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.”

  • The Unfeathered Bird

    This remarkable book goes well with chicken and, I would think, a nice dry white wine that hasn’t seen the inside of an oak barrel. Because a chicken is the closest most of us ever get to a featherless bird. Or, given the season, you could go with a turkey. Both of these birds are…

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  • A Fall Fantasia

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  • Light on the Face of the Water

    (It’s New York Harbor, between the piers on the Brooklyn side, so there maybe some other things on the surface as well.)

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  • Thrush Hushed

    A Hermit Thrush (Catharus guttatus), much in evidence in the parks now as they head south, who didn’t make it. Hit a window in Coney Island.

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  • The Wagner Free Institute

    There are so many life forms here on Earth that it is impossible to comprehend the sheer variety and diversity of them all. Sure, there are Internet projects attempting to catalog all the planet’s species, perhaps a Sisyphean task, but for any one individual, it is all surely far too much. Mind-boggling; a good word,…

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  • Eclipsed

    The hybrid eclipse of the Sun this morning was mostly drowned in the clouds over the Rockaway Peninsula. A little bit of our life-giving star was briefly visible, through Nate’s DIY binocular hack, with the dark curve of Moon upon it. Still, a gorgeous morning to watch the sunrise from the oceanside end of the…

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  • Forever

    A taxidermy representation of a Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), a species hunted to extinction by the mid-19th century. This was the largest Alcid, up to a three feet tall and weighing some 11 lbs. They were flightless but excellent swimmers in the cold, fish rich waters of the north. The bird’s scientific name was later…

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  • Low hanging fruit

    I hope your Halloween was without plastic, styrofoam, and corn syrup.

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  • Road Killers

    Surely the most frightening thing on the roads tonight will be the automobiles, especially the single occupancy vehicles which clog the life-blood of the city like a diseased vampire. The number of traffic deaths in NYC up to the end of 9/13 was 203, while the number of homicides was 242 (the NYPD rarely considers…

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  • Dioramas

    Or costume ideas. These live at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, in Philadelphia.

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