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Raptor Wednesday
Look, up in the sky! It’s a… oh, let’s cut to the chase, comix book fans. It is a mature Bald Eagle. A pair have been nesting in the area for a couple of years now. (Remember, in 1974 there were no breeding pairs in New York State AT ALL. In 2017, there were 323…
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Another Snout
This makes four American Snouts, Libytheana carinenta, I’ve seen so far this year in Brooklyn. That’s four times as many as I’ve ever seen. This one, unfortunately, was dead on the sidewalk.
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More Exuviae
An emergent damselfly next to the husk of its former, aquatic life stage. When they first emerge as their adult, flying form, they don’t have much color. Their wings unfurl and harden off, like their new exoskeleton. They can’t fly immediately.When they can fly, they will sometimes take shelter in trees, bushes, etc., to finish…
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Two Degrees
“What happens if one changes a systems’s parameters — the temperature, the weather, the climate? What will collapse and what will endure? Who will live and who will die?” A two-degree rise in global mean temperature, which now sounds optimistically low for the results of global warming this century, may be compared with effects of…
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Hyphantria cunea
The Fall Webworm caterpillars are out in force this year. Bush Terminal.Transmitter Park. (Droppings on the leaf to the right.)Down the street. Yesterday was Henry THoreau’s 202 birthday. I’ve written quite a bit about him here over the years. He remains a vital beacon in this vicious era.
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Tilt-a-nest
Northern Mockingbird nesting. A late brood or a second one? The angle here, by the way, is accurately represented. I wonder if they built it this way or it somehow shifted once they got it going. If you think these sweetgum pods look odd, you’d be right. This is a different species from our native…
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Exuviae
Wait… what? This Rambur’s Forktail damselfly is perched on the exuviae of a dragonfly.Another view of the male Rambur’s green-blue color pattern. Dragon- and damselfly eggs are laid on or near water. The larval stage is aquatic. After a season, or a year (or more depending on species and location), the aquatic nymph crawls out…
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Raptor Wednesday
The #BrooklynKestrels. Mother and daughters. The young ones tend to look plumper than she does, but I can’t see this in this particular picture. She’s still bringing them food — and this roof is still a larder. They fly down to it, out-of-sight, and come up with a pice of something. There have been some…
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Great Egret
Ardea alba have even been known to show up in small backyard goldfish ponds. If there’s food… and they do seem readily habituated to the presence of similarly long-legged hominids.One of the bird’s long plumes, or aigrettes. These are breeding plumage feathers; this one about 18″ long. They’re the reason these birds were nearly hunted…
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Milkweed Flowers &
Bee tongue hosing up the nectar of Asclepias syriaca.DOA.There’s a wee ant in these curious flowers.Polinia on the bee’s knees. Here’s a leaf-cutter bee on A. tuberosa. Butterflyweed, one of the common names of this type of milkweed, is evidently the drag performer in the Asclepias genus.
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Backyard and Beyond 