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.”

  • The Last Picture

    A close-up of some moss through a 10x loupe. “At the scale of a moss, walking through the woods as a six-foot human is a lot like flying over the continent at 32,000 feet. So far above the ground, and on our way to somewhere else, we run the risk of missing an entire realm…

    See more

  • The Footprint

    “It happened, one day about noon going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised, with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked round me, I…

    See more

  • Ischnura ramburii

    Wednesday is traditionally Raptor Day here at B&B. Damselflies are quite the airborne predators, so…. This one is an immature female Rambur’s Forktail (Ischnura ramburii), spotted at Jamaica Bay with numerous others of her species. I’ve seen a male away from the Bay, in Green-Wood once. Several of the Ischnura genus have orange colored immature…

    See more

    , ,

  • Remains of the Night

    Something got this bat, or else something else (a car?) got it and then something ate of it. I’m struck by the delicate structure of the rib cage. *** The entomologist and curator Alex Wild said this on Twitter yesterday after the disaster in Brazil: “The loss of the Brazilian National Museum to a preventable…

    See more

    ,

  • Monarch Labor Day

    Monarch caterpillars famously withstand the toxic sap of milkweeds. They themselves become toxic to predators by eating milkweed. This gaudy circus look is the opposite of camouflage: it’s a warning! But they don’t want to drown in the sap. This caterpillar chewed away at the stem, or petiole, of this leaf to cut the plant’s…

    See more

    , ,

  • There Were Whales

    D. Graham Burnett’s The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century is a whale of a book. He traces the… evolution (?) of whale science from the cutting room floor of factory ships by scientists who were more or less creatures of the industry, flensing their way through interesting collections of…

    See more

    , ,

  • Two Butterflies

    See more

    , , , ,

  • Doublewhammy

    This Common Grackle with both a broken lower bill and a piece of string stuck onto its foot. *** By The People a new impeachment campaign. Because we can’t depend on politicians.

    See more

    , , ,

  • The Leeches Are Winning

    Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) in combat.Ugh, the leeches! On face and feet and even shell. This stagnant puddle of “fresh” water is simply crawling, or fluttering, with leeches. Here’s some footage of this colossal wrestling match that was too large to email back to myself from my phone… Here’s Solnit on the absolute necessity of…

    See more

    ,

  • Raptor Wednesday

    “This evening I saw a heron flying over Baker Street. But this is not so improbable as the thing I saw a week or two ago, i.e. a kestrel killing a sparrow in the middle of Lord’s cricket ground. I suppose it is possible that the war, i.e. the diminution of traffic, tends to increase…

    See more