Brooklyn
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Snake/Privatization
An albino version of the New York native Black Rat snake (Elaphe obsoleta) being held by one of Prospect Park’s “Pop-Up Audubon” staffers recently. This is the largest snake species in the state, reaching up to six feet in length. They get bigger in the South. Constrictors, Black Rat snakes squeeze their prey to death,…
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Barn Swallow Nest
Underneath a bridge in Prospect Park, little mud pellets mark the beginning of a Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) nest. Interestingly, the swallows seem to be using an old Organpipe Mud Dauber wasp nest as a brace or support.Five days later, the cup-like nest is coming along. A few bits of twig or the like seem…
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Black-Crowned Night Heron
Nycticorax nycticorax is the most-common heron in the NYC area. It is also the most wide-spread of herons on the planet, being found on five continents. This one was very close to me, and everybody else, in Prospect Park recently, and seemed oblivious to all of us gawkers. As their common name suggests, they do…
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Sassy
Sassafras, as you may know, is one of those unusual native trees that has variable leaf shapes. Three leaf types show up on the same tree: unlobed, single lobed, or double-lobed. These Sassafras albidum at Brooklyn Bridge Park all seem to leaf-out initially with the longish oval unlobed leaves, the lobed mitteny ones coming with…
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The Future
The Native Flora Garden is expanding at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Most of the one-acre extension, which effectively doubles the size of the NFG, can be seen here from a distance. The new space will include pine barrens and coastal plain habitats.Here’s a peek through the fencing of the pine barrens habitat to come. Pitch…
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Sidewalk Kill
It gets graphic at the end…. I was just minding my own business walking down the grandly named Brooklyn Bridge Boulevard towards Atlantic Avenue, across from the Brooklyn Pokey/Detention Complex. I kept one eye on the sky, because I am half an optimist, and one eye on the sidewalk, because I am the other half…
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Spring Cleaning Snails
Three different specimens of our old friend Cepaea nemoralis.The snail’s “foot,” which gave rise to the name for this whole class of Molluscs, Gastropoda, which means simply stomach-foot (and is anatomically incorrect; the stomach is in the portion of the animal that is inside the shell).Just a size comparison with some other snails found during…
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Redbud, Ready to Bud Red
Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) about to pop. The flowers emerge up and down the branches, and the trunk, in advance of the leaves, making the pink-flowered trees look particularly intense.
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Alert
I don’t know about you, but I need a mammal break. Look at those little ears! The Eastern Chipmunks (Tamias striatus) are out and about now that things have warmed up in the Ravine, Lullwater, and Midwood. One of the hundreds of reasons to keep your dogs leashed in those parts of the park where…
Backyard and Beyond 