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.”

  • Anticipation

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  • Floater

    What do you think?

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  • Wildflower Week

    New York City Wildflower Week begins tomorrow. It’s a celebration of all things wildflower, and all things habitat, because you can not separate the two, and a reminder that the NYC region has already lost over 40% of its native flora. I will be leading two walks this year. Events are free. Pictured: In the…

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  • Barn Swallow Nest

    Underneath a bridge in Prospect Park, little mud pellets mark the beginning of a Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) nest. Interestingly, the swallows seem to be using an old Organpipe Mud Dauber wasp nest as a brace or support.Five days later, the cup-like nest is coming along. A few bits of twig or the like seem…

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  • Frog Weather

    An enormous Bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) in the Lullwater.Nonchalant as a dozen people file by five feet away.

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  • Listen

    Do you want to know a secret? This Saturday at 6 a.m. I will be leading one of my Listening Tours for New York City Wildflower Week. You may register here if you want to come along to this free event. Note the time: we meet at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park…

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  • Black-Crowned Night Heron

    Nycticorax nycticorax is the most-common heron in the NYC area. It is also the most wide-spread of herons on the planet, being found on five continents. This one was very close to me, and everybody else, in Prospect Park recently, and seemed oblivious to all of us gawkers. As their common name suggests, they do…

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  • Assume the Position

    Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s… actually, yes, it is a bird, a small darting thing high high high up in leafy elm. Perhaps a flame-throated Blackburnian, a sky-bringing Cerulean, a red-faced Cape May. Warbler season is upon us, and, even though, as of this writing (Sunday evening), the weather is particularly…

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  • Sassy

    Sassafras, as you may know, is one of those unusual native trees that has variable leaf shapes. Three leaf types show up on the same tree: unlobed, single lobed, or double-lobed. These Sassafras albidum at Brooklyn Bridge Park all seem to leaf-out initially with the longish oval unlobed leaves, the lobed mitteny ones coming with…

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  • Rootmatting

    I don’t know what it is, but it makes an absolute rug of roots, mostly horizontal. This is the kind of stuff that held the prairie in place.

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