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.”

  • 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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  • Break the fast

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  • Iridescent

    A still can only capture one moment of the shifting iridescence of this Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos). But what a moment in the later afternoon sun!

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  • Same Sumac, Another Bird

    “O my Starling, O my Starling….” Note the yellowing bill, a breeding sign for Sturnus vulgaris. Spring is in the air. Another Starling, a week later, in the glow of a setting Sun.

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  • Eagle Resurrection

    Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) over Croton Point Park. Hugely perched in trees, wheeling in the air on their seven-feet wingspans, primary feathers sticking out like fingers, or powerfully, but not super-speedily, rowing through the air. I was reminded of the giant eagles in Tolkien, deus-ex-machina-ing over and over again to pull Hobbits and wizards out…

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  • Let’s Get Closer, Shall We?

    The Inner Borough from the end of Pier 5 in Brooklyn Bridge Park. This is wide-angle, 24mm lens equivalent on the zoom, approaching fish-eye. The third large building in from the left, with the strong dark verticals, is 55 Water Water Street, an otherwise mediocre pile from the ruinous era of square-foot architecture.Zoomed in about…

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  • Two halves of the sky

    The antithesis of a contrail.

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  • Winter’s Purple

    On Brooklyn’s rocky southwestern coast… say what? This outwash plain should be sand all the way to the Continental Shelf, but there are places where we have piled up the boulders. The rip-rap along Shore Road Greenway, from Owl’s Head Park down under the Verrazano Narrows and beyond, for instance, is fine habitat in winter…

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