Brooklyn Bridge Park
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Great Blue Skimmer
For your August weekend, Libellula virbrans, spotted today in Brooklyn Bridge Park. A male. At 2.2 inches, this is one of our larger dragonflies, and it’s a great percher: this one returned to the same cattail leaf half-a-dozen times as I watched and photographed. More common in the southeastern swamps, but reaching up to Mass.…
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We’ve Got Crabs
The triangle of saltmarsh ot the southern end of Pier One at Brooklyn Bridge Park is an experiment. It’s cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), which thrives even though it’s flooded by salt water at high tides. In flower now, it will send many seeds off on the currents, searching for mudflats. Key to its success, though, is…
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Habitat
Brooklyn Bridge Park’s horticulturalist Rebecca McMackin told me recently that she consciously works to create habitat. The proof is in the animals: Spot-winged glider (Pantala hymenaea), a new species for me. A reader of this blog, in private conversation, noted how the carrion beetle thing yesterday was a little queasy, but I personally find these…
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Form
The forms of nature are virtually infinite. These buds will soon resolve themselves into the saucer-sized flowers of Rose Mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos).And inside one of the blossoms already opened.
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Blue Wings To Die For
The Great Black Wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus) is a katydid and grasshopper hunter. As with the spider hunters and others I’ve been detailing this summer, the prey provisions the nests of their young. In between wrestling paralyzed katydids to the nest, these wasps sup on nectar. Like most solitary wasps, this generation never see their progeny…
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Brooklyn Sunset
I like to think of these as a herd of giraffe, heading towards the last watering hole of the day across the harbor in New Jersey.Brooklyn Bridge Park, where all these pictures were taken tonight, is scarce on mammals. This rat, a creature of the docks if there ever was one, was larger than it…
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Tachinid
Most flies get very little respect. Perhaps it’s their hairy rumps? Or maybe it’s that their larvae are parasitic on caterpillars? But Tachinidae flies are also pollinators, and so the plants approve.
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Two Gulls
Ring-Billed Gull (Larus delawarensis), one of the three species of gull found here in the city year around.Laughing gull (Leucophaeus atricilla), a summer visitor to the city. Named for their call, which sounds a bit like crazy-laughter. (The name “Black-headed gull” was taken.) These birds will soon lose their breeding plumage, which includes the black…
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Blue Dasher
The Blue Dasher dragonfly (Pachydiplax longipennis) is common around our ponds and lakes, especially if there’s lots of vegetation in the water. The males have a chalky blue abdomen, with black tip. The females have no blue at all. But they do have tell-tale paired yellow streaks along their abdomen.Dragonflies of this species will often…
Backyard and Beyond 