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Field Trip: Staten Island
Staten Island was the last of the city’s five borough’s to develop. Most of that development came after the Verrazano Bridge opened in 1964, so it was late “post-war” but it was definitely suburban (some of it god-awful). It remains the least populated part of the city; hence, it is the greenest of the boroughs.…
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Warblering
Shhh, I’m out “hunting” warblers… Before I started birding, I wasn’t aware of the wood-warblers. Like many things, like natural history things in particularly, if you aren’t looking for them, you probably won’t see them. Fast-moving, small, and seasonal, they usually don’t show up in backyards. They are high in leafy trees (some species), and…
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Field Notes: Galls
Happy Arbor Day. Love the trees…like a gall… Galls are abnormal growths of plant material caused by the invasion of an alien entity, typically insects and mites. The gall wasps may be the most famous of the gall-forcing insects. Some galls are balls, some are nut-like, some are leaf-spiky — like the ones above, found…
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Field Notes: Prospect
I don’t have a telephoto lens, so my shots here on the blog are usually macro and non-avian. But I captured some not terribly bad shots of birds recently while walking around Prospect Park Lake. There is usually a cohort of feral domesticated ducks to be found around Prospect Park Lake. Ducks are birds that…
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Worms
Last year, on a night walk in Inwood Park, our guide said that earthworms were slowly transforming, indeed, destroying, our northern hardwood forests. Whoa! I’d never heard that before and wanted to look into it. After all, earthworms are the gardener’s and the composter’s friend, right? Hasn’t that been drummed into our heads for years?…
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Turtles
On Saturday, a day of glorious spring, the Japanese Hill and Pond Garden at the BBG was thick with turtles soaking up the heat of the sun. Being cold blooded, they really need that heat. On the other hand, they can usually survive the winter, and freezing water, quite nicely. Some bury themselves in the…
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In the woods
Mayapples, Podophyllum peltatum, not yet in bloom, in Prospect Park. “He loved the woods for their freshness, their sublime solitudes, their vastness, and the impress they everywhere bore of the divine hand of their Creator. He seldom moved through them without pausing to dwell on some peculiar beauty that gave him pleasure […]” James Fenimore…
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Field Notes: JBWR
There were so many tree swallows out at Jamaica Bay even I could get good shoots without a real telephoto. Birds seen: DC cormorant, Great egret, Snowy egret, Little blue heron, Tricolored heron, Glossy Ibis, Mute swan, Brant, Canada goose, American black duck, Gadwell, mallard, Northern shoveller, Greater scaup, Bufflehead, Ruddy duck, red-breasted merganser, Osprey,…
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Field Trip: Tiny flowers
A chickweed, methinks. Some kind of violet? Both of these were found at the Lily Pond, in town. The ground was squishy: the water table all over the island was high. Which leads me to this: A sphagnum?
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Back 40 Lifestyles
Ants in the backyard. Click on this image to get a bigger version. They use the grooves in the concrete as their highway. They take soil particles spilled from my pots to build their little mounds in an otherwise concrete desert. They love it when I place a potted something or other over the grooves.
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Backyard and Beyond 