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Agelaius phoeniceus
This nest may never have been used, but Red-winged Blackbirds definitely bred along this lakeside. Here’s one of this year’s models, still getting some help with feeding. The feather pattern is not without interest.
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Invertebrates
Let’s start Monday with a reminder that we are outnumbered. From some recent explorations in the city and beyond:Odonata larva.Jellyfish. Wolf spider.Worm. (With iridescent slime!) Leaf-footed bug. Snail. Yes, they — they’re hermaphrodites — are in there. Carry on.
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Silent Summers?
Eggs suspended on stalks: lacewings are known for this predator-evasion tactic, but I bet there are others as well. The number of insects on the planet at any given time has been estimated at 10 quintillion; another estimation measures it this way: there are 300 pounds of insects for every pound of human. Nevertheless, insect…
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D&D Roundup
Fragile Forktail (Ischnura posita) female. Eastern Pondhawk (Erythemis simplicicollis) male.Familiar Bluet (Enallagma civile) male.Eastern Amberwing (Perithemis tenera) male.Sometimes, we must work with the image. This looks like a Stream Bluet (Enallagma exsulans), a new species for me. Only segment 9 is completely blue; the blue rings on the other abdominal segments are conspicuous. Plus habitat…
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Sweet Bees
Sweat bees in the family Halictidae are attracted to the salt in sweat. This little one would not be put off from my arm. Blown and shook off, it returned several times. I have no problem offering up extruded salts, but I was slathered in sunscreen, and that can’t be good for anything, even when…
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Mouse of Walden
“Someone memorialized Thoreau’s small friend by drawing a mouse on the the back of his door,” writes Laura Dassow Walls in her magnificent new biography. In honor of the Thoreau bicentennial and the mouse at Walden Pond, I asked my friend Marion to draw one on the door to my apartment. Meanwhile, in Antarctica: Larsen…
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HDT200
Born two hundred years ago today, David Henry Thoreau entered the world some 182 years after Concord was settled by English colonialists. What a half-way point for America! Concord’s establishment was, by the way, half a dozen years after the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: the Puritans were reluctant to move inland. At first.…
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Birthday Boy
Tomorrow is Henry David Thoreau’s 200th birthday. This was his journal entry of March 23, 1856: “I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me. Very significant are the flight of geese and…
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A Week on the Thoreauvian Rivers
“The Indian pipe is still pushing up,” noted Henry David Thoreau in his journal on August 23, 1858. The ghost plant, indian pipe, Emily Dickinson’s favorite flower: Monotropa uniflora emerging. Often mistaken for fungi, this is actually a heterotrophic flowering plant. There are several thousand species of such non-photosynthesizing plants in the world. Most of…
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Purple Martins
It’s been several years since I last ventured to the Purple Martin colony at Lemon Creek on Staten Island. There are at least half a dozen nests going now. It’s hard to count with all the comings and goings. Also, House Sparrows and European Starlings have taken some of the spaces, adding to the difficulty…
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Backyard and Beyond 