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.”

  • Peregrines

    Wednesday at dusk: Peregrines (Falco peregrinus) on the steeple.Thursday morning, the fifth straight day of seeing Peregrines — either here in Brooklyn or across the East River at 55 Water St. This picture is from two blocks away. Gamaliel King’s steeple is a challenge to shoot between the trees, row houses… And of course the…

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  • Magic Mushroom

    The “vivid” feature of the camera brings out the lurid in this large old shelf-like polypore.Fungus is wild.

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  • Snow Line

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  • More Blackbirds

    Right inside the “wellness center” at LIU Brooklyn’s campus. I assume it used to be a “gym,” short of gymnasium, which was where ancient Greeks played naked (Putin would plotz); gymnós meaning naked. Moving right along: those are pretty good corvid forms, if massively oversized. But what the hell is this on the corner of…

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  • Red-breasted

    Red-breasted Mergansers (Mergus serrator) can be spotted from both sides of the East River now. They will be heading north to breed soon. (I may be optimistic with that “soon.”) This is a male. Of our three merganser species, this one likes salt water the best.

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  • Borough, Sweet Borough

    Not what most out-of-towners think of when they think of Brooklyn. Nor what most in-the-towners think of, either, for that matter. But it all depends on where and how you look. Winter, 2014. The first real winter in a long, long time.

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  • Snow Day

    The other day, the news was this was, so far, the 9th snowiest winter in NYC. (We’re number nine, we’re number nine!) I have to admit most of it has fallen while I’ve been inside. But yesterday I took a walk thinking I would avoid the snow and ended up walking amidst it. Except for…

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  • Icicle at Sunset

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  • Snowbird

    It hasn’t been a big year for Slate-colored Dark-eyed Juncos (Junco hyemalis), a generally common winter visitor. This was the only one around the other day and I haven’t seen many this winter. They are are usually found close to the ground in small flocks, so this view gives a good sense of the very…

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  • Charles Darwin’s Birthday

    And some elementary wisdom from Martin Chalfie, who shared the 2008 Nobel prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein. He spoke about his work last night at the Linnaean Society.

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