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All praise to the pollinators!
It’s National Pollinator Week. While honeybees get most of the media attention, there are some 250 different species of bees found in New York City. Recently, a new species of sweat bee was named after being discovered in Prospect Park. Here’s yet another type of local bee. This is a genus Megachile leaf-cutter bee, so…
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Pelham Bay Park
“Only the dead know Brooklyn…” but you can say the same thing for the rest of NYC. Five massive boroughs: it’s a full-time job to explore them all. Last Saturday, we journeyed up to the eastern Bronx to visit Pelham Bay Park. Pharaoh — or should I say “Tyrant,” based on the Greco-design of the…
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Sweet, Tart
Local fruit trees bloomed early this year… but then they were lucky, because they did not get hit by a frost afterwards. See third picture down on my March 22 post for this plum in bloom. Now it’s full of fruit. Other places were not so lucky: this year’s tart cherry harvest in Michigan, New…
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Willow, willow
Turns out there are several small, shiny blue-black beetles out there that devour leaves. The Blue or Cobalt Milkweed beetle, the Grape Flea beetle, and the imported Willow Leaf Beetle, which is what I think this is. Plagiodera versicolor.These shiny critters were not on willow leaves, as far as I could tell, but along the…
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Seen on Nantucket
I was on Nantucket at the beginning of the month and it was cool, overcast, and/or rainy much of the time I was there. One afternoon, however, the sun poured out.The “beard” of a bearded lily. A polypore mushroom of some kind in the State Forest.In the Highlands of Scotland some years ago, I got…
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Lil’ Snapper
A baby Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) has the unfortunate characteristic of blending in quite well with a road. South Cross Road, in Bradford, Mass., to be exact. While in the area last week, I saw several Painted turtles and a few others I could not identify who didn’t make it across that road and other…
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Vespidae
This queen Eastern Yellowjacket, Vespula maculifrons, is recognizable by the “free spots” on her abdomen segments. That, and the thickness of her abdomen. The workers and males of the species lack the spots. A female European Paper Wasp, Polistes dominula, a native of Eurasia now quite wide-spread in North America. Both of these wasps were…
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Cactus Flower
I usually see the Prickly Pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa) out at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge about this time of year, but I haven’t been on the A train in a while. I heard recently that a patch was discovered in Upper Manhattan, which is at the other end of the A train. This flowering specimen,…
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The Nature of Cities
We are living in a time of growing awareness of “the nature of cities.” Since I started blogging in 2010, that awareness has sprouted all over, so I’m very much a part of the Zeitgeist. What’s meant by the pun in “the nature of cities” is, of course, the nature in cities. The wild has…
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Tiger Swallowtail
The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (Papilio glaucus) is the largest butterfly in the northeast (wingspan can reach 5″). I saw my first of the year over the weekend in Massachusetts.This is a male. Females have much more blue on the hindwing. There’s also a dark female form which is more common as you head south.
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Backyard and Beyond 