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Gowanus Twilight
Yesterday afternoon, I walked over the canal and was surprised by a pair of Kestels cavorting in the air, then two more, flying about. I didn’t have my real camera, so for our post-prandial constitutional we walked down into the valley to see if we could catch the family again. I’d spotted the nest earlier,…
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Puffinmania
You never forget your first Atlantic Puffin (Fratercula arctica). Mine was, alas, quite dead, a veritable ex-Puffin, gone to join the Choir Invisible. It was being inquisitively pecked at by a Herring Gull on Nantucket’s South Shore. The scavenger was put out and aloft by my approach, and the small dead auk of the family…
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Representations
The owl of Minerva overlooking wee Jamie Boswell’s brilliant career. National Portrait Gallery of Scotland.At the kirk in Duddingston, Edinburgh.On the exterior of The Salmon, in Belford. Presumably an earlier incarnation of the inn….In Craster, under the pall of the smokehouse working on the town’s famous kippers (cf. Salmon Rushdie’s first brush with the things).In…
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Walking Holiday Collage
This is Arthur’s Seat, a volcanic outcropping turned into a park surrounded by Edinburgh and environs. The sticky toffee pudding at the Sheep’s Heid on the far side was magnificent. I nursed an angry British bee’s sting in the ear over it and a pint.We stayed close to the Royal Botanic Garden and de-jetlagged there.…
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Milkweeds
While I was away, the milkweeds of Brooklyn all came out. Some of them in Brooklyn Bridge Park are nearly as tall as I am. But here is my favorite, Butterfly Weed, which usually stays pretty close to the ground: Asclepias tuberosa.
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Lil’ Gators
The larva of the familiar lady beetle is so different from the adult you have to wonder who it was who first put the two together. Only observation and/or experimental raising would do the trick. I think the one doing the eating here is the Multicolored Asian Lady and the one being eaten is the…
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Green Heron
How many Green Heron (Butorides virescens) nests are there in Prospect Park? I saw one, heard about another, and suspect a third.
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Backyard and Beyond 