books
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Moth Bible
I picked up the new Peterson Field Guide to Moths of Northeastern North America by Beadle and Leckie as soon as it came out earlier this year. I’d been anticipating it because I’ve been following Seabrooke Leckie’s blog for several years now. In fact, I was inspired to blog myself by her example. Moths, which…
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Break The Fast
I’m reading Ian Tattersall’s excellent but pretentiously entitled Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Ancestors. It is serious food for thought. But you may not want to read this post during breakfast… Our hominid ancestors of some two million years ago were far from top dog; in fact, they were the prey…
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“How many of us, and how often, think of the fact that we live our time on a planet, within that planet’s time? What good is it to be alive on Earth and never come to know at least the place where one lives? We don’t even try to know it with our senses, much…
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A Wider View
“The poet says the proper study of mankind is man. I say, study to forget all that; take wider views of the universe.” – Henry David Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1852 This blog was begun nearly two years ago under the influence of Thoreau and remains so. Going with a tweeted recommendation from Geoff Wisner,…
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Avian Builders
Avian Architecture: How Birds Design, Engineer, and Build by (the puckishly named) Peter Goodfellow. So what don’t birds build their nests out of? Most of us are probably familiar with the grassy/twiggy cup nests built by a number of songbirds, some lined with moss, some reinforced with mud, like the classic, omnipresent American Robin nest.…
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Feathers
I love this cover to Thor Hanson’s book Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle. It was designed by Nicole Caputo. Some things you’ll learn in this book: feathers pre-date birds; some dinosaurs had colored feathers; feathers are amazing at insulation and waterproofing; a peregrine has been recorded diving at 242 mph and making turns…
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Systems of change
“[…] it is often not easy to assign insects to precise categories because there are so many species and their morphological, behavioral, and genetic differences frequently tend to overlap or intergrade. Often the best we can do is estimate degrees of relationship and/or distinctness and assign them to hypothetical groups as information becomes available. As…
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Perfectly Said
We make our lives in a world not of our making. We feel in a world that does not feel. Yet it’s become a world in which our presence is felt. What attitude might confront such a world? An attitude of curiosity, for the complex world? An attitude of admiration, for the beautiful world? An…
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Shifting baselines
Here at Backyard & Beyond, we get excited by a woodchuck, some muskrats, and a dozen cattails sprouting from a roof. The return of seals to New York Harbor puts a spring in our step. Yes, we celebrate, but that’s because we’re starving, and starvation, the best of all sauces, makes every scrap at the…
Backyard and Beyond 