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Spiders
Spiders are one of the mainstays of life in my Brooklyn backyard, which I persist in calling the Back 40 (inches). The following samples, however, were photographed in Massachusetts recently. There are some 3400 spider species in North America north of Mexico. Some are web builders, making the classic orb web; some make sheetwebs. Some…
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Spotted on Governor’s
You can put a lady bug/lady beetle in the freezer for a couple of minutes (no more than 6) to slow it down for photography, but when you’re in the field that’s not much of an option. Especially since I’m not collecting. I found this one on Governor’s Island on Sunday. It was in the…
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My Lady’s Slippers
In a white pine, hemlock, and oak woods in New Hampshire, we searched for lady slipper orchids, Cypripedium acaule. They had been reported there earlier in the week. We didn’t find any there, but based on a tip we found four at a nearby intersection. From the US Forest Service: “In order to survive and…
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Beetle & Bug
A green immigrant leaf weevil, Polydrusus sericeus, as ID’ed by the good people at Bug Guide. I found this one on the grounds of the Stevens-Coolidge Place, in North Andover, MA. A stink bug, Banasa dimiata, found on Nantucket, MA. Not a beetle, it’s a “true bug.” Confused? While “bug” is commonly used for just…
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We know the enemy
Back when Earth Day was young and the word “ecology” (from the Greek root for home) was on some lips, Walt Kelly’s Pogo captured the moment. Kelly’s diffident possum is pictured amongst the litter of the swamp, swamped in pollution. “We have met the enemy and he is us,” he says. Of course, some things…
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Night Flyers
A sampling of the children of the night, all pulled to the lights of Bradford, MA during my recent week away from NYC. This last is a giant crane fly of some kind. I only noticed this detail upon examining the image: the two club-like structures beneath the wings. Then I stumbled across what they…
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Out at Jamaica Bay
“You must take the A train” — if you want to see the prickly pear cactus in bloom. Personally, I’d drop everything to go see it. It’s the only cactus in the region, Opuntia humifusa, and it loves the sandy Mid-Atlantic Plain, the outer lands, (of which portions of Brooklyn and Queens are included). Bumble…
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Red Squirrel
This red squirrel, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, was chasing, or being chased — in a circle it’s hard to tell who’s on first — by a gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, on a big ash tree in Bradford, MA. Meanwhile, a neighborhood cat was patrolling the nearby fence, hoping for a loser. We chased the cat off. I’ve…
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Walt Whitman Sunday
“I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-threaded moss and fruits and grains and esculent roots,/And am stucco’d with quadrupeds and birds all over.”
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Backyard and Beyond 