mammals
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Colors of Spring
Redbud. Orange fungus. American robin blue. Grey squirrel (black variant) & magnolia. Burnt orange fungus. Black dog, having a hell of a time trying to get out of the Lullwater.
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Tentative IDs
Wildness forensics continues: we found this skull in a kettle pond on the top of Highland Park. I think it’s raccoon: note those molars and check out this PDF to see what you think. On Cypress Ave, we found another mammal, this time definitely a raccoon, that was road kill. In nearby Machpelah Cemetery, where…
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Brooklyn Woodchuck
I’m bringing this out of the archives in case anybody ends up here from a nice article in the Times by Jesse Greenspan on city groundhogs/woodchucks, in which I am quoted.Through the urban naturalist grapevine, I knew that woodchucks lived in Green-Wood Cemetery, but I’d never run across one before. Yesterday, I noticed something oddly…
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Through the window
That hearty urban mammal, the gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, makes its way across the Back 40 Bypass between the abandoned house to the south and the half-abandoned house to the north. (It’s a bit of a slum corner, I’m afraid.) The squirrels have a condo in the upper stories of the half-abandoned house to the…
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Fieldnotes: Muskrats
If you build it, they will come. Is this your typical muskrat habitat? On Sunday, looking for more caterpillars and exuviae in Brooklyn Bridge Park, we ran into a couple of muskrats, Ondatra zibethicus, munching away on the new plantings. Yes, we were surprised. One of the animals was a youngster, and some comments found…
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Other Icelandic Animals
White-tailed bumblebee (Bombus locorum), seen a number of places in Iceland, finally digitally captured in the small garden behind the Parliament building. Besides birds, Iceland doesn’t have a lot of other animals, including invertebrates. The number of bugs is growing, though, as the world warms. Moths were a common sight, in the long diurnal light.…
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Eastern Cottontail
The mammal’s eye. Some bird seed encouraged this one to get closer. Three others grazed the yard. That’s a rabbit-blood-bloated tick on the ear there. The flash gave it a red-eye effect like a wild sunset. As if it was guarding the Cave of Caerbannog. “Oh, it’s just a harmless little ‘bunny’ isn’t it?”
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Red Squirrel
This red squirrel, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus, was chasing, or being chased — in a circle it’s hard to tell who’s on first — by a gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, on a big ash tree in Bradford, MA. Meanwhile, a neighborhood cat was patrolling the nearby fence, hoping for a loser. We chased the cat off. I’ve…
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Beach-combing
I could spend the rest of my life beach-combing. You never know what will turn up. Previous discoveries have included an enormous leatherback turtle and a piece of whale vertebrae, although, admittedly, neither of these was in the New York Bight/Hudson River estuary system region. This small fish was. I found it, quite desiccated, on…
Backyard and Beyond 