Brooklyn
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Horseshoe Moon
Can you feel it? The Horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) sure can. It’s spawning season. Here, looking like rocks, are some males awaiting females and clusters of males attached to, and surrounding, females. Could it be their multiple optical systems, including compound eyes and UV sensors? Could it be their one hundred thousand cuticular receptors, allowing…
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Cardinal Chicks
Looking somewhat like Muppets, two Northern Cardinal chicks realize there is no food forthcoming from the camera. Normally at this stage in their careers, they are all about open mouths — wide, wide mouths, like so:These birds will quickly get bigger, feather out, and fledge, or fly out from the nest. (This site gives details…
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Mother’s Day Bouquet (Living Flowers)
Some flowers for my mother, who passed a decade ago, and all the other mothers out there. Paulownia tormentosa is in bloom. Rich, heady perfume. Look to your empty lots, backyards, and canal bridges.Star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum) is another escapee from the reservation. A native of Europe, this Lily family member has basal leaves that are…
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Lady Bug
My first lady bug of the year. The Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle (Harmonia axyridis) is also multi-spotted, or sometimes not spotted at all. It’s highly variable, with more than 100 (!) colorforms. The M-shape on the pronotum is usually a good marker of the species. Of course, that’s a W-shape if you look at it…
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View from the Back 40
March 26th.April 3rd.April 9th.April 16th.April 25th. Overnight, and I mean that literally, since I took a photo yesterday afternoon, the lower levels of this ivy were mauled. Perhaps the hellions next door? The construction waste, knotweed, and even mulberry that filled the neighbor’s backyard was recently cleared out. Now screamers populate it. Not a net…
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The Elusive Baby Pigeon
Question: how come you never see a baby pigeon? Answer: you’re not looking hard enough. Actually, the answer might best be approached with another question: how many baby birds does anybody ever see? Ducklings, sure, but ducks are precocial, meaning they are ready to roll (and swim and follow their parents) pretty much as soon…
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Elm Fruit
American Elm (Ulmus americana). Typically given their druthers, Amerian Elm will take the classic vase shape that made it such a popular park tree before Dutch Elm Disease (a beetle-vectored fungus) killed off so many of them. There are still mighty elms to be seen, though. Prospect Park’s most magnificent example, on the Long Meadow,…
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Wall of Nests
The 1869 Beard & Robinson Stores, stretching down to the end of Van Brunt Street. This stone wall on its southern end looks fairly smooth from afar, but is in fact riddled with lots of short ledges and crannies. Numerous House Sparrows are nesting here like troglodytes. There were a good number of Starlings around,…
Backyard and Beyond 