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.”

  • Nesting

    I’m sure you can recognize these common nesting birds in Brooklyn right now. Meanwhile, our under-bridge pigeon nest is proceeding apace:

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  • Notes for Further Reading and Doing

    Reading: Rob Jett’s ebook The Red-tailed Hawk Journals: A City Birder in Brooklyn is now available. Rob has been documenting the Red-tails of Brooklyn for more than a decade and tells how he first came to these adventures. It’s a great story. Liam Heneghan has written a fine essay on the #1000UrbanMiles project he instigated.…

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  • Audubon Part II

    The second of three John James Audubon exhibits is up at the New-York Historical Society. These are the original watercolors JJA did for his printer in England. Go! (I snapped a few details before being busted by museum security; since I wasn’t using a flash, I thought it would be ok.)It was a curious experience…

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  • Snow Goose

    A Snow Goose (Chen caerulescens) was on Prospect Lake today. They are not uncommon in Jamaica Bay during the winter months, but don’t visit interior Brooklyn very often. Among the most abundant waterfowl on the continent, Snow Geese are often seen in huge numbers on fallow fields and wetlands.

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  • Texas Testudines

    Texas Tortoise (Gopherus berlandieri). Very fond of eating tender cactus fruit. I also found the skeleton of one of these elsewhere and pulled off a few of the scutes to get some detail.Nice to see Red-eared Sliders (Trachemys scripta) in their native region. Here’s a recent hatchling, about the size of dollar coin.Texas Spiny Softshell…

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  • Tulipmania

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  • Scissor-tailed Flycatcher

    Yowza! Kinda gobsmacking, the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Tyrannus forficatus is a backyard bird in Texas.We saw them every day. They’re the state bird of Oklahoma, too, where my mother was born. See it on the OK quarter. The males have longer tails, and more intense coloring. Look for the orange underwings. And those salmon flanks!The tail…

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  • Bill Strategies

    Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger) with Laughing Gulls (Leucophaeus atricilla).American Avocet (Recurvirostra americana).Marbled Godwit (Limosa fedoa).Roseate Spoonbill (Ajaja ajaja).Reddish Egret (Egretta rufescens) and Black-necked Stilt (Himantopus mexicanus).Wait for it…Long-billed Curlew (Numenius americanus).Some of the birds at an afternoon’s stop at the Hans & Pat Suter Wildllife Refugue in Corpus Christi.You know you can subscribe to these…

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  • Brooklyn Update

    When my plane descended into LaGuardia last Monday, there were a lot of gray/brown still-wintering trees in evidence. I’d just come from southern-most Texas, where spring was fully in motion, but things are stirring here, too.Question Mark (Polygonia interrogationis) amid the weeping cherries, which were throbbing with honeybees, and an occasional bumble.The nacreous heart of…

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  • He Xie

    Ai Weiwei’s He Xie of 2010. At the Brooklyn Museum’s Ai Weiwei: According to What? exhibit, which just opened and runs through August 10th. The phrase “he xie” means river crabs — these are made of porcelain — and is also slang for the Chinese state’s censorship of the internet, because it sounds like the…

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