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Galls in Winter
The leaves of this White Oak in Green-Wood have refused to fall. They held up to Sandy, the Nor’easter a week later, and all the rest of the winter so far. Actually, some oaks are tenacious leaf-holders, only shedding them just before, or just as, new leaf growth begins to bud.So I got to take…
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Ice, eagles
Yesterday morning, on a blustery cold day in Columbia County, New York, we listened to the ice moving down the Hudson. This wasn’t a very loud sound, but it was hypnotic hearing the crinkle of ice folding into itself, the cristle of it moving south with the current. (Excuse the smudge of my frozen finger…
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Watering Hole
An open patch of water in Prospect Park’s Lake attracts everybody. The Ring-billed gulls — of which there were hundreds on the ice — had just taken off, leaving the Mute swans in charge. The crowd meant more fowl were on-shore and close to the path, grooming and resting. This allowed me to get up-close…
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First Horseshoe?
We approach the first anniversary of my now constant companion, the distinguishing identifiable feature of my corpus, my horseshoe crab tattoo. So I was most pleased to notice this detail in the book, Natural Histories, I reviewed in my last post. In 1590, Theodor de Bry’s opus America presented some of the first images of…
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Natural Histories
I am embarrassed to say I did not even know that the American Museum of Natural History had a research library, and within it an impressive rare book collection. Library Director Tom Baione has put together a sumptuously designed and illustrated selection highlighting some of the historically important books in the collection, matched with short…
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Cold-schmold!
The Monk Parakeets, also known as Quaker Parrots (Myiopsitta monachus) in Green-Wood Cemetery were celebrating the return of (barely) above freezing temperatures yesterday with their usual racket. Once, long ago in Green-Wood, with my bins in hand identifying me as a weirdo, a couple came up and asked if I was there to look at…
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Brooklyn Raven
Winter, especially at the tail-end of a bona fide cold snap like we’ve had most of the week, generally presents few surprises for the nature watcher. But this morning, as I wandered about Green-Wood Cemetery, I watched a Common raven (Corvus corax) and a Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) contest the airspace overhead. The Red-tailed was…
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Death and Life on the Gowanus
The northern, terminal end of the Gowanus Canal. Where we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On Friday, a dolphin ended up in the canal, causing a media frenzy, including, evidently, a helicopter overhead, and the usual circus of social-media-alerted gawkers. (I was blessed to have missed it all.) The animal died in…
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Wunderkammer
The Grolier Club‘s fine exhibition closes in a week. As a wunderkammermensch whose apartment, if not this very blog, is very cabinet-of-curiosity oriented, I must urge you to go see it while you can. Rarely is an exhibition of books, many of them catalogues of private collections, so intriguing. (For a bibliophile, no inducement is…
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Cold Tree
“A beautiful form has as much life at one season as another.” ~ Henry David Thoreau. The distinctive cone shape of the Dawn Redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is actually kind of similar to the distinctive cone shape of the Bald Cypress (Taxodium distichum). Both species grace Brooklyn Bridge Park and both appear “bald” this time of…
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Backyard and Beyond 