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Ootheca
A praying mantis egg case, or ootheca, from the Greek for egg (oon) and container (theka). Thanks to Amy for spotting and IDing this for me while we were at Four Sparrow Marsh. These are collected and sold for science projects and pest control in gardens, since mantises devour whatever they can get their prayerful…
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Tiny snail
Responding to my last post, snail maven Aydin Örstan thought the third of the terrestrial snails harboring on the marine snail shell in my backyard was Vallonia costata. If so — and it looks like it to this mollusk amateur — that would make for five different species of snails found in my concrete slab…
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Queen Mother Conch
Some time ago, I found a couple of queen conch shells, Strombus gigas, at Dead Horse Bay. Needless to say, this is not this tropical species typical habitat. But the landfill at Dead Horse Bay turns up the strangest things sometimes. Perhaps these were somebody’s souvenirs once. Anyway, a ruthless recycler, I put the shells…
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Urban Tracker
A large paint spill on the Congress Street sidewalk. Perhaps the bicycles wheels zooming through it and down the block weren’t that surprising, but at least two people tracked through it as well. I wonder if this pigeon thought it was food?
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Let my people go!
Dead trees in bondage, Neptune Avenue, Coney Island. This time of year, the Ents are pissed. While I very much encourage the worship of trees, dead ones are a grotesque fetish. I don’t care if they’re farmed. I like my paganism unadulterated, not cryptically incorporated into, and co-opted by, monotheism. Updated 12/10: A friend who…
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Ground Pines Up Close
Looking like a baby pine tree, these tree clubmosses, Lycopodium obscurum, are in fact also known as ground pines or creeping cedars.What we see sprouting from the ground of the woods is the sporophyte; most of the action is going on underground, where rhizomes spread unseen. When you see a cluster of these, they are…
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Botany City
My friend Kristine is now “documenting the ways in which we urbanites cohabitate with the plant world, both indoors and out.” Check out her posts. She and other nature-oriented bloggers are listed in my ‘roll of honor to the right (scroll down). Although organized alphabetically, the listing has a hierarchy that runs something like this:…
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Floating Island
Did the earth move? At first I though it was wind playing on the water, creating an illusion of motion. But the wind was actually pushing this reedy mass – which I guesstimated to be 50 yards wide – along. I’d happened by during the floating island’s mid-cruise, and it took about ten minutes for…
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New England Woods
Wheeler Woods Conservation Area in Haverhill, Massachusetts, is a small patch of woodlands bordering Chadwick Pond. Walking there during Thanksgiving, I noticed these things:
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Backyard and Beyond 