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.”

  • Walking Tour

    “To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with fine art works, nine tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall. Teach him something of natural history, and you place in his hands a catalogue of those which are worth turning around.”…

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  • Audubon’s Mammals

    While behind the locked doors of the American Museum of Natural History last week, I saw a hidden exhibition of John James Audubon’s mammals. It was an unexpected treat, but too brief. (The exhibit was open to the public between 2007-09 in the renovated Audubon Gallery, but I missed it then.) Nowhere near as famous…

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  • Behind the scenes at AMNH

    I will most likely never see the great majority of the planet’s 10,000 plus bird species, but I’m fine with that, since I’m not a competitive birder. I am, however, not happy about missing those species native to the East Coast that were exterminated long before I showed up: heath hen, Carolina parakeet, passenger pigeon.…

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  • Trio of Bird Projects

    If you don’t hear crows in Brooklyn almost every day, you haven’t been listening carefully enough. This project, Birds of Brooklyn wants you to listen closely, too. Look up at Myrtle & St. Edwards and Myrtle & Carleton for Myrtle Avenue Bird Town. Compared to the butt-ugly highrises recently erected on Myrtle, these bird houses…

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  • Through the window

    That hearty urban mammal, the gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, makes its way across the Back 40 Bypass between the abandoned house to the south and the half-abandoned house to the north. (It’s a bit of a slum corner, I’m afraid.) The squirrels have a condo in the upper stories of the half-abandoned house to the…

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  • An Ancient Enemy

    Last week, I killed a mosquito with gorgeous emerald green eyes in my girlfriend’s apartment. It was 3:30 in the morning, and for perhaps obvious reasons I did not think to photograph the remains. I did, however, think it would be the last of the pestilent blood-suckers for the year. But alas, no; last night,…

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  • In Green-Wood

    I have a confession to make: I’ve been cheating on Prospect Park. Yes, yes, I know, I know — how could I? Olmsted & Vaux & Stranahan’s great park, which beats the knickers off Central, is so lovely and sweet, but I guess Man isn’t made to be park-monogamous. It’s not like I feel good…

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  • All Creatures Great and Small

    Mostly small. And mostly slimy (cue Monty Python). More tidying up in the Back 40 in preparation for winter. My backyard is a Brutalist expanse of poured concrete, so I use numerous pots for planters. All were salvaged from the street. There’s also a found-on-the-sidewalk wooden box, festively decorated with painted balloons. While moving this…

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  • Two Projects of Note

    The marvelously named “Friends of The Pleistocene” and Smudge Studio are working on a geological guide to the city’s building materials as a way to show how geological time very much intersects with human time. The work is called Geologic City: A Field Guide to the GeoArchitecture of New York and I’m really looking forward…

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  • Tiny disk

    Tidying up the Back 40 (inches) this time of year inevitably unearths some signs of life settling in for the winter. This is one of several very small disk snails I’ve found attached to brick or metal outside. I’ve seen these critters before and think they are probably Discus rotundatus, immigrants from Europe like many…

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