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.”

  • Black-Crowned Night heron

    Scene at the Lake in Prospect Park. Although the black-crowned night heron, Nycticorax nycticorax, will eat just about anything it can swallow, these red eared sliders look a tad too large. (Still, the tableau does give the impression of a vulture waiting for the cowpokes to die.) The most widely spread of the herons, N.…

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  • Great Egret

    Ardea alba in the Valley Water, Green-Wood Cemetery. Once nearly exterminated for their feathers, which plumed ladies’ hats.

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  • Shhh…

    Is there a color more beautiful than robin’s egg blue? This is the nest I posted a picture of last week. It was, after all, a brand new nest. So in the park now, you can see young fledged robins, hopping and flying about; you can see nestling robins, all mouth, gaping for food above…

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  • Horseshoe Crabs

    I wrote about the Atlantic horseshoe crab, Limulus polyphemus last week, before I got a chance to head out to the city shore to look for some this year. So that was theory, this is practice, at Plumb Beach. And practice can be hands-on. If you should happen to see a horseshoe crab wrong-side up…

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  • Silk Moth

    About 11:45 this morning, I noticed some activity at the pupa I found in Prospect Park and brought home to see if it would hatch out. It’s a giant silk moth of some kind, not sure which yet. Above you can see one of the feathery antennae, which has unfurled after being forced out of…

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  • Armchair Naturalist

    Printed on the back of my MetroCard (the local public transit system’s swipe fare card, which replaced the token of happy memory) as part of the “Train of Thought” program: “Within five miles of where you live, there are enough strange things to keep you wondering all your life. Probably in your dooryard may be…

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  • In the Back 40

    The first blossom of my grape tomatoes. Come pollinators! And some kind of leaf miner enjoying the sunflower. Meanwhile, the neighbor’s Japanese knotweed is now a good two feet higher than the fence. Machete time. (TimeOutNY, the consumption [consumptive?] guide to the city, recently pictured the next backyard over from knotweed central.) It’s an evil…

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  • Lady Beetle Sex

    (Must be blog sweeps week…) The multicolored Asian lady beetle, or lady bug, Harmonia axyridis. An introduced species, these are highly variable in terms of color and number of spots. Note the W or M (depending on your point of view) shape on the pronotum; most of this species seems to have these. They seem…

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  • In Prospect

    On the “thumb” of the Peninsula.

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  • Robin’s Nest

    I was a little surprised there were no eggs here, since the green suggests it’s a fresh nest. Those green pieces do give it a homey touch. Robins incorporate mud into their nest, as well as found things like scraps of plastic, which, unfortunately, the park does not lack.

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