Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

  • Tentative IDs

    Wildness forensics continues: we found this skull in a kettle pond on the top of Highland Park. I think it’s raccoon: note those molars and check out this PDF to see what you think. On Cypress Ave, we found another mammal, this time definitely a raccoon, that was road kill. In nearby Machpelah Cemetery, where…

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  • Earth Day

    Seedhead in Prospect Park today.

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  • Field Trip: Our Sunken Forest

    We took our first trip to Highland Park and Ridgewood Reservoir last weekend. Straddling the Brooklyn/Queens border, the park and accidental nature preserve deserve to be better known outside of their surrounding neighborhoods. More about our discoveries in Highland will be in my next post. But what’s all this about a Reservoir and accidental nature…

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  • Save the dates

    May 1 The Listening Tour. I will be leading a Proteus Gowanus event on May Day at 6:00 a.m., as part of the interdisciplinary gallery and reading room’s Paradise exhibition. We will meet at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. Then we’ll SILENTLY walk through Prospect Park at the crack of dawn to…

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  • Meet a beetle

    Ah, spring, when a nature nerd’s fancy turns to whatever is found crawling on the inside door frame. This is a varied carpet beetle, Anthrenus verbasci. It is one itty-bitty member of the mighty beetle order, being a hair under 1/8″ long. It was devilishly tricky to shoot, with the macro feature and a 15x21mm…

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  • Starlings

    A pair of starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, on the Nethermead were locked in combat the other day. Literally locked, as one had the other’s legs in its grasp. The fight went on and on, until the captive one either broke free or the captor relented. Then they flew off in the same direction, and it looked…

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  • Birds of Macbeth

    We saw Cheek By Jowl’s version of Macbeth at BAM yesterday and didn’t like it much. Among other things, the weird sisters’ brew was cut, and the night watchman’s drunken tomfoolery was stunningly mishandled. But I was struck by all the birds. In fact, Shakespeare is full of birds. These are the birds named in…

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  • Spring screen

    Baby, we were born to fold. For a miniature Japanese-style screen: 1. Open up image by clicking on it. 2. Print (in color preferably). Carp should be printed horizontally. 3. Trim as necessary. 4. Z-fold into thirds. 5. Position (in appropriate place). 6. Feel the serenity. Or other emotional state (as appropriate).

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  • Shifting baselines

    Here at Backyard & Beyond, we get excited by a woodchuck, some muskrats, and a dozen cattails sprouting from a roof. The return of seals to New York Harbor puts a spring in our step. Yes, we celebrate, but that’s because we’re starving, and starvation, the best of all sauces, makes every scrap at the…

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  • Naming of the names

    “Names, names, the naming of the names. What’s this? What’s that? they ask me, pointing to this bush, that bush. I give my standard response: ‘What it is, ma’am, no one knows; but men call it – creosote bush.’” ~ Edward Abbey, A Colorado River Journal Bobby, Violet, Franz. These are some of the names…

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