Brooklyn
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Of Wings and Stigmata
Found the remains of a dragonfly on a Brooklyn sidewalk recently. Possibly a Common Green Darner, one of our most common species. One of the hind wings was still in pretty good shape.Pretty good, but at 40X showing some wear and tear. These two shots are hand-held through the microscope, so not as great as…
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American Dagger
There is so much going on “in” an oak tree. The biologist E.O. Wilson has written that you could spend a lifetime voyaging like Magellan around a single tree, discovering all the interrelated life associated with it. Quercus is definitely one genus where this applies very well. This British study found 284 insects associated with…
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The Bee’s Tongue
Never mind the knees, how about those tongues? Check out the tongue between the down-turned antennae. (Those antennae, by the way, are hugely important sensory organs: they can touch, taste, and smell.) There are short-tongued and long-tongued bee species.This leaf-cutter bee seems to be tasting this stem.This one explored numerous leaf edges. The tip of…
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Another Snout
This makes four American Snouts, Libytheana carinenta, I’ve seen so far this year in Brooklyn. That’s four times as many as I’ve ever seen. This one, unfortunately, was dead on the sidewalk.
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More Exuviae
An emergent damselfly next to the husk of its former, aquatic life stage. When they first emerge as their adult, flying form, they don’t have much color. Their wings unfurl and harden off, like their new exoskeleton. They can’t fly immediately.When they can fly, they will sometimes take shelter in trees, bushes, etc., to finish…
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Tilt-a-nest
Northern Mockingbird nesting. A late brood or a second one? The angle here, by the way, is accurately represented. I wonder if they built it this way or it somehow shifted once they got it going. If you think these sweetgum pods look odd, you’d be right. This is a different species from our native…
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Exuviae
Wait… what? This Rambur’s Forktail damselfly is perched on the exuviae of a dragonfly.Another view of the male Rambur’s green-blue color pattern. Dragon- and damselfly eggs are laid on or near water. The larval stage is aquatic. After a season, or a year (or more depending on species and location), the aquatic nymph crawls out…
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Raptor Wednesday
The #BrooklynKestrels. Mother and daughters. The young ones tend to look plumper than she does, but I can’t see this in this particular picture. She’s still bringing them food — and this roof is still a larder. They fly down to it, out-of-sight, and come up with a pice of something. There have been some…
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Great Egret
Ardea alba have even been known to show up in small backyard goldfish ponds. If there’s food… and they do seem readily habituated to the presence of similarly long-legged hominids.One of the bird’s long plumes, or aigrettes. These are breeding plumage feathers; this one about 18″ long. They’re the reason these birds were nearly hunted…
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Quiscalus quiscula
Now, there’s binomial! Doesn’t really help to translate it, however, since it basically means “quail quail.” Well, then, my favorite quail… anyway, as long as we stay away from the Middle Latin-to-English thing and just let Quiscalus quiscula ripple off the tongue. What I’m trying to suggest here is that “Common” Grackle is simply unfair.…
Backyard and Beyond 