Green-Wood
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This is just to say
I have eaten the persimmon that was on the ground and which you were probably saving for the opossum Forgive me it was delicious so sweet and so cold (with apologies to William Carlos Williams) Diospyros virginiana. Said in most accounts to only be palatable after the first frost. Well, it got cold. And, oh,…
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Raptor Wednesday
Old faithful: Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). You will see these all over the city, as often perched upon a human edifice as in tree. The guard at Woodlawn Cemetery’s Jerome/Bainbridge Avenue gate said there’s frequently a Red-tail atop this chapel’s steeple. Further into the grounds, I heard a Common Raven making that distinctive knocking sound…
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Franklinia BK
I discovered recently that Green-Wood Cemetery has a couple of Franklin Trees (Franklinia alatamaha). One may be the largest specimen in the country. But don’t get too carried away: this is not a giant species. This one might be all of 20 feet tall. It sure does have fine autumnal foliage, though. Windfall fruit and…
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Ah, nuts!
“Filbert? Filbert? Where is that boy?”Turkish filbert or hazelnut (Corylus colurna). Shell and two halves of another. The frilly husk, or bristly involucre to the hort pros, of the nut dries out to a gnarly, tentacled beauty. I was late this year and found only two twisted, nut-less examples under this Green-Wood tree, so here’s…
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Detente
Is this an art project on Green-Wood’s Valley Water? * It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? It’s not like ignorance and stupidity are new enemies. They may be the oldest enemies of all. But ignorance (not knowing) and stupidity (not wanting to know) are incredibly empowered now and very readily exploitable by forces directly affecting…
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After the Woodcock Storm
On Saturday, I couldn’t help flushing more than two dozen “mud bats,” or American Woodcock (Scolopax minor), in Green-Wood Cemetery during an hour’s walk. On Sunday, although we spent nearly three hours there and covered a much greater extent of the grounds, we only only found three. One of them, though, allowed us to observe…
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Woodcock Moon
According to a tweet from a British wildlife trust, November’s first full moon is known as a Woodcock Moon because it “coincides with an influx of these nocturnal woodlanders.” Well, yesterday, on this side of the Atlantic, following Friday night’s full moon, Green-Wood Cemetery was positively timberdoodle-riffic. I counted, conservatively, twenty-eight of the buffy orange-bellied…
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Small Kites on the Loose
Surely the last butterflies of the year, these pics from last week? No, I saw two Monarchs heading south yesterday. This is so weird, the weird that is the new normal in the global disruptions of radical climate change. All the Monarchs we’ve seen so late into this fall? Probably not a good thing: they…
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Just Wow
Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia.
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Backyard and Beyond 