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.”

  • PSA: Know Your Starlings

    And your Grackles. This is currently on exhibit at Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Photo Wall. These not-grackles are in fact European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). Mortimer! For Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula), see here. For Boat-tailed Grackle (Q.major), hang out at Jamaica Bay and you might get lucky. For Great-tailed Grackle (Q. mexicanus), try the Southwest US and…

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  • London Wetland Centre

    Polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his wife about their only child — who he of course did not get to see grow up — “make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than games.” This is a statue of that child grown up, Peter Markham Scott (1909-1989), naturalist,…

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  • A grand trip

    I’ve returned from England, where I walked the 90 or so miles of the Dartmoor Way, with a few short and long cuts in between, and so many ups and downs, my calves are now like iron and my heart is ten years younger. By the way, the butts of bumblebees there are a rainbow…

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  • Several Planes at Once

    I think this may be one of the largest trees I’ve seen outside of the Coast Redwoods. Click on this image to make it larger, and note the fits-four-adults bench at the base of the bole, just past the lamp post. It’s a London Plane (Platanus × acerifolia), gifted by the Vassar College Class of…

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  • Variations on Legs

    Fiddler crabs in the tiny patch of ever-so-green right now salt marsh at Pier One. On the jumbly rocks next to it, a number of these spiders:I have returned from a two week trip abroad. I have a new computer. I am ready to blog again.A young New World Robin, SO different from the Old…

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  • Happy Fourth of July!

    A Robin (Erithacus rubecula) in Bovey Tracey, Devon, UK.

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  • ‘Till Next Time

    Many of the Magicicadas never had a chance.But those that did survive to breed have laid their eggs by now, setting in process yet again the long-term strategy of this genus of periodical cicada. The eggs are planted in branches. Once they hatch, the tiny nymphs will drop down to the ground, to burrow into…

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  • Blue as an egg

    Robin’s egg blue is also the color of Gray Catbird eggs.

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  • Puff…

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  • PSA

    Found along the Hudson.

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