Brooklyn
-
Raptor Wednesday
Summer is quiet when it comes to raptors, unless you have American Kestrels breeding down the street.But now fall is in the air. This Red-tailed hawk perched on a #BrooklynKestrel landmark recently. One of the local falcons, now days generally heard more than seen, was not happy about it. The kestrel’s alarms calls got me…
-
Nine-Spotted Lady Beetles
Do you remember when the Flatbush Gardener released Nine-spotted Lady Beetle larvae in his native meadow garden? Coccinella novemnotata is the New York State insect, but it is almost non-existent now in the state. In fact, the species is hardly to be found anywhere in the east. Cornell’s Lost Ladybug Project has been working to…
-
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
I’m missing the egg stage, but otherwise here’s the run: The first few instars of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail mimic bird droppings. This one was on the nearly horizontal surface of a magnolia leaf, right out in the open. Finally saw one! The caterpillar is green in youth. Or is that middle age? Old age,…
-
Webworm Days
Fall Webworm caterpillars have been everywhere. This one was on a raised bed on the sidewalk next to the local high school last week, with barely a tree in sight. I don’t even remember where this was, back in July. Here’s yet another, along the 5th Avenue Green-Wood fence. Uh-oh! You see, everybody knows the…
-
BioBlitz Notes
Birds are hard to capture with phone cameras, the standard way people enter information on iNaturalist. I led two bird groups of Macualay Honors College students on the BioBlitz Saturday. This is the only picture of a bird I put into iNaturalist. We tallied birds seen the old fashioned way, with paper and pencil. Macaulay…
-
What Came To Light
Moths spotted during the Macaulay Honors College BioBlitz in Green-Wood cemetery Saturday night: Black-bordered Lemon Moth (Marimatha nigrofimbria). Explicit Arches (Lacinipolia explicata). The Gem, or Gem Moth (Orthonama obstipata). Idia genus. Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda). White-speck (Mythimna unipuncta). Same individual, showing the effects of different light regimes on the subject. Greater Black-letter Dart? Opinions differ…
-
Emergence
On Saturday, your correspondent stumbled upon a cicada emerging from its larval husk. The folded forewing has sprung from the exoskeleton, but the hindwing remains inside. The left hindwing, on the other side, was free soon enough, but this right one would remain inside the tight confines of the husk for the entire time. From…
-
Catbird
Migrating, breeding, molting, migrating. While Gray Catbirds are resident year around along the Atlantic Coast up into Massachusetts, the vast majority leave NYC and head south come the fall. Before that, they molt into their basic, non-breeding plumage. This one in Prospect Park is in the midst of shaking out the old and growing in…
-
The Mosaic
All this week I’ve been detailing little pieces of the great mosaic of life around here. That’s what this blog has been doing for years now, sure, but this week’s cicada / Cicada-killer wasp / Mockingbird sequence was vary connect-the-dots. Usually I see something and then say something, building up observation after observation, painting a…
-
An Ecosystem
On Monday, we started with cicadas. I’ve been trying to get a photo of a Cicada-killer Wasp with her six mitts on a cicada. Thrice now laden-wasps have zipped by me, white underside of their prey visible, but I haven’t been quick enough with the camera. ONce they land, the wasps are quite quick into…
Backyard and Beyond 