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.”

  • Red-tailed One

    Perched near the edge of Green-Wood Cemetery, a Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) surveys the scene. One of the classic field marks of this species is the vaguely V-shaped white splotching on the back. The band of darker splotches across the belly is another tell. (In the west, things get more complicated ~ there are some…

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  • Sunset Park Elm

    Solar powered.

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  • Sunset Park Elm

    At dawn. Still at dawn, but with a different filter. These were taken after last weekend’s blizzard.

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  • Great Horned

    Bubo virginianus, bold as daylight.

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  • The Acrobat’s Red Belly

    A Red-bellied Woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) showing his generally covert namesake, the kinda-reddish belly, while going for the triple roll. What looks like sweet potato is a peanut butter concoction stuffed into a coconut shell at the feeders in the Ramble.

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  • Momento Mori Monday

    Et in Arcadia ego.

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  • Sunset Park Elm

    A long-shot from the apartment yesterday morning. The night before, Friday, when the snow started, I was looking out the window about 11pm. It was a white night, the lights of the city bouncing down from the low clouds. A large bird came from overhead, just a story or two higher than my fourth floor.…

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  • Storm Birds

    There’s a surprising amount of bird activity out there. Pigeons are being driven laterally by the wind. An occasional gull is visible in the gull-colored sky. House Sparrows sweep across sidewalks and the gated little yards across the street on the hunt for food. Starlings flocking in a small Chinese Scholar tree gobble the hanging…

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  • Passengers

    Actually, they’re no longer passengers on this Earth with us. A Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) diorama at the American Museum of Natural History.

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  • Snipe

    Originally posted on Backyard and Beyond: Everywhere except Reykjavik, on both ends of our Icelandic trip, we had sightings of the common snipe (Gallinago gallinago). This species is not to be confused with the related Wilson’s snipe, which we have in Brooklyn, and which was considered the same species until recently, making the confusion understandable.…

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