Green-Wood
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Last Insects?
It’s definitely autumn. Yet there are lingerers in the freakish-now-normal mildness. On Wednesday, for instance, I was quite surprised to see a Monarch Butterfly vibrating by on my lunchtime walk in Green-Wood. At first I thought it was a leaf, as one would this time of year. Further exploration also turned up a skipper in…
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Hokumpokes, or Scolopax minor
It’s that time of year again. The shady, leafy understory is potentially loaded with timberdoodles, hokumpokes, bog suckers, worm sabers…. Two may be found hunkered down in the picture above.They do have a lot of names, testifying to their hold on the imagination. One thing’s for certain: American Woodcocks generally see you before you see…
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Raptor Wednesday
It was a crazy day. Raptors filled the air. An exaggeration, yes, but not by much. At one moment, there nine different raptors overhead, mostly Buteos and Accipiters. I’ve never seen so much activity above Brooklyn before. One of the birds was this juvenile Northern Harrier. The long tail, angled wings, buffy red breast, and…
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Flickering
Northern Flicker, yellow-shafted edition of the east. They have mostly passed through in migration by now, but a couple of weeks ago, the city was full of them.This Colaptes auratus male — females lack the black mustache marks — excreted while perched up here. Most of these birds are pretty skittish, bolting quickly at the…
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Return of the King
I almost walked into this Golden-crowned Kinglet. So I just stood there and took photographs as it foraged around me, sometimes near and sometimes far. That’s my boot.Green-Wood was still flush with these yesterday, and now more Ruby-cronwend are around as well. I’ve never seen so many kinglets!
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Mushroom Monday
To everything there is a season, and these mushrooms were on the way to deliquescing into ooze. Ants in the first picture. In the second, the white rice-looking things are alive. They are some kind of springtails, possibly of the genus Ceratophysella, and are scavenging on the rich fruit of these fruiting bodies. As always,…
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Nature Note
A first for me: here’s a Tufted Titmouse eating a Winter Wren. I saw the Baeolophus bicolor fly up from the road with a bundle that turned out to a Troglodytes hiemalis. Winter Wrens are small, but this was still a substantial load for the Titmouse. Because of the road, I suspect the smaller bird…
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More Precious than Rubies?
Ruby-crowned Kinglets are the hidden royals. The males, who have the ruby mohawk of a crown, only show them for love and war.Regulus calendula, means little king, glowing — with that ruby crown. They are very territorial; I once watched one charge his own reflection repeatedly. His ruby was definitely showing. This is a tiny…
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Raptor Wednesday
Sometimes all you have to go on is a distant shape. So today, we have three main types of raptors soaring in the sky for you. These three species were all seen the same day, by the way. First a Buteo, with long, broad wings, and a relatively short tail.The light suddenly reveals the red…
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Mushroom Monday
A couple of stinkhorn mushrooms. Elegant, no? Well, elegant stinkhorn (Mutinus elegans) is what these things are called. The French, being French, mince not: Phalle élégant.I usually see these in mulch piles, but these two were sprouting from the grassy mix under a Turkish filbert.Most mushrooms disperse spores via the air. These phallocratic fungi have…
Backyard and Beyond 