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.”

  • Raptor Wednesday

    In two of these pictures, you have to search for the Red-tailed Hawk. The bird made two attempts to grab this knot-holed Gray Squirrel and did not succeed. Raptor Wednesday, or, the Mammal’s Salvation.

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  • Sky Tumbling

    Oh, to slip the surly bonds of earth! These crows were facing the wind and dancing in place.

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  • Monday Monday

    I read a lot of science fiction in the 1970s and 1980s. But, damn, has the future turned out to be a disappointment. The dystopians weren’t depressives after all, just clear-eyed. Yet look at this House Sparrow! Passer domesticus doesn’t want to see us go. Because then what the hell would they do? Happy Monday,…

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  • So We’re All Lichens Now?

    Getting back to the lichens. For many, they’re just background, splotches on trees and rocks, if they’re even noticed at all. But boy, have they been on a wild ride in human thinking of late. … You probably know lichens are lifeforms that intertwine fungi and alga or cyanobacteria. Yeasts and other bacteria and sometimes…

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  • Recent Sightings

    Oh-oh… these are male Wood Duck feathers found under a big pine. Suggesting somebody had duck…. My mother, who was born in Oklahoma and grew up on a farm there until her parents retreated back to the Illinois they’d started from during the Depression/Dust Bowl, didn’t like eating duck. She couldn’t forget the bits of…

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  • Gift Wrapping

    A Baltimore Oriole nest left over from the summer. High up in a linden. So much ribbon! But then, this is a cemetery, and balloons (boo!) and flowers bouquets (inimical to nature in their own way) come tied. The weavers will find their material. In Prospect Park once, I’ve watched an Oriole pecking at some…

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  • Lichens

    Always take a look at the sticks and limbs that come down from old trees. There’s a lot of stuff going on up there, out of sight, and breakages provide a great opportunity to see what. This piece of an oak has at least two nice lichens on it. Star Rosette Lichen (Physcia stellaris). Rosette…

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    This Red-tailed Hawk is “chonk,” as the kids say. The bird took off a few minutes later.

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  • Splotch

    I remember when I went to Montreal some years ago in the fall and saw lots of maples, silver especially, and lots and lots of dark splotches on the leaves. These, however, are examples from right here in Brooklyn. This is Black Tar Spot (Rhytisma acerinum), an ascomycete fungi. It’s cosmetic, not existential.

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  • Perseverance

    Yesterday, with temps in the low 40s and windchill pushing the feel down into the 30s, a tiny ant and a Margined Calligrapher were both working it in a dandelion.

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