Jamaica Bay
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Horseshoe Moon
Can you feel it? The Horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) sure can. It’s spawning season. Here, looking like rocks, are some males awaiting females and clusters of males attached to, and surrounding, females. Could it be their multiple optical systems, including compound eyes and UV sensors? Could it be their one hundred thousand cuticular receptors, allowing…
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Devil’s Walkingstick
What a great name, and perfectly understandable when you get a look at the young shoots and stems. Aralia spinosa is a native understory shrub, sometimes a small tree, of the East Coast, particularly the South. You can find it in all the boroughs; this patch was along the north end of the loop around…
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Boldness
Or you could make your nest right out in the open, just a few feet from the path around the West Pond at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. This Canada Goose’s partner sits on the path hissing up a storm at anybody with the temerity to walk by. Branta canadensis goslings are precocial like ducklings; exposed…
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Butterflies, Butterfly-Shaped
American Lady (Vanessa virginiensis). Very similar to the Painted Lady (V. cardui), which, like the Monarch (Danaus plexippus), is migratory. Saw my first Monarch as well (last year I noted my first at the end of June); the milkweeds, which Monarchs are so associated with, were only three-four inches out of the ground. I’m using…
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DHB, FBF
Yesterday, we took a walk along Dead Horse Bay and the North 40 Trail at nearby Floyd Bennett Field. Before we knew it, we’d been outside for more than six glorious hours.This is a transitional time, with both winter and spring bird species finding themselves rubbing shoulders, so to speak. The large raft of Greater…
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Floyd Bennett Under Threat Again
Staten Island’s reactionary GOP (I know, that’s redundant) Representative Michael Grimm has introduced a bill in Congress to authorize the Interior Department to, according to the Jamaica Bay Research & Management Information Network: “(1) issue permits to allow the planning, construction, operation, and maintenance of natural gas pipeline facilities in the Gateway National Recreation Area…
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Ever green at JBWR
Transitioning away from my posts on the trip to St. John, what could more appropriate than Yucca, Yucca filamentosa, or Adam’s Needle? It looks like it belongs down there in the tropics. In fact, it grows up here at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Baring a patch or two of grass and some pines, this plant…
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Brooklyn’s Grasslands
You can’t see them in this picture, but there are thirty-five or so Horned Lark on the ground here at the northwestern corner of Floyd Bennett Field. One of the few open ground bird species on the East Coast, Eremophilia alpestris breeds at the tundra top of North America. The Lower 48 are their wintering…
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Grapevine Beetle
I found this Grapevine Beetle (Pelidnota punctata) dead on a tree stump, being scouted out by a fly. It’s about an inch long; three spots on each elytron, two on the pronotum like false eyes (these are sometimes absent). The species likes parks, gardens, and woodlands, and are so named because they feed on grapevines,…
Backyard and Beyond 