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Mother’s Day Bouquet (Living Flowers)
Some flowers for my mother, who passed a decade ago, and all the other mothers out there. Paulownia tormentosa is in bloom. Rich, heady perfume. Look to your empty lots, backyards, and canal bridges.Star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum) is another escapee from the reservation. A native of Europe, this Lily family member has basal leaves that are…
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Just Listen
How do silent movies make their way into a blog about natural history? I was struck by something Geoffrey O’Brien wrote in the May 24th New York Review of Books. Discussing last year’s homage to silent movies The Lover and Hugo, O’Brien notes how differently our minds behave when we watch silent films. Tomorrow morning…
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American Copper
Lycaena phlaeas. Common name aside, the East Coast population of this small butterfly is thought to have been introduced from Europe during the colonial period, probably on the sheep sorrel its larva feeds on. It is notably associated with these invasive sorrels, and often found on disturbed habitats like roads and lawns, where I’ve photographed…
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On Nantucket
Going to Nantucket is like going two weeks back into the past. Spring comes a little later there, even in this year of early spring. Although just a touch more north of us here in NYC, the island is thirty miles off-shore and surrounded by an ocean holding onto its cold. The Japanese Flowering Cherries…
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The Hunt for Red Admiral
Red Admiral butterflies (Vanessa atalanta) are out in force this year, enough to be noticed by my radio station, WNYC. This is probably an East Coast phenomenon, as I was on Nantucket this weekend and saw many but photographed few. Being so fast, flighty, and flittery, butterflies are generally hard to photograph. Red Admirals are…
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In the mud
“Mr. Holmes, they were the prints of a gigantic hound!” Or at least a raccoon.
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Tell us again, Granddad, about ice
Today is Climate Impact Day, set up to connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather, effects felt from diatoms to humanity. What is past is prologue, and I think of two years ago when we flew back from Iceland. Our plane crossed over Greenland, and I took a few photographs through the jet’s…
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Two paintings
My mother was a bird-watcher long before I was. She painted the Sanderlings on Nantucket, the Yellow-headed BlackCowbird either on Nantucket, from memory, or when we lived in Calgary, Alberta, where you are more likely to see this western species. I may have seen them then, 35 years ago, but I did not have eyes…
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Limulus Polyphemus
For my birthday, I was given the gift of a tattoo. The work was done by Robert Bonhomme when he was still at Brooklyn Tattoo. Robert told me that when he was a kid, his siblings would run around local beaches searching for shells, while he was always on the lookout for horseshoe crabs. That…
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Woodpecker Sign
This pine is dead, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t provide a home for fungi, many an invertebrate, and an active red-tailed hawk nest. These holes attest to the various boring insects that have been pecked out by woodpeckers up and down the trunk. Wing of a woodpecker that met an untimely end. Looks too…
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Backyard and Beyond 