Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

  • Owl Update

    Has it been that long since I checked in with the local Great Horned Owls? Evidently. One of the parents was perched beneath the nest the other day. And in the nest…!

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    Owl Update

  • Bugging Out Walks This Month

    I will be leading a couple of my famous insect tours in Green-Wood Cemetery this month on the 17th and 18th. The 18th is a walk specifically for kids. Green-Wood charges for these tours (and pays me). My Bugging Out events often sell-out, so reserve early. I strive to keep my Tours & Adventures page…

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    Bugging Out Walks This Month

  • Green Heron

    A rather kingfishery pose. Though they sure can stretch. Distance and light cooperate here in displaying the greenish tinge to Butorides virescens, formerly called the Green-backed Heron. Got or know of some young ones interested in plants? In or near Brooklyn? Then tomorrow’s Meet Your Green Neighbors walk for kids and their families at Green-Wood…

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    Green Heron

  • Chimney Swifts

    Are back. I saw and heard my first on April 26.

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    Chimney Swifts

  • Raptor Wednesday

    Red-tailed in a Cottonwood.

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  • Grackle-ing

    Green-Wood’s big pines attract Common Grackle for nest-building. They hide the nests well way up there. But there can never be any doubt about whether or not you have Grackles.

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    Grackle-ing

  • Blueberry Digger

    Blueberry Digger Bee/Habropoda laboriosa hard at work not on blueberry flowers, rare around here, but on Japanese Andromeda/Pieris japonica. This bee is reminiscent of the Eastern Carpenter Bee, but has a long tongue so can enter these flowers from the top, as it were, while the relatively small-tongued ECB, which is a much larger bee…

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  • Kestrels Update

    There’s a new female American Kestrel in the local mix. This one isn’t banded, has heavy markings, and, most notably, a tail that looks like it went through the wringer. Let’s call her Tangle-tail, a designation that will fall out with molting. I’ve seen her recently in Green-Wood (what would be roughly 6th Ave &…

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    Kestrels Update

  • Kentucky Coffeetree

    The roasted seeds of Gymnocladus dioicus were used by settler-colonialists to make an ersatz coffee. Their descendants having given the keys to a monster bent on destroying the nation, we may be headed back to that. If you clean the green goo off and polish these with your palm sweat, they turn into cool thingamajigs…

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  • Return to the Spring Beauties

    The pinker ones are more photogenic, but any population of Claytonia virginica will have a range of color-forms.

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    Return to the Spring Beauties