Brooklyn
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Salt Marsh, Silk Stockings
Marine Park is the largest park in Brooklyn, but most people think it ends at the NW end of Avenue U. Across the street, however, is the Salt Marsh Nature Center, which overlooks Marine Park Creek, which connects to Gerritsen Creek and flows into the Atlantic. This part of the park is a large, U-shaped…
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Hot Spot
This part of the Ambergill in Prospect Park has become a hot spot for watching birds bathe. I saw my first indigo buntings of the season here this week, and many other species are coming in to dip and shake those tail feathers, including all manner of orioles and warblers. The shallow pools on the…
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Sulphur
A female orange sulphur butterfly, Colias eurytheme, I think, and not a female clouded sulphur, C. philodice, because, although these species are quite similar, this one looks just like the example in Kaufman’s Field Guide to Butterflies of North America. Complicating matters, these two species can hybridize.
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BK 4BR Park Vue Fully Stocked
The Nethermead Arches is a great place for wasp condos. The bridge provides protection from the sun and rain, so organpipe mud-dauber wasps, Trypoxylon politum, build their nests upon its vertical surfaces. Each tube here is made up of several separate cells. An egg was laid in each cell with a cache of paralyzed spiders…
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American Chestnut
Until recently, I didn’t know that American chestnut trees, Castanea dentata, were growing in Prospect Park. Turns out some were planted in 2004. Several of these have survived, but, like the 1,400 chestnut trees killed in the park in the early 20th century, they are doomed by the chestnut blight. This fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, was…
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Tick
I found four dog ticks crawling up my legs yesterday. This was a first for me within the bounds of the city. I was at Four Sparrow Marsh on the edge of Brooklyn. (My companion, on the other ankle, found none; maybe because of her wellies or her press pass.) As you can tell from…
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Not at all sluggish
I know you’ve all been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the first slug of the year in the Back 40, my concrete backyard. Well, here it is. (There were probably others, but as mostly nocturnal creatures, they’re hard to see.) The leopard slug, Limax maximus, slime-delivered. Disliked by gardeners, for they eat greens; loved by…
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Two birds
Near the dog bathing beach at the Upper Pool in Prospect Park, I found a couple of noteworthy birds the other day:The most common bird species in the park is surely the American robin, Turdus migratorius, which you can find on the meadows and in the woods and everywhere in between. This particular one stands…
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Backyard and Beyond 