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.”

  • Cattails on high

    I was walking down Furman Street, which parallels the new Brooklyn Bridge Park and is half shadowed by the howl of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Passing one of the few buildings left from the days of dockland glory, I looked up. (The building is a garage on the 1929 map, between the old Ward Line and…

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  • Coney Island’s Endemic Species

    You have to be a certain age to remember when Coney Island Whitefish teemed off of Brooklyn’s shores in such massive schools that beach-goers wouldn’t dare go into the water. Today, however, they’re a rare sight. Although sometimes mistaken for the pallid Manhattan eel  (Mentula brevus), the Coney Island Whitefish is a unique species. Sitts coneius…

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  • Mourning Cloak

    One of the earliest butterflies of spring, the mourning cloak, Nymphalis antiopa. Appropriately enough for its mournful name, this one was photographed today in Green-Wood Cemetery.

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  • Mushroom season

    The early days of spring, with their rain and damp, are good for mushrooms. These fruiting bodies of fungi grow quite quickly when conditions are right. This one was peaking out of the leaf-litter in Prospect Park over the weekend. I’m pretty clueless on identifying mushrooms, but I think it’s a polypore of some kind.…

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  • Beach CSI

    A beach is an inhospitable place. The wind turns sand into a blasting medium. The sea means a high level of salt, which is antagonistic to much life. In summer, the sand’s heat makes you jump. If you look closely, you’ll see invertebrates adapted to this harsh environment; there’s all sorts of life underground, especially…

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  • Natural Object: Poppy

    Sweet dreams are made of this — well, they might be if this was that kind — a poppy seed capsule/pod that managed to survive the winter in the garden of friends in Windsor Terrace. Meanwhile, let’s go walking with Thomas De Quincey: Some of these rambles led me to great distances; for an opium-eater…

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  • Uneven Development

    Forsythia blooming: the microclimate of a ESE-facing wall on Sydney Place intensifies the sun. Meanwhile, in Prospect Park:The trees bid their time.

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  • Basic beach

    I live on an island. It’s a rather lengthy island, and so, unimaginatively, it’s been called “Long Island” for several centuries now. I’m on its far western end, in the once-upon-a-time city and now borough of Brooklyn, which, uh, doesn’t really think of itself as being a part of “Lon Guyland.” The reasons for this…

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  • Early Spring Subtleties

    Some tree species aren’t very showy with their flowers. They aren’t out to attract animals because they’re wind-pollinated; and they aren’t out to seduce gardeners with luscious blooms. So their beauty is subtle, but undeniable. This is some kind of elm species, near Prospect Park Lake.I was away for a week, and while I was,…

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  • Winkles

    Four shells collected at Cape Anne, Massachusetts. The three clustered around the illustration are Common European Periwinkles, Littorina littorea. This winkle, much savored by Old World palates, was first recorded in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1840, perhaps arriving via rock ballast in ships. Another source says they may have arrived much earlier, upon…

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