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.”

  • Books

    It’s never too late to get some books for Christmas. Here are two excellent choices for gifts: Spring Wildflowers of the Northeast: A Natural History, by Carol Gracie. Gracie, a reader of this blog, profiles 30 species of wildflowers (with variations) that herald the spring in our woodlands. The lovely (Spring Beauty, Lady’s Slipper) and…

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  • Snowy Snowies

    The 114th Annual Xmas Bird Count is underway. Brooklyn’s survey was on Saturday. It was a stormy day: any reasonable animal should have been hunkered down at home. Consequently, borough totals were the lowest since 1981: 110 species, with generally low numbers of individual birds. This is continuing to be the Year of the Snowy…

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  • Branching of the Sky

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  • 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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