New York Botanical Garden
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In Da Bronx
Franklinia in bloom. What a scrumptious flower! And the bees agree. (All of today’s trees are descendants from seeds collected by William Bartram in the 1760s. The plant is unknown in the wild.) On the mammal front, Cottontail and Chipmunk and Gray Squirrel.In addition to the frog, a Garter Snake crossed our path, and a…
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Two Butterflies
Northern Cloudywing (Thorybes pylades).Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos); this one was particularly attached to this pebble.
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Nyssa
Black Tupelo/Blackgum/Bee Gum/Sourgum (Nyssa sylvatica) beginning to turn. Happy September!
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Gnawy
Bald-faced hornet (Dolichovespula maculata) cutting away at the black locust hand-rails at the Native Plant Garden at NYBG.Look at those mandibles! Several hundred workers in a colony will build up those football-sized nests so beloved by nature bloggers from wood pulp and saliva; it looks like a lot of work, because it doesn’t seem like…
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Leggy
Daddy-, or Granddaddy-longlegs… but wait a minute. There are only six legs here. The Opiliones order of harvestman are related to spiders and have eight legs. What’s going on? It looks like the first joint to the right of the face is missing a limb, so presumably is the other side. Missing that joint, too,…
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Snouty
A young Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina) tests the air. Neither a wizened old warrior the size of a European subcompact nor a silver dollar-sized baby, this one was about 4″ long.
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Damsels & Dragons
The Blue-fronted Dancer (Argia apicalis). One and half inches long, found along the Bronx River and further away on woodland paths. I’m getting better at distinguished these wee things, which means getting closer with lens of varying sorts. This is a male. Species IDs include the black hair-line markings on the thorax and the blue…
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Natural object: Owl pellet
An owl pellet from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, “collected” on Tuesday. Owls are gobblers, scarfing down their food whole. The undigestible bits of bone and fur and feather are coughed up in pellets. You may have dissected some in school (I missed out), because you can pretty much put together what the owl ate by…