Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

Maine

  • Barnacles

    I just pulled these acorn barnacle shells out of a side pocket of my backpack. I picked them up in Maine a couple of months ago and promptly forgot about them. Crustaceans, acorn barnacles begin life as free-floating larvae. The tiny head and telson affair is called a nauplius. These grow into a second larval…

    mthew

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  • Two Monhegan Cairns

    Lobster Cove: sharply-edged fragments of igneous gabbro. Pebble Beach: sea-smoothed granite “pebbles”.

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  • Bird Sex

    Bird sex is usually a very brief affair, a quick connection between cloaca. They may make this contact many times over the course of a day, or three, but the actual hookup itself is a matter of seconds. Sperm is transferred without benefit of a penis (except in the case of ducks and a few…

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  • Plants and other lifeforms

    A few more from Maine. Here’s Low-bush Blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) in flower. I’m mad for those little Maine blueberries, which I get frozen and eat all winter.Starflower (Trientalis borealis).Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), a wildflower relation of Dogwood.Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) needs to be revealed. Hiding its light under a bushel. This is a plant I’ve never run…

    mthew

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  • More Maine Birds

    An exhausted Chestnut-sided Warbler (Setophaga pensylvanica) looking for food amidst the festering seaweed of Lobster Cove on Monhegan Island.And here’s one of the Empidonax flycatchers in the same spot. These flycatchers are impossible to tell apart unless they vocalize.There were big flocks of Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) over Monhegan, sometimes landing near by. A Red-necked…

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  • Intertidal Zone

    The tides increase as you approach the Bay of Fundy. While the average difference between high and low is five feet here in NYC, it’s 10 feet in Maine. This means the state’s rocky shore is full of tidal pools, pockets of water temporarily abandoned as the tide pulls away. Such places are ripe with…

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  • Two Rarities…Offshore

    Monhegan Island is ten miles off the coast of Maine. It’s blessed with ample fresh water and lots of plant life, which inspires the insects that hungry migratory birds are looking for as they sweep up from the south this time of year. For many of these migrants, the tiny island is their first sight…

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  • Hello, Maine

    Three views from Portland Head Lighthouse.Clarry Hill’s blueberry fields. The rocky coast of Monhegan.Looking towards White Head from Black Head, Monhegan.

    mthew

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