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Red Hook Saunter
Red Hook is the name of the eastern-most town in St. Thomas, USVI, but I’m back home in Brooklyn now, where Red Hook is a neighborhood.Long a working-class dock-side neighborhood, it’s relatively tree-less compared to Brownstone Brooklyn. The City’s Million Trees program is trying to change that (although who cares for the trees once planted…
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Ever green at JBWR
Transitioning away from my posts on the trip to St. John, what could more appropriate than Yucca, Yucca filamentosa, or Adam’s Needle? It looks like it belongs down there in the tropics. In fact, it grows up here at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Baring a patch or two of grass and some pines, this plant…
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Februarius Mirabilis
Are you old enough to remember when winter used to be winter, damn it, and spring, spring? On the way to Prospect Park today, the second day of February, I saw the flowering quince on Congress St. in bloom:And then, in a tree pit in Windsor Terrace, some bulbs were pushing up into the light:In…
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Chiton
Even though we have at least one species of chiton, or coat-of-mail shell, in our northeastern waters, I’ve never come across one. The eight plates, or valves, that make up the shell usually break apart and scatter to the waves. This one was actually in a pile of shells placed as decoration in the villa…
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Hanging
Outside the ruins of the Reef Bay sugar mill, the soldier crabs amassed. Inside, the bats hung out to dry. So far, white nose syndrome has not spread to the islands.
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Big Sky Country
The sky above Jamaica Bay, looking north, yesterday afternoon. Although you have to go through Queens to get there, the western edge of West Pond at JBWR is actually part of Brooklyn.
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Arthropods of St. John III
Hermit crabs range from these little guys, scavenging the back end of rocks along the shoreto the landlubbers known as “soldier crabs,” which can get up to baseball sized, shell (usually the West Indian topshell or whelk as below) included.These are the ones who swarm out of the mountains in August to mate by the…
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Iguana Iguana
The western edge of Klein Bay is rocky, but I scrambled about three-quarters of the way along its edge the first morning of our trip. I wanted to see the sun come up over Dittlif Point peninsula (unseen to the left in the above image). I found a nice flat rock to stand on –…
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Arthropods of St. John Part II
One of the ubiquitous arboreal termite colonies, or termitaria, found on the island. Known locally as wood lice or wood ants, this Nasutitermes species builds large nests of partially digested wood pulp mixed with their own saliva and feces. The material looks like mud from a distance. The nests are often found broken up on…
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Backyard and Beyond 