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11th Month Insecta
There are still a few insects in the cold. On Friday, this wasp, bumble bee, and fly were active. There were other flies about, and other impossible-to-photograph diptera, and a lovely leaf-hopper or two. Some kind of gall on a crab apple. Exit hole visible. Remember last January when I found a large cocoon that…
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Why Birds?
Why not mammals, asks Simon Barnes in The Meaning of Birds. He doesn’t use the example of dogs and cats, but these do illustrate our affinity for our fellow warm-blooded, lactating fur-balls. Of course, these are domesticated animals, tamed for precisely their human-philic characteristics. Wild mammals, which we nevertheless try to cute-ify and commodify, know…
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Gallish
Went on a walk last weekend in Central Park in honor of Alexander Von Humboldt and the late mycologist Gary Lincoff. We met at the Explorer’s Gate, next to the Humboldt bust. The baby vomit stench of ginkgo fruits, rotting and crushed on the sidewalk, deterred us not. The venerable American elm behind Alex reaches…
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Raptor Wednesday
A parade of Falco species! Last Thursday afternoon and then again Monday morning, a Peregrine (F. peregrinus) was atop St. Michael’s eating what looked like pigeon. (This butcher’s block, the highest perch for blocks, is two avenue blocks and one street block away from our apartment, approximately 500 meters/1640 feet, so these through-the-scope views leave…
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American Woodcock Fallout
It must have rained timberdoodles Friday night, because Saturday morning I came across 25 of them in Green-Wood. This shattered my record. Another three were probably repeats, flushed from here to there. A cold front fall of American Woodcock. (Besides fall of woodcock, plump, cord, and rush are recored as collective nouns for them; I…
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Beech Nuts
The root of the word book is the same as that of the word beech. The late poet C. D. Wright’s posthumously published Casting Deep Shade is an “amble inscribed to beeches and co.” Appropriately, this book itself is a lovely thing. The unusual trifold cover makes it highly inappropriate for subway reading, but there…
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The Faces of Lichen
It wasn’t so long ago that I thought these memorials were just dirty, worn away with time and the elements, including acid rain. But I’ve been looking closer. At the lichens. Tireless, long- and slow-growing lichens, lovers of stone. Well, at least these species. Others favor wood. Some grow on both wood and stone. Some…
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Backyard and Beyond 