plants
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Ball Moss
Ball moss (Tillandsia recurvata) isn’t actually a moss; it’s a flowering plant. This particular example was found on the ground after it had flowered. This plant is in the same genus as the famous dripping Spanish Moss (and both are in the same family as the pineapple). These not-mosses are epiphytes, aerial plants that attach…
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Sights
Yesterday, in Brooklyn Bridge Park:A lone female Red-breasted Merganser (Mergus serrator).As a Man of Hair, I do appreciate the random crest feathers.Unexpectedly, a Red-necked Grebe (Podiceps grisegena). I last ran into one in February. The red of the neck, breeding plumage, looks like it is just starting to come in. The bird was spending more…
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Sumac Robin
10* yesterday. This is one of four American Robins who were scouring the Sumac berries. Not all Robins head south for the winter. These could also be birds from further north, this their south. Wintering Robins tend to flock and change their dietary habits, since there are few earthworms to be had now.
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Fall
I cropped Lower Xanadu out of this image so that you could enjoy the honey-wheat color of this Spartina in the morning sunlight without any distractions.
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Green-Wood
Cherries are starting to bloom.Although still chilly, the morning sun was strong enough to begin heating these hard cases up.The bulbs and corms, of course, are bursting with stored-up goodness. Dark-eyed Junco, a winter bird, still hanging around. Two weeks ago, when I was last in Green-Wood, the cemetery was all about the Common Raven,…
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Checklist
Snowdrops: Check! Crocuses: Check! Witchhazel: Check! And half-a-dozen or so Red-winged Blackbirds, bringing the area around the Terrace Bridge to sudden, raucous life with their insistent “I am now here!” vocalizations: Check! It was interesting to observe these birds, all males. Two at the feeders presented variations in plumage, with one bird sill having some…
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Gray, with red highlights
It was as gray a Ring-billed Gull yesterday.But in Brooklyn Bridge Park, if you looked closely, there were flashes of color.Subtle color, mostly.But in a few cases, as in these rose hips, vibrant, almost lurid in comparison.And speaking of lurid, these seem to have been devoured from within.
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Two Invasives
One strategy for taking over the world is just to produce massive amounts of your kind. Some of ’em are going to take. Sometimes a whole lot of them are going to take. Here are the reproductive agents of two introduced species that have become invasive in our part of the world:Water chestnut, devil pod,…
Backyard and Beyond 