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Here Be Worms
A selection of J. R. R. Tolkien’s hand-drawn dragons from The Hobbit. The ones below are from the included map. The one above, not in my 30th printing of the 1966 edition, was added as a frontispiece to later editions.The collective noun for dragons is a desolation, unless you’re referring to the Asian versions, in…
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Other Kestrels
The city’s rooftops are alive with drama. Here’s a pair of American Kestrels above Manhattan’s Chinatown. The male has some prey. The Mourning Dove is, what, kibitzing? This photo was taken by a Friend of the Falcons who has been on the lookout for a nest site for this pair. I recently passed another kestrel…
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Nesting
Two Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) were cutting across the parking lot repeatedly. They were gathering nest material: Seems awfully late, doesn’t it? Many species have already fledged this year. Others are well into incubation. But Cedar Waxwings are very late nesters: they want their young to be hungry around the same time as summer’s fruits…
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Amberwing
Perithemis tenera. *** I found this, on the carbon bombing of the planet and the fatalism that induces in some, interesting.
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Raptor Wednesday
Chasing crows and being chased by crows, our American Kestrels pause briefly together in the late breeding season. There should be youngsters in the cornice nest, but there’s been no external sign of them with these eyes yet. A very quick search for kestrel cavity nest cams in the US turned up little this season,…
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Ladybugs
Two Spotted Ladybug, Adalia bipunctata.Wait, there are four spots, or two tiny dots and some squarish sides? This is one of the melanistic forms of the species. First one I’ve seen this year, on a tree in between Third and Forth Avenues. Others seen since. It’s definitely insect season.
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The Ravens
Two weeks ago, the word went out that a family of five Common Ravens had been spotted near Bush Terminal Park here in Brooklyn. It was nearly a week before I personally saw any bill or feather of them, and then only from afar. These two were so larky I assumed they were two of…
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Re: Rachel Carson
I finally read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in this handy new Library of America edition with an excellent introduction by editor Sandra Steingraber. Along with the chronology and notes, the volume puts Carson in a deep context of the burgeoning environmental activism of the 1950s, which was sparked in important ways by atmospheric nuclear testing.…
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More Green Heron
Note the tongue. The fish were jumping.But the problem remained.It’s a long way down to the water.
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Backyard and Beyond 