Brooklyn
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Pollinators
I took a walk through Brooklyn Bridge Park yesterday afternoon. It was very windy, which made photographing flying insects quite a challenge. I saw my first Monarch butterflies of the year, as well as an American Lady. Black Saddlebags dragonfly. Great Northern Bumblebee (amongst a host of small, medium, and large bumblebees I am otherwise…
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Sheepshead Bay
Ten piers, ten local creatures of the sea.
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Brooklyn Bridge Park
The cattails (Typha angustifolia) are as high as an elephant’s eye. In fact, one of the gardeners was actively clearing some of these out, saying they were growing outwards and the goldenrod was growing inwards, and without care there would not be any pond after too long. Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), my favorite milkweed family…
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All praise to the pollinators!
It’s National Pollinator Week. While honeybees get most of the media attention, there are some 250 different species of bees found in New York City. Recently, a new species of sweat bee was named after being discovered in Prospect Park. Here’s yet another type of local bee. This is a genus Megachile leaf-cutter bee, so…
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Sweet, Tart
Local fruit trees bloomed early this year… but then they were lucky, because they did not get hit by a frost afterwards. See third picture down on my March 22 post for this plum in bloom. Now it’s full of fruit. Other places were not so lucky: this year’s tart cherry harvest in Michigan, New…
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Cactus Flower
I usually see the Prickly Pear cactus (Opuntia humifusa) out at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge about this time of year, but I haven’t been on the A train in a while. I heard recently that a patch was discovered in Upper Manhattan, which is at the other end of the A train. This flowering specimen,…
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The Nature of Cities
We are living in a time of growing awareness of “the nature of cities.” Since I started blogging in 2010, that awareness has sprouted all over, so I’m very much a part of the Zeitgeist. What’s meant by the pun in “the nature of cities” is, of course, the nature in cities. The wild has…
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Snug as a snail in a snail
I like the idea of one gastropod hanging out in the shell of another. You’ve seen this before: the Queen Conch shells I lugged home — not from the Caribbean, but from Dead Horse Bay’s eroding landfill — provide an excellent shelter for terrestrial snails. Cepaea nemoralis, the Brown-lipped snail. A new squatter, as an…
Backyard and Beyond 