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Raptor Wednesday
Walking home, the low November sun in my eyes, I was not at first sure that the shape on the corner of my apartment building was. I briefly wondered if there was an architectural flourish I’d never noticed. The silhouette quickly resolved itself. A Red-tailed Hawk. With prey. And screeching at the other Red-tailed that…
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Books of Lichen
An announcement from my other life: As some of you may know, I write for JSTOR Daily, a free service of the non-profit database JSTOR. I usually write about historical topics, although I occasionally slip something in about natural history. The Daily has decided to launch a membership component on Patreon. It’s expensive publishing seven…
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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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Backyard and Beyond 