Fort Tilden
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King Eider
Snowy Owls aren’t our only Arctic visitors. This is a male, or drake, King Eider (Somateria spectabilis). I saw my first ever earlier this month, when, after the Brooklyn CBC, we all hurried over to Beach 59th St. on the Rockaways. The other day another was spotted off Fort Tilden. This time I had my…
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Four October Butterflies
On Friday at Fort Tilden, the sun was bright when I got there but a cold front moved in from the northwest as I stood atop the hawk watch platform. These were all seen while the sun was still bright.Monarchs (Danaus plexippus) predominated, still, floating along the coast towards the south. A sulphur, probably Clouded…
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Hawk Watch
Looking northwest towards Gotham-Metropolis; the birds come cruising along from the right. It’s no Hawk Mountain or Veracruz, Mexico, where thousands of North America’s Broad-winged hawks squeeze by on their way south, but I’ve never been to those places, and home is where the raptor is. Or at least just passing through, following the coast…
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Fort Tilden Stars
At the western-most parking lot at Fort Tilden, we came across a pile of treasures of suspicious provenance. There were perfectly intact shells of both our big whelk species, moon snails (including the largest I’ve ever seen), and lots of sea stars. I’ve never found a sea star on the beach around here, and usually…
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Rockaway
Friends who live in the Rockaways showed us around last week. This barrier beach of a peninsula juts out of the soft underbelly of Queens as the sheltering arm of Jamaica Bay. It’s thickly settled on its eastern end, but Jacob Riis Beach and the Fort Tilden section of Gateway NRA provide some naturalist splendor.…
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Snake!
“There are m$%#er-f@!*ing snakes on this outwash plain?” Why, yes, there are. Contrary to urban myth, St. Patrick did not chase them all from the city back in the day. I found this one at Fort Tilden a couple of mosquito-ridden summers ago. Jamaica Bay and Staten Island have been other places I’ve seen snakes…
Backyard and Beyond 