That seems to be an eel, which must have been carried in from the coast a few blocks away. Not bad for an afternoon’s sightings in Green-Wood. Earlier in the day, two American Kestrels were overhead of me on 4th Avenue and 12th Street in Manhattan. Here’s one of them:

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The new meadow in Green-Wood has attracted the Northern Italian Wall Lizards. So many nooks and crannies! So many sunning places! So many things to eat! (And now that fall has really come, presumably so many places to abide the winter.)

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I mean, they almost always announce themselves with a belted-out rattling cry.

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I’ve been sending Cynipid galls to the Forbes Lab at the University of Iowa. They’re doing a genetic sequencing project on these oak gall wasps. (Here’s is a great introduction to this fascinating lifestyle.) But since these are appealing structures, other animals want in as well: inquilines may or may not crowd out or kill…

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Eastern Carpenter Bee: one of our biggest bees. Bramble Mason Wasp: one of our a medium-sized wasps. One of our smaller bees, about 5mm long: Dialictus subgenus of Lassioglossum. There are a LOT of tiny wasp species. This one isn’t even that small. It’s twice as long as a 2mm long gall wasp. (Not counting…

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Bramble Mason Wasp/Ancistrocerus adiabatus Smiling Mason Wasp/Ancistrocerus campestris Bramble Mason Wasp/Ancistrocerus adiabatus Smiling Mason Wasp/Ancistrocerus campestris European Tube Wasp/Ancistrocerus gazella Three of the local Eumeninae potter and mason wasp species sport a smile-like pattern of two scuttellum spots and one transverse band on the metanotum. (There’s another regional smiler, Ancistrocerus catskill, but I haven’t come…

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A “Marlin hauke,” if I’m reading Thomas Hariot correctly. His 1588 Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia is the first recorded account of bird-watching in North America, though of course the locals had been doing it for thousands of years already. The Merlin (Pigeon Hawk, Lady Hawk) would have been…

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I measure out the seasons in Chimney Swift sightings. Last Friday around 5:40 pm, a dozen or more, probably more (it’s hard to count ’em when they harum-scarum the sky), were over the park and surrounding blocks. It might have been the last big hurrah of the year.

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