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Street Plants
In the July-September number of The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society (145.3) there’s a survey of the vascular plant species of sidewalk plots in Brooklyn and Queens by R. Statler and J. Rachlin. Since most of you probably can’t get to the whole article yet, I’ll make a few notes about it. Over a…
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Raptor Wednesday
Sometimes all you have to go on is a distant shape. So today, we have three main types of raptors soaring in the sky for you. These three species were all seen the same day, by the way. First a Buteo, with long, broad wings, and a relatively short tail.The light suddenly reveals the red…
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These Eyes
From a distance, I thought this was a wasp. Look at that patterning!But then, those eyes…This is a wasp-mimicking fly of the Spilomyia genus, perhaps S. longicornis.Now here’s a bee, one of the Agapostemon sweat bees. Note how the eyes are on the side of the animal. Flies have front-facing eyes that often meet near…
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Mushroom Monday
A couple of stinkhorn mushrooms. Elegant, no? Well, elegant stinkhorn (Mutinus elegans) is what these things are called. The French, being French, mince not: Phalle élégant.I usually see these in mulch piles, but these two were sprouting from the grassy mix under a Turkish filbert.Most mushrooms disperse spores via the air. These phallocratic fungi have…
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Purple Gallinule
An immature Porphyrio martinica, pretty rare for our parts, has spent the weekend in Prospect Park. Essentially a tropical species, Purples are found year-around in Florida, the Carribean islands, and parts of Mexico. The specific epithet tells you as much: this purple waterhen is named after Martinique. They have been known to get as far…
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Frankenstein’s Planet
I re-read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, recently. The book is 200 years old this year (see the exhibit at the Morgan). If you have not read it, it is profoundly different from the Frankenstein created by the commercial media over the years. The strangest transference may be the naming thing: “Frankenstein” has…
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The Return
Look who showed up on the knob perch across the street! It’s a male American Kestrel. I think it is the male American Kestrel, the pater familias of the falcon family who nested on the corner. I’ve seen a male a few times over the last few months; I don’t think he went anywhere. This…
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In The Kingdom of Kinglets
Golden-crowned Kinglets were raining down on the city this week. This one got to within two feet of my shoes hopping and flitting and carrying on, while half a dozen others worked over the ground and branches of some ornamental cherries. Their calls are like whispers.Regulus satrapa, the little king ruler: a bit redundant? Not…
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Skipper
Tongue-of-a-skipper — my new all-purpose exclamation — but some of the Hesperiidae family of critters are hard to identify. The ones that perch with wings half-cocked, looking like jet fighters, are the folded-wing type in the Hesperiinae subfamily, the grass skippers. Wings are more moth-like than butterfly-like; antennae are generally hooked. They just don’t really…
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Hatchin’
To be absolutely honest with you, I could follow the sounds of nuthatches all day long, from tree to tree. You won’t always see them as they scurry about pines and hardwoods searching nooks and crannies, but they pack a lot of voice in their small bodies. What they’re looking for in the crevices of…
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Backyard and Beyond 