Bronx
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Asclepias
Butterfly weed (A. tuberosa). My favorite.Purple (A. purpurascens). Other people’s favorite. “It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order…
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Bluets & Forktails
Azure Bluet (Enallagma aspersum) male.Familiar Bluet (Enallagma civile) male. Familiar Bluet female, one of three color forms for this species. When odonating, you will quickly see that it’s males who patrol the water. Females are often munching away elsewhere, and come down to the water to pair up and lay their eggs in the wet…
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Spring Purples
Look how purple these Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) start out!And flowers, ready to open. * Still, spring is having a hard time soothing us. A year+ into Trumpism: a sizable percentage of the American population is militantly ignorant, authoritarian-minded, anti-rational, resentful, racist to the bone, and eagerly yearning for the alleged renewal that fascism promises.…
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Songbirds
Finally, some songbirds! I’ve spent a lot of time in Green-Wood this winter and it has been barren of some of the usual winter bird suspects. So it was good to run into Tufted Titmouse, White-breasted Nuthatch, Golden-crowned Kinglet (rather unexpectedly) and a small flock of American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis) all hanging close together on…
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Mammal Monday
Deer tracks on the continent. Found on the grounds of the Bartow-Pell Mansion, in Pelham Bay Park. (FYI for you out-of-towners: the Bronx is the only part of New York City that is not an island.) On nearby Hunter’s Island, part of the same park, but no longer an island. Last time we were here…
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Boots For Scale
I wear a 9/9.5. These are rabbit prints. There were some other curious prints in the snow on the frozen Bronx River that I could not figure out. No tail, as in a muskrat, and although rather canine-looking, (but too big for fox?) they looked too close together for coyote. Perhaps a cat whose prints,…
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The Year in Raptors
Suddenly, every local Rock Dove and Starling is in the air. They swirl this way and that, creating visual confusion: which way do your eyes go? Then just as suddenly, the long tail of a Cooper’s Hawk concentrates the eye in the airborne melee. The Accipiter is hunting, surfing over the tops of buildings, jetting…
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Spider Update
On Wednesday, Araneus diadematus ate brunch. Judging from the size and shape of the mummified-in-silk prey, I’d say it was a fly. The temperature was already near 50 that morning and would rise up to 60 in the afternoon. Diptera weather! There were also two gnats stuck to the web, but these were so small…
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The Spider Who Stayed Out in the Cold
This large Araneus diadematus orb-weaver has been living outside a Bronx living room window for nearly three months now. That included the last of summer, when a large window fan blew out towards her, making the web bounce like a trampoline. The web spans the breadth of the window. When she isn’t in its center,…
Backyard and Beyond 