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May Day
Some mammals for Monday and May Day.Did you ever wonder why they, and we, are called mammals? I have to admit I never did until last week. Linnaeus came up with the term Mammalia in 1758, from the Latin mammae, meaning the breasts. This we all know. Yet everything else Linnaeus named is based on…
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Audubon III
Welcome back to several ways of looking at John James Audubon. Lucy Bakewell was born in Burton-upon-Trent, Straffordshire, England, on January 18, 1787. Seventeen years later, by then translated to Pennsylvania with her family, she met her neighbor John James Audubon. They were married for 43 years beginning in 1808. Then she survived him by…
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Save The Swamp
And flush the toilet. “Swamp” was always a poor choice to describe our pervasive political corruption. Swamps, after all, are fantastic habitats. (Not that we have much swamp in NYC; that’s grassland above.) The word that best describes our pervasive political corruption, now gone into overdrive with the naked kleptocracy of the Trump family and…
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Audubon II
There is darn little art without political economy. Welcome back to another way of looking at John James Audubon. In his book, Audubon’s Elephant, detailing the difficulties of getting the double elephant edition of Birds of America published in Britain, Duff Hart-Davis says Audubon’s portfolio weighed a hundred pounds. Hart-Davis doesn’t inform us that when Audubon referred to…
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Turning Tern
Do you have as much difficulty with terns as I do?This is a Forster’s (Sterna forsteri) in (mostly) non-breeding plumage. A good field mark is that dark mask and pale nape. Also most helpful: not moving for a good long view. * The Anatomy of Liberal Melancholy is food for thought, as is this appreciation…
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Happy Birthday, John J.
It’s Audubon’s 232nd today. Backyard and Beyond will be noting this in several ways over the next couple of days. Some of you may be surprised to learn that John James Audubon retired to Manhattan. In 1841, upper New York County was still pretty wild, as the city more or less ended at 14th Street. Wishing…
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Painted Bunting
Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: A rare, resplendent adult male Painted Bunting (Passerina ciris) has been in Prospect Park for two weeks now, attracting an enormous amount of media attention and hordes of viewers. Note this big seed-cracking bunting bill. The bird has stuck to the area around and atop the new ice-skating complex,…
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Cough!
A pellet of pieces of shell and pebbles. Found on a pier on the Piankatank, along with some other samples that had been smushed and otherwise disassembled. Diameter of a quarter and quite round. Who do you suppose chucked it up? Grebes, Kingfishers, Loons, Osprey out there: but they’re all fish-eaters.
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Double-crested
Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus): in case you were wondering what the double-crests are. Breeding plumage.As fine an example as any of how optical enhancement can reveal the astonishing beauty of birds. Those eyes! For anyone sliding into complacency, a perusal of Trump’s latest incoherence transcript will do the trick.
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Owlets
Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus).GHO are said to have the greatest diversity of prey of any raptor, diurnal or nocturnal. Mammals, mostly, but also birds, including other raptors. They will also eat insects, reptiles, fish, and carrion. And you know these Muppets are ravenous. By the way, is that down on their eyelids? Meanwhile, in…
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