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.”

  • Fall

    I cropped Lower Xanadu out of this image so that you could enjoy the honey-wheat color of this Spartina in the morning sunlight without any distractions.

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  • Braiding Tide

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  • Golden Frog

    Found dangling in Brooklyn Bridge Park. The helpful tag led me to @seemetellme, an artist who gifts small objects around the city, and, indeed, other parts of world. A sucker for animal art, I took this but left another, non-animal, elsewhere in the park. For someone else’s accidental discovery. (Through the magic of the interwebs,…

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  • Downy, Honeylocust

    The sound was like typist behind a closed door, in an office with thick carpets. It was subtle. In the clamor of the city, we must strive to hear the subtle sounds, and Green-Wood, wind-swept atop the moraine, is a fine place for the subtleties. This Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens) was pecking away at Honeylocust…

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  • Pine and Oak Leaves

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  • Snowy Owls Here, There, Everywhere

    In the last week I’ve heard about half a dozen Snowy Owls (Bubo scandiacus) on the edges of Jamaica Bay, all within the bounds of NYC. Elsewhere, bird watchers in New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern states are reporting unusually large numbers of these tundra natives. This is a major irruption year, perhaps the largest in…

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  • On the Old Croton Aqueduct

    The city’s tendrils reach deep into the countryside, but so too do its arteries. When Croton water arrived in New York City in 1842, there was much rejoicing. What was already the largest city in the country hadn’t had a reliable water supply before this, dependent as it was on often contaminated wells. The lack…

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  • Planet Earth is Blue

    And cloudwhite.

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  • Thanksgiving

    I give thanks to planet Earth. Couldn’t live without it. Coincidently, NASA scientists have announced the discovery of a new moon of Jupiter, Ipomoea. Oddly, initial reports suggest it’s mostly made out of sweet potato, with a gingersnap core.

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  • Solvitur Ambulando

    “And all the leaves on the trees are falling,” this time of year, some of them enormous. My friend and fellow nature blogger Melissa of Out Walking the Dog sent me a photo the other day of a very large face-covering leaf I thought might be American Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis). The very next day I…

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