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Field Trip: Beetles!
Found this handsome creature on the beach on Nantucket, where it was not doing well with the shifting, treacherous, sisyphean sands. The good folks at Bug Guide identified it for me as Tricrania sanguinipennis. Like the oil beetles we found at Jamaica Bay, these parasitize ground nesting bees. Euphoria inda, the bumble flower scarab, found…
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Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn
My dispatches about my Nantucket field trip will continue for several days, but, since I’m back in Brooklyn, I thought I would note the gorgeousness of spring right here, right now. White blossoms (Callery pear, apple, etc.) are falling like sprinkles of snow. The cherry trees are in perfect form. I will try to make…
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Field Trip: Nantucket
Harbor seals on the Jetties, Nantucket Harbor. I went up to Nantucket, MA, last week, taking a bus up to Hyannis and then the “slow boat,” the ferry, across the Sound. For a couple of years now, I’ve noticed osprey over Hyannis harbor and wondered where they nest. On the return trip, this time on…
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Natural Object: Cedar-Apple Rust
Many of us look to the stars hoping for new discoveries. Obviously, there’s plenty to find out there. But some people seem to think everything has already been done right down here. Ha! Last week I was on Nantucket Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. Thirty miles at sea, it’s a damp and very windy…
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Foxy Thoughts
In our hyper-specialized society, “amateur” is far from a noble description. It is, in fact, usually the opposite, a term of disparagement, insult, attack. Meanwhile, in the sports-entertainment industry, it has lost all meaning, corrupted by the NCAA’s exploitative hypocrisy and the corporate/nationalist perversion of the Olympics. But the word’s roots lie in the Latin…
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Field Trip: Moths, Spider
From inside the house. And running along the ground. There actually seem to be a lot of spiders running on the ground up there.
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Local critters
Inside, on a wall. Outside in the Back 40, in a pot.
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Natural Object: Seeds
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, but you know that. And the Giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum, of inland California — as distinct from the coastal redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens — comes from these little things. By volume, these Giants are the largest living thing on the planet. A superlative beast by any standard, in fact: can…
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Snail Tales, part III
For a change of pace, a fresh water gastropod, which means I did not find these in the Back 40. The species is a Brooklyn resident, however: I took this photo at the Valley Water in Green-Wood. I think the snail is Viviparus malleatus, the Chinese mystery snail, a.k.a. the Japanese trapdoor snail. (Like many…
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Another Back 40 Gastropoda
Leopard slug, Limax maximus. This species is native to Europe, but is now found in many other parts of the world. I wasn’t aware until just now that this member of the Gastropoda actually does have a “shell,” only it is internal, underneath the shield, which is that spotted portion at the top front end.…
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Backyard and Beyond 