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White Oak
The pale underside of some Eastern White Oak (Quercus alba) leaves found on Mt. Taurus.This is another specimen of the tree, two weeks later, in Green-Wood. It’s been a spectacular fall. Same tree, with some Hedgehog Galls. I also explore these fuzzy galls a little more here.
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Bärenfähigkeit
On the liturgical calendar, today is St. Martin’s Day. In the late Middle Ages, “Martin” was often the name given to bears abused and belittled in circuses and other equivalents of side-shows. This is not coincidental, Michel Pastoureau shows in his fascinating The Bear: History of a Fallen King. The Church waged a long war…
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Pigeon Hawk
A really nice and extended look at a Merlin (Falco columbarius) yesterday in Green-Wood. The bird gave me the big, beady eyes, too.These falcons are known for perching for a long period of time, eyes on the lookout for the prize. The surroundings were busy with Blue Jays and Monk Parakeets.The faint Fu Manchu “mustache”…
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Last Dragonfly
I took this picture through a window and at some distance. This was actually a sculptural element on the wall of a florist’s. But the two-foot wingspan reminded me of the ancient dragonflies. The extinct Meganeura genus, preserved in some pretty spectacular fossils, had wingspans up to 25″ (65 cm) around 300 million years ago.
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Resin
A fist-sized clump of resin. Usually associated with coniferous trees, this frozen waterfall of hydrocarbons, and several others, were on a deciduous tree I couldn’t identify on the Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown. (The grounds are a 19th century landscaper’s dream, rich with exotica.) Resins seem to have a defensive function, battling insects and smaller threats.…
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Boorujy: Passenger
Wow! As I generally say when I see the large-scale paintings of George Boorujy. His show “Passenger” opens tonight and runs until December 20th at P.P.O.W. Gallery, 535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10011. Click on image for larger version, but above all go see this work on the wall. I wrote…
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A Forest in Times Square…
.. but the beavers might take a little longer. My friend, the botanist and all around urban nature superhero Marielle Anzelone, is fundraising for a PopUp Forest in Times Square. Sounds crazy, right? A bit of forest in the resolutely artificial, corporate-gagged, light-pollution-bathed, Elmo-stalked, tourist-duped nightmare they’ve made of the ol’ Forty-Deuce? Precisely the point!…
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After barely a summer
Death among the asters.
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What a fall!
The Lullwater. Wood Ducks and a Pied Grebe and turtles and meadowhawks.Red Maple (Acer rubrum) burning up the Vale.
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Auspices
On an otherwise empty platform of the Ardsley-on-Hudson train station, this White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) lay dead, probably a victim of collision with the windows overlooking the Hudson. It was a day for symbolism. We saw eagles and hawks in the sky, foretelling what exactly (this probably depended, for the ancient Romans, on how much…
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Backyard and Beyond 