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.”

  • So what is the good news in the litany of malignancy? Joshua Tree National Park is seeing vandals destroy the famed trees during Trump’s assault-on-America government shut-down. “Off-road” assholes are ripping up other national parks, too. The Instagram effect of people taking selfies in remote locations is trashing those locations. “Recent housing growth rates are…

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  • Hooded Mergansers

    Shouldn’t be too long before these come into their breeding finery.

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  • Bufflehead

    The purples and greens in this male Bufflehead are pretty subtle, especially on an overcast day. But that bufflehead!So named because of the resemblance to a buffalo’s head. If you say so. Was Dewlapped Duck not considered?One of our winter visitors, they bred much further north. They’re cavity nesters, and small enough to use the…

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  • Ruddy

    A flotilla of resting Ruddy Ducks. The bills on the males will turn even bluer before it’s all over.

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  • Raptor Wednesday

    This linden tree sported a male American Kestrel in 2017 and 2018, too. Now here’s… another? He’s facing the low winter sun. That makes for good photographs, but also gives his potential prey a good view of him.You’d think he’d want to come out of the sun, but that might throw his shadow ahead of…

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  • Waiting Out the Winter

    Two specimens from the general area of back-of-the-beach scrublands at Fort Tilden. Big silk moth cocoons, I think.From a distance, they look like lingering leaves, of which each bush or tree still had a few.

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  • Grebe

    The water beading off this Pied-bill Grebe… You know, I think this plumage is more interesting than the breeding plumage. This cinnamon tinge to the neck is not, by the way, found in all non-breeding birds.

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  • Lord Love A Duck

    Have you heard about the HotDuck™? Good gravy — which is probably what it should be served with — there’s been quite a media ballyhoo over a stray male Mandarin Duck that escaped from some farm or zoo somewhere and ended up in Central Park. No fan of zoos, I haven’t seen the bird myself.…

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  • Beech

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  • Beach

    Probably not what most people think of when they think of New York City.But the Rockaway Peninsula, the lower jaw of the “fish-shape Paumanok” (happy 200th year, Walt Whitman!), is a part of Queens facing the New York Bight.On a recent winter day — at least according to the calendar, for the temperature was near…

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