-
BioBlitz!
The 24-hour Central Park BioBlitz begins this afternoon at 3pm. An effort to collect as much information on biological diversity in the park as possible, the CPBB is sponsored by the the Central Park Conservancy and The Macaulay Honors College at CUNY. The event is using the iNaturalist app to track discoveries. There will be…
-
Ahoy, Skippers!
The Skippers in the family Hesperiidae are small, fast, confusing, and perhaps not even butterflies. But we will leave that to the taxonomists…Also, they are all over the place: walking through a meadow or even a semi-feral lawn now can stir them up. A subsection of the Skippers, the Grass Skippers, have a characteristic “jet…
-
Summer of the Blue Dashers
The Blue Dashers (Pachydiplax longipennis) have been everywhere this year. I said this two weeks ago, and I repeat it now. It is a banner year for them. Just walking down the streets here in Brooklyn reveals them perched on bare branches of trees, fence posts, and car antennas.This is a classic pose for the…
-
BBG Purge
This is what I know, having heard it through the Vitis vine: on Wednesday at 7pm, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden fired six members of its science department, wiping the department out. By e-mail. What a classy move! The Metropolitan Flora project has been suspended. The head of the community-building GreenBridge was axed. The herbarium has…
-
Flying Now
Barely… actually she seems to be doing ok with those chucks missing from her forewings. This is an Eastern Tailed-Blue (Everes comyntas); a female, with brown wings on the upperside; the male has blue. Wingspan is close to an inch, so about half inch when perched. And the tails made much of in the common…
-
The Warbler Bible
Just in time for the challenge of what Roger Tory Petterson called the “confusing fall warblers” in his ground-breaking field guide comes The Warbler Guide, by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle, with drawings by Catherine Hamilton. It is published by Princeton University, whose field guide line is very impressive. I know Tom, who lives in…
-
Three Wee Damselflies
Fragile Forktail (Ischnura posita) male. Tell-tale broken strip on the thorax like an exclamation point. One of the inch-long damsels.And this looks like the female Fragile Forktail.Immature female Lilypad Forktail (Ischnura kellicotti). Just over an inch long. Without binoculars or telephoto, it’s hard to see this gorgeous orange color. And some kind of bluet…
-
-
River of Milky Jade
Signs of life in the Superfund Gowanus, which has a weird milky jade color (and, oy, the stink!) this time of year.
-
It’s Been Awhile
Die, hellfiend, die! Oh, uh, sorry… my usual near-Jainist approach to insects falters when it comes to the ancient enemy. This actually hasn’t been a bad for the little bloodsuckers. So far. I was expecting an onslaught getting to Dead Horse Bay last week, as in the past, but that seems to be a spring/early…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Backyard and Beyond 