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150 for 150
An informal group of us are getting together today for a micro-mini bioblitz in Prospect Park. We’re going to see how long it takes us to identify 150 species — including plants, fungi, insects, reptiles & amphibiansbirds, & mammals — in honor of the park’s 150 years of vital importance to the non-human. (Samples for…
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Puffinmania
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: You never forget your first Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica). Mine was, alas, quite dead, a veritable ex-Puffin, gone to join the Choir Invisible. It was being inquisitively pecked at by a Herring Gull on Nantucket’s South Shore. The scavenger was put out and aloft by my approach, and the…
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Large Piece of Turf
Homage to Dürer. * A lesson of Jeremy Corbyn’s near victory against the dead center of his own party and the vicious opposition of the Murdochian sewer of Britmedia? Don’t let the bastards get you down.
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Let’s Hear It For Humility
“Area Closed/Protected Natural Area.” Just being a fan of the natural world’s beauties doesn’t mean you’re a friend of nature. Some people think their photography or their bird lists are more important than anything else. But no, they aren’t, not by a long shot. Primary is the care, caution, and respect we pay to the…
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Ladybugs
The first four photographs were all from on the same patch of milkweed (Ascelpias syriaca), not yet in bloom but already festooned with aphids.Multicolored Asian, Harmonia axyridis. There were several. Checkerspot, Propylea quatuordecimpunctata. The only one noticed. Two-spotted, Adalia bipunctata. Counted four. Getting busy and laying eggs. This is one of two egg clusters on…
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A Bit of Prairie Or My Shirt?
It’s definitely blue and it’s definitely flax, but is it (Wild Blue, Lewis, Prairie) Flax ( Linum lewisii, Linum perenne, Linum perenne lewisii are all synonyms) native to the other side of the Mississippi? Or is it Linum usitatissimum, native to Eurasia and the Middle East and for thousands of years cultivated as a source…
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Gracklettes
With their parents noisily thrashing in the leafy underbrush nearby, a trio of young Common Grackles (Quiscalus quiscula) were doing some of their own foraging in the grass. Still being fed, but also learning to do it for themselves. I was curious to see what would happen as a Great Egret approached one of the…
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Pale Beauty
Subtly tinged with green, Campaea perlata is known as the Pale Beauty moth. The caterpillars, also known as Fringed Loopers, enjoy munching away on the leaves of a broad range of deciduous trees and plants (65 species!). Like most moths, it’s nocturnal, hiding away from predators during the day. This particular day was quite overcast,…
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How Now, Brown Thrasher?
All three of our regional Mimidae can be found here in New York City. Northern Mockingbirds are year-around regulars, even on the streets and in backyards. The Catbirds swoosh into the parks to breed in spring and their meowing calls and other songs are a major part of the aural landscape of the woods until…
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The Earth Abides
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: At the end of Emile Zola’s 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine, a train full of soldiers hurls along the rails into Paris. There’s no one is control of the thing, for, after much madness and jealousy, the engineer and the fireman have killed each other. The doomed train is…
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