Brooklyn
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Homeboy Mammal
First glance on rounding the corner of a shady tree: I thought this was a hairy cat on the loose. I mean, a big, low-slung hairball, one of those Persians who’s been to Paris, if you know what I mean.Woodchuck. Whistlepig. Groundhog. Land beaver. Marmota monax. In Green-Wood. I’ve seen them there before, but this…
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Spider
We interrupt this progression of posts on the faraway sublime to bring you a bit of sublime closer at home. I was breaking down a head of broccoli and had gotten to the best part, the stem, which unfortunately was hollowed out by rot, when this one scootled across the chopping block for the cover…
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Whose Botanic Garden?
The NY State Legislature reserved 39 acres for a botanical garden in Brooklyn in 1897, on land that had originally been part of the proposed site of Prospect Park. The triangle northwest of Flatbush Avenue became instead Institute Park, home to the Brooklyn Museum, Mount Prospect Park, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Botanic Garden…
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Ant, Wing
An ant wrestles with a lepidoptera wing. An aerodynamic challenge.
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Time bees
In August of 2010 I found a feral honeybee hive here. In 2011 and 2012, I didn’t notice any activity here at all, although I have to say my checking in was sporadic at best — Green-Wood is a big place and my routes didn’t always go past this tree — but still, I don’t…
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Ahoy, Skippers!
The Skippers in the family Hesperiidae are small, fast, confusing, and perhaps not even butterflies. But we will leave that to the taxonomists…Also, they are all over the place: walking through a meadow or even a semi-feral lawn now can stir them up. A subsection of the Skippers, the Grass Skippers, have a characteristic “jet…
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Summer of the Blue Dashers
The Blue Dashers (Pachydiplax longipennis) have been everywhere this year. I said this two weeks ago, and I repeat it now. It is a banner year for them. Just walking down the streets here in Brooklyn reveals them perched on bare branches of trees, fence posts, and car antennas.This is a classic pose for the…
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BBG Purge
This is what I know, having heard it through the Vitis vine: on Wednesday at 7pm, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden fired six members of its science department, wiping the department out. By e-mail. What a classy move! The Metropolitan Flora project has been suspended. The head of the community-building GreenBridge was axed. The herbarium has…
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Flying Now
Barely… actually she seems to be doing ok with those chucks missing from her forewings. This is an Eastern Tailed-Blue (Everes comyntas); a female, with brown wings on the upperside; the male has blue. Wingspan is close to an inch, so about half inch when perched. And the tails made much of in the common…
Backyard and Beyond 