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Raptor Wednesday
Monday morning dawned and lo and behold there were two female American Kestrels on the Solar Building! The one on the left had the tell-tale head fuzz of a fledgling. Just like that, voila! So there was another Brooklyn Kestrel in the house!Was there only one? Within the hour that Monday morning: there were three…
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The Membrane-Winged
An Eastern Carpenter Bee working the milkweed.This is one of our biggest bees, so note the tiny little critter to its right in both pictures above. Didn’t see this one while photographing. Not sure if its a bee or wasp. One of the leaf-cutter bees stuck to a Drosera filiformis, thread-leaved sundew. This carnivorous plant…
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Spotted Dweller of the Coast
A very vocal shore bird this time of year makes you think there’s a nest nearby.Spotted Sandpipers are the shore birds you’ll see inland. In Brooklyn, that means the edges of Prospect Lake and Sylvan Water in Green-Wood host them during migration. Teeterbird is one of their common names, for their habit of bobbing their…
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Whose Future?
What a filthy week it has been: The bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria in the Rio Grande, who fled the savage violence in their homeland, caused in no small part by the United States’ long and terrible interference there, only to die at the unforgiving “Trump Wall” of white…
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Question Marks
Polygonia interrogationis , the Question Mark butterfly. The wings need to be closed to see the mark in question. I think it’s more of a semi-colon. The similar Comma (Polygonia comma) has the “comma” mark but not the dot. Mud-puddling. Everyone does it, but butterflies are so conspicuous they get noticed doing it. Insects need…
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Beach Patrol
An old map I once saw named this section of Staten Island’s southwestern shore “Red Bank”. Herring Gull. One of the Raritan Bay channel markers (“red-right-return” to the sailors) had an even bigger gull on it. Indeed, the world’s biggest: a Greater Black-backed Gull, who made a sortie after a fish-laden Osprey. The Osprey held…
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Various Insects
Polished Lady Beetle. The gloss on these things! You can see the trees overhead reflected in the elytra*.Red-banded Leafhopper. You must get close to this little one to see this wild pattern.Invasive European Wool Carder Bee. They hover very much like flies and are quite territorial. All over now, they were first detected in New…
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Raptor Wednesday
I’d hoped to be able to report some exciting falcon-reveal news about the local American Kestrels. The parents have been here and there, but as of this, written late yesterday afternoon, we’ve got nada to say about fledglings.Meanwhile, can I offer you this dicey situation as a substitute for your Wednesday raptor needs? A perched…
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Sinister Snails
Little freshwater mollusks in the Physa genus, according to the iNaturalist community. The aperture is on the left side, hence sinistral. In the Sylvan Water. How did they get here? Did they arrive via muddy duck feet, a noted transportation system for plants and animals?Less than a centimeter long, with some smaller. To the nearly…
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Mocking the Class of ’19
A fledgling Mockingbird in a tree. These things give themselves away with their “feed me” chipping.Another, even smaller, next to the neighboring bush. I think they were siblings (seemed to be fed by the same pair of adults).Looks helpless, but easily managed to hop-skip-flap up into the heart of the bush. People often mistakenly “rescue”…
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Backyard and Beyond 