Brooklyn
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Save the dates
May 1 The Listening Tour. I will be leading a Proteus Gowanus event on May Day at 6:00 a.m., as part of the interdisciplinary gallery and reading room’s Paradise exhibition. We will meet at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park. Then we’ll SILENTLY walk through Prospect Park at the crack of dawn to…
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Starlings
A pair of starlings, Sturnus vulgaris, on the Nethermead were locked in combat the other day. Literally locked, as one had the other’s legs in its grasp. The fight went on and on, until the captive one either broke free or the captor relented. Then they flew off in the same direction, and it looked…
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Painted Turtle
The seasons turn. The years go ’round. Last March, I photographed a painted turtle, Chrysemys picta, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Japanese Pond. It was surrounded by numerous eastern red-eared sliders. This past Saturday, I found the same — or, hopefully, another? — painted turtle in the same area of the Pond (where the rocks…
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Look Down
One of the speedwells. I think it’s Persian speedwell, Veronica persica. One of the chickweeds. As with the speedwells, there are numerous species. Found both of these in Green-Wood last week.
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Clinton Street Blossoms
The magnolias are starting to bloom, and this year, perhaps under the influence of the Japanese films I’ve been watching at Film Forum, I’m finding them a bit too rich for my blood. The ripe fleshiness is more blowsy than sensual. And the ghostly white ones nod towards the terrors of the “Whiteness of the…
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Brooklyn Woodchuck
I’m bringing this out of the archives in case anybody ends up here from a nice article in the Times by Jesse Greenspan on city groundhogs/woodchucks, in which I am quoted.Through the urban naturalist grapevine, I knew that woodchucks lived in Green-Wood Cemetery, but I’d never run across one before. Yesterday, I noticed something oddly…
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On State St.
There’s still a dearth of nectar & pollen bearing flowers, but a small plot of fancy tulips was being worked over by some bees Saturday. I’ve recently checked in with both the feral honey bee nests I know of in Brooklyn, and both show no signs of activity. I hope it’s just the cold.Further down…
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Cattails on high
I was walking down Furman Street, which parallels the new Brooklyn Bridge Park and is half shadowed by the howl of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Passing one of the few buildings left from the days of dockland glory, I looked up. (The building is a garage on the 1929 map, between the old Ward Line and…
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Coney Island’s Endemic Species
You have to be a certain age to remember when Coney Island Whitefish teemed off of Brooklyn’s shores in such massive schools that beach-goers wouldn’t dare go into the water. Today, however, they’re a rare sight. Although sometimes mistaken for the pallid Manhattan eel (Mentula brevus), the Coney Island Whitefish is a unique species. Sitts coneius…
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Mushroom season
The early days of spring, with their rain and damp, are good for mushrooms. These fruiting bodies of fungi grow quite quickly when conditions are right. This one was peaking out of the leaf-litter in Prospect Park over the weekend. I’m pretty clueless on identifying mushrooms, but I think it’s a polypore of some kind.…
Backyard and Beyond 