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The spiders were hung by the chimney with care
A detail from Audubon’s Birds of America that caught my aging eyes recently in a 1965 coffee table version, not nearly the elephant folio in the room.
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Cedar Waxwings Bathing
Day two of winter. Can spring be far behind? (No shadows of the waxwing slain here.) Yes, a little bit of last spring and perhaps a forecast of the next. Now, Cedar Waxwings are not unknown this time of year, but they are irregular, meaning you never know. I’ll be presenting a slide-show lecture on…
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Snow Geese
Amidst perhaps 200 Canada Geese (Branta canadensis) on the Upper Pool, a trio of Snow Geese (Chen caerulescens).The all-white with black wingtips bird (spectacular in flight) in the background is an adult. The varying-degrees-of-gray are youngsters.This is actually one of the most abundant species of waterfowl on the continent, but since we don’t have any…
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Love in A Warming Climate
The old verities are gone. The cold of the northern hemisphere’s winters is becoming a thing of the past. Sure, there will be cold snaps, polar expresses of arctic temperatures swooping down into lower latitudes, but weeks and weeks of winter? A good three month period? Something today’s children will not know. In recorded history,…
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Hard Shell
One of my favorite binomials is Mercenaria mercenaria, the hard-shelled clam that has numerous common names depending on its age/size: Littleneck, countneck, topneck, cherrystone. The oldest/largest are known as quahogs, a.k.a. chowder clams. The purple stain on the inside of the shell here is the famous wampum, which was used by native Americans as a…
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Spiny Gall
Witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is a good gall-tree. One species of aphid, Hormaphis hamamelidis, forces the tree to make cone-shaped galls on the leaves. The young aphid grows up inside this, protected from its enemies. Another species of aphid, the Spiny Witch Hazel Gall maker, Hamamelistes spinosus, makes the tree make these hard, spiny galls that…
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Gotham Unwatered
Ted Steinberg’s Gotham Unbound: The Ecological History of Greater New York is a history of the de-watering of the region. From the Dutch on, but particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, we have have pushed out the borders of the archipelago with landfill. The interior wet places have been drained, filled in, and covered…
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Together
A herd of Monk Parakeets eating grass. I did not know they do this. Myiopsitta monachus generally go for fruit and nuts, but of course this time of year the former is in short supply. But boy, give them a backyard Brooklyn apple tree in the fall and they will be there. Some suggestions for…
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House Sparrow
At a slide show I did for 4th and 5th graders recently, the kids recognized a lot of animals I showed them. Just that morning, in fact, they had talked about Humpback Whales, because of the one in the harbor and Hudson. But this bird presented a bit of a problem. I think it’s because…
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Central Park Flora
Recently, we got to join Regina Alvarez, Daniel Atha, and Ken Chaya for one of their Central Park flora expeditions. For three years, the trio have been searching for wild — that is, not planted by the park — plants in Central Park.Atha, who has travelled the world over collecting plants, uses an elegantly simple…
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Backyard and Beyond 