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.”

birding

  • Hung Like a Barnacle

    The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex, by John A. Long. “We all know about the birds and the bees…” goes the jacket and webpage copy for this book, but do we? In fact, I can’t think of a stranger duo of examples to be used as an euphemism for courtship and…

    mthew

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  • Wrack, Canis, Kestrel

    From the Brooklyn Bridge, the wrackline is visible on the lawn in Empire Fulton Ferry section of Brooklyn Bridge Park. It’s all over but the clean up in my part of Brooklyn, but Lower Manhattan on the other side of the bridge is still dark.In DUMBO, one of the moss-painted animals left over from the…

    mthew

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  • Cawngress of Crows

    American crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), an intensely social species.

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  • Barnacle Goose, Prospect Lake

    A Barnacle Goose (Branta leucopsis) hanging out with some Canada Greese (Branta canadensis) on the Lake in Prospect Park. A most uncommon sight in the northeast, since this bird is native to Greenland and Northern Europe. First one I’ve ever seen. Probably the first one ever seen in Prospect. If you go looking for it,…

    mthew

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  • Pine Siskins

    Pine siskins, Spinus pinus, have been passing through town this past couple of weeks. These were in Brooklyn Bridge Park yesterday. This was forecast to be a big year for these typically boreal birds, pushed down to our latitudes by weather and other conditions in Canada, and it has been. A small, streaky bird with…

    mthew

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  • Jamaica Bay and Colombia

    One of the male ospreys who breeds in Jamaica Bay was fitted with a GPS tracker this migration season. The bird is now “wintering” in Colombia. I put wintering in quotes because although migratory birds head south to avoid our winter, they go to places in Central and South America where winter is an extremely…

    mthew

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  • Red-breasted

    I practically walked into this Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis) a week ago on Nantucket. We were eye-to-eye for a moment, until it worked its way further into some kind of tiny-leaved elm. The island was flush with these nuthatches while I was there. I even saw a few White-breasted Nuthatches on the island, which I…

    mthew

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  • Peregrine

    Storm King Mountain, not quite at peak fall color on Sunday. This picture was from atop Little Stony Point, which is just north of Cold Spring, NY, beneath the better known Bull Mountain (Mt. Taurus). Granite used to be shipped from here to the city to build little things like the Brooklyn Bridge. While facing…

    mthew

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  • Hawk Watch

    Looking northwest towards Gotham-Metropolis; the birds come cruising along from the right. It’s no Hawk Mountain or Veracruz, Mexico, where thousands of North America’s Broad-winged hawks squeeze by on their way south, but I’ve never been to those places, and home is where the raptor is. Or at least just passing through, following the coast…

    mthew

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  • Bird Sense

    Tim Birkhead’s Bird Sense: What’s It’s Like to Be a Bird details our current knowledge of birds and the history of how we got to this state. Written for the lay reader, a person with an interest in the world; by which I mean it’s hardly necessary that you be a bird watcher to enjoy…

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