

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  • Cicada Chorus

    The communal roar of the cicada chorus, a dynamo seventeen years in the making, and the individual buzzing and rustle of the periodical cicadas at Princeton Battlefield State Park. The thicket of understory and woods pictured, bordering a trail and a meadow, was the loudest, most active spot here on Thursday. The cicadas were flying,…

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  • Fruiting Friday

    Bonus: pollen pouring off an eastern white pine.

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  • Diversify

    Marielle Anzelone on NYC’s threatened biodiversity.

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  • Brood X

    There are actually three species of periodical cicadas that make up Brood X. Magicicada septendecim or Pharaoh Cicada; Magicicada cassinii or Dwarf Periodical Cicada; and Magicicada septendecula or Decula Periodical Cicada. We call these seventeen year cicadas (there are also some thirteen year ones), but these are median spans: Decula can live from ten to…

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