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No Common Name
The colorful little Coelioxys coturnix is a recently introduced Eurasian species. They’re a cuckoo species, cleptoparasitic, laying their eggs in Megachile nests. Which Megachile are attacked this way here–does anybody even know yet? Foraging on Horseweed/Erigeron canadensis. On Sunday the 17th, I’ll be doing another of my Green-Wood Bugging Out Walks for Kids.
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Green Herons
Way up in a linden at Sylvan Water in Green-Wood. And on the rocks at Bush Terminal Park.
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Scoliid Wasps
New York City isn’t very rich in Scolliidae. Above is the first Noble Scoliid Wasp/Scolia nobilitata I’ve seen here, spotted last week in Green-Wood. It’s the tenth iNaturalist observation of the species in the city. We do have a lot of Blue-winged Scoliid Wasps, also known as Two-spotted Scoliid here in the East (Scolia dubia ssp. dubia).…
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Raptor Wednesday
Sightings of American Kestrels are starting to pick up. Male above at Green-Wood’s neogothic gate giving the Monk Parakeets something to talk about. I’ve looked up at the various spires of this big Greek Orthodox church in Bay Ridge every time I’ve walked by, but this past weekend was the first time I’d seen a…
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Not So Common
Grooming wasp on a leaf. Such yellow and black wasps get called yellowjackets, but that’s not a species-specific term. This one looks like it could be a ground yellowjacket of the genus Vespula. We have at least five Vespula species in NYC, the most common being Eastern/V. maculifrons and the introduced German/V. germanica, which has…
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Everybody’s Eating
From a distance, without benefit of optics, I thought this was a worm with grass still attached to it. But no, this Northern Mockingbird definitely has a mantid. Predator versus predator…
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Backyard and Beyond 