Brooklyn Bridge Park
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Dragonfly Exuviae
Dragonflies seen at Brooklyn Bridge Park these days include the twelve-spotted skimmer, blue dasher, painted skimmer, and variegated meadowhawk. These long exuviae, the shed exoskeleton of dragonfly larvae, belong to one of these, or perhaps another, species. In their larval stage, dragonflies are aquatic, and voracious predators. When ready to make the leap to the…
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Brooklyn Bridge Park
Painted skimmer, Libellula semifascianata. (Oh, come now, much more than just semi fascianata!)A ladybug larva demolishing aphids. Perhaps the seven spotted, Coccinella septempunctata. Twice or more as big as the insects below, and a little more lumbering, hence the best shot of the post! This is an Eastern carpenter bee, Xylocopa virginica, working the swamp…
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Cattails on high
I was walking down Furman Street, which parallels the new Brooklyn Bridge Park and is half shadowed by the howl of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Passing one of the few buildings left from the days of dockland glory, I looked up. (The building is a garage on the 1929 map, between the old Ward Line and…
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Confusing Fall Warbler
Roger Tory Peterson, the Bronx’s great contribution to ornithology, has a couple of famous-in-the-field pages in his field guide called “Confusing Fall Warblers, etc.” On their way south, the warblers have left their breeding plumage behind them, so they are not nearly as dramatic as in the spring. Juvenile birds, born this spring and summer,…
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Monarchy
An unusually dark Monarch caterpillar found at that little wonderland of wildness, Brooklyn Bridge Park. The place was full of standard-colored Monarchs about two weeks earlier. This one was the only one seen on a more recent visit. It’s late, but probably not too late. Nearby, I found the remains of a pupa. Also found…
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Chrysalis
The remains of a pupa, or chrysalis. This was, I think, the temporary home of a specimen of a Monarch, Danaus plexippus, as it underwent metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly. The caterpillars themselves were much in evidence here in Brooklyn Bridge Park at the end of August, gobbling up milkweed. Curiously, the milkweeds contains noxious…
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Fieldnotes: Muskrats
If you build it, they will come. Is this your typical muskrat habitat? On Sunday, looking for more caterpillars and exuviae in Brooklyn Bridge Park, we ran into a couple of muskrats, Ondatra zibethicus, munching away on the new plantings. Yes, we were surprised. One of the animals was a youngster, and some comments found…
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Monarchs
A passel of monarch butterfly caterpillars, Danaus plexippus, were denuding some milkweed around the waterworks at the Brooklyn Bridge Park recently. The monarch is probably our most familiar butterfly. The generation we see here may be the one that, come winged adulthood, makes the epic long march of a flight towards the cool cloud forests…
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Dragonflies
Brooklyn Bridge Park is now open at its northern end, in the shadow of the great bridge. Here small pools and streams, part of the park’s landscaping and drainage system, are newly planted with a host of plants. And what freshwater body is complete without dragonflies? Recently, under a hot sun, I watched twelve-spotted skimmers,…
Backyard and Beyond 