Brooklyn
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Thorn Apple
At Tsankawi, our guide pointed out the distant Datura, flowering with large, gaudy, trumpet-shaped flowers. These were the largest blooms for miles around in the arid region. Jimsonweed is another name for it, and we have it here in Brooklyn. Some snuck into the Back 40. This is its ripening seedpod. Beware: the plant is…
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Nuts! Beechnuts
General Anthony C. McAuliffe Week continues….We have two kinds of beech trees, genus Fagus, in our midst: the European F. sylvatica and the American F. grandifloria, with numerous cultivars, including cut-leaf and copper, and several subspecies to mix it up even further. Sylvatica was often planted in parks, where the smooth gray bark attracts the…
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Waiting for me in the warmth of the hallway.I plead self-defense.
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Six ways of looking at a spider
While I was putting together yesterday’s post and eating three different kinds of New York state grapes from the farmer’s market, I noticed something alive in the middle of the air under my desk. It was slowly descending. And then rather more quickly ascending. She tried several times to crawl up onto the top of…
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Weekend Naturalist
Through the Naturalists’ Gate at 77th Street, past the enormous head of the great geographer Alexander von and under the eagle eye of this AMNH topper I entered the Central Park and rambled in the Ramble in search of the barred owl that had been reported yesterday. The owl remained with Minerva, although the local…
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Summer Whine
You spend years underground sucking on tree roots. And then, three to seven years after birth (accounts differ; species differ), you dig your way up out of the ground. How do you know when to do this? You’re in your fifth instar stage, by the way, when you do. Assuming you haven’t been concreted over,…
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Inside and Outside
I read somewhere recently that we, all of us, are always within two or three feet of a spider. There are untold billions of them in the world, and some of them do like the comforts of a less an immaculately kept house. This is one of (at least) two species that likes my bathroom.Right…
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Gowanus Fish
Life in the Gowanus, and I don’t mean the mythological Carroll Gardens flipper-baby frogmen that are supposedly heard plopping and flopping in the greasy water on still moonless nights.
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Barge Music
Ten Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) perching on the hull of Bargemusic at Fulton Ferry Landing on a recent morning. The swallows patrol Brooklyn Bridge Park and the Promenade above for insects caught in mid-air. They should be heading south in about a month or two.
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Prospect Park Summer
One of the parent swans had just nearly kicked the ass of yet another unleashed dog.I think they were hanging outside their lamp-post nest because it was even more blazingly hot inside. But, I didn’t stick around long enough to ask, or even to focus all that well.
Backyard and Beyond 