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Wooly Bear
Our old friend the Banded Wooly Bear caterpillar, bearishly larval stage of the Isabella Tiger Moth, Pyrrharctia isabella. This was found behind a large piece of bark, which was put back. Have you heard the one about judging winter’s length/severity by the amount of black and/or orange on the animal? Turns out that the colors…
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Signs
Another Saw-whet pellet from our owl experience last weekend.In fact, once I started looking down, there was evidence that this owl and/or others having been hanging around a while. Such pellets can be dissected to discover which little mammals the little owls of the Bronx eat. More evidence. While pines are often gooey with resin,…
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Thoreau Thursday
All biographies end. And, of course, the ending is always the same. Nearing the literal and figurative end of Laura Dassow Walls’s magisterial life of Henry David Thoreau, I suddenly found myself not wanting to go on. I didn’t want him to die. Not right now. Not during our political upheaval. I started reading “Wild Apples” to…
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Raptor Wednesday
It is not easy being a large hawk. They’re slow, obvious, and nobody likes them. A case in point: this young Red-tail (Buteo jamaicensis) was being hassled by several Blue Jays, who screamed and shouted in alarm. They were pressing the advantages of the many smaller against the larger one. Even a bold Black-capped Chickadee…
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Sourwood
The dried five-part fruits of Oxydendrum arboreum, fallen from the tree. This is a great tree for fall colors, both the leaves and the fruits. One guide I have says its range is from NJ south. There are a couple young ones in the Native Flora Garden at NYBG and a stellar oldster in the…
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Superb Owl Sunday
Joined David Burg of WildMetro and others for a Superb Owl walk today. Here’s one of a pair of nesting Great Horned Owls (Bubo virginianus). The mate was quite close by in a vine. There was also a Saw-whet (Aegolius acadicus) way up a White Pine. The ground beneath was littered with evidence, including white…
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American Hazelnut, Sweet Yellow Buckeye
Corylus americana, an unexpected discovery in Brooklyn. I didn’t know there was a native filbert. This is a shrubby, colonial plant of the understory. No leaves this time of year, of course, but behold the nut and those glorious dried bracts. I understand these were planted by staff. I’ve been thinking about species lately. Life…
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Cocoon
The winter woods are quiet and relatively monotone in color. But look closer. (And listen!) We were looking at tree buds. This big cocoon with remnants of leaf-covering was just hanging there. One of the giant moths of the family Saturniidae made this, I think. Will it make it? Has it already be taken over…
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Vents
White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis).Note the color in the vent region. This russet red can be more wide-spread on some examples of WBNs. The Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis), on the other feather, is this color from the throat on down. So you would think these two species wouldn’t be hard to distinguish. The Red-breasted is smaller…
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Thoreau Thursday
Orwell is our go-to guy for the political perversion of language, but I discover that Ralph Waldo Emerson was on a similar track a century earlier. Corruption of character leads to “the corruption of language,” he wrote in “Nature.” “In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding…
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Backyard and Beyond 