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Timber!
We caught Ted Levin talking about his book, America’s Snake: The Rise and Fall of the Timber Rattlesnake this week at the Linnaean Society. It’s a damn good book and deserves to be read far and wide. Too many people fear and loath snakes, an irrationality that leads directly to massacre. There are still bloody snake-killing…
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Raptor Wednesday
In winter, my eyes are always looking for the anomalies in trees. There are plastic bags and balloons, unfortunately, as well as the more welcome clumps of leaves from old squirrel dreys, and sagging Baltimore Oriole nests persisting past their usefulness (at least to birds), and big footballs of paper made by wasps. And then,…
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Acer Color
Is that spotting something amiss? (Well, not amiss if you’re a fungus.) * Trump’s corporate puppet on the FCC is trying to end net neutrality, a disaster for democracy. So it’s “break the internet” in protest in advance of Thursday’s vote. Once again, I’d rather join people in the streets, but until then…
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The One, The Many
In fact, you almost always see Mourning Doves (Zenaida macroura) in pairs, year-around.A herd of Rock Doves (Columba livia), not quite as denim-y as they looked that day.
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Ants in Your Stockings
Better than coal, right? Hell, what isn’t? The Eleanor Spicer Rice series of books about ants are for the younger naturalist, but we can all learn a thing or two about these omnipresent critters in these pages. I perused Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Ants and Dr. Eleanor’s Ants of New York City; Chicago and…
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Onwards!
The sound of a single leaf scrape-skittering across the road, Or the sound of hundreds, dry susurrations and crinkly waves, crumpling beneath the feet, parting before the bow of the shins: I’ll take both those paths.
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Bur!
Quercus macrocarpa, the bur oak, is supposed to have the largest fruit (macro carpa) of all North American oaks. This acorn is in a 1.5″ long mossy cup. One of the species’ distinctive, pinched-waisted leaves on the plate, too. The plate was purchased by my parents in my natal Japan. How about these apples, from…
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Kestrel Wednesday
I walked by the Kestrel perch the next day, on the off-chance he would be there. Nope. But I was on a round-trip errand, so when I returned, there he was. Not the same branch, but the same linden. This time I was on the avenue, meaning rather closer to his height on the tree…
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Red Star
Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) amid oaks and others. * Hannah Arendt, who died on November 4th, 1975 wrote this: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” (Alabama Republicans the latest marks of…
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Revealed
Paper can be strong stuff, but it’s all relative. The exterior coating of wood-pulp paper made by Dolichovespula maculata hornets, who scrape dead trees (or fence posts!) with their mighty jaws, has been stripped off by the weather. Horizontal layers of comb are revealed within. And still-capped larvae probably all killed by the freeze. The…
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Backyard and Beyond 