Prospect Park
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Flying
Insect-summer is over. But last week I was in Prospect Park and saw masses of dragonflies over the Butterfly Meadow, in a patch of the Nethermead, and then in two clusters along the Long Meadow. They all seemed to be Common Green Darners, the large migrating species. And they were hunting on the wing. Gnats,…
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Drey
A large clump of leaves in the branches of a tree is often mistaken for a bird nest. It’s actually a drey, or squirrel nest. More specifically, it’s a summer nest. Winter will find them squirreled away in warmer, sturdier spots, like your attic. This Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula), helping to perpetuate the impression that…
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Seen on recent saunters
Beech nuts and the pods they come in on. At another beech tree, this time a stump, some funky fungus.I like the way one of these “organ pipe” mud-dauber-wasp nests follows the arch here. It will be some months before we see the trees this leafy again.
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A Bumper Buckeye Crop
There is a single old Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava) on the edge of the Long Meadow. I walked by on Tuesday, wondering if there might be any of the big seeds, or buckeyes, still around, or yet to fall. Well, I hit the jackpot. There were many and they had just fallen, so they were…
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Sympetrum Meadowhawks
The red meadowhawk dragonflies are difficult to identify in the field, since several members of the genus Sympetrum look rather similar.But I figured these out because of the legs. These are Autumn Meadowhawks (Sympetrum vicinum), in some sources called Yellow-legged; other meadowhawks have black legs. They’re small: 1.3″ long. Their colors, especially the bright males,…
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Twilight’s Last Gleaming Wood Ducks
We’ve been having some magnificent sunsets lately. This was last night, from the Nethermead. When I crossed over Payne Hill, I found a mess of Wood Ducks still at the far end of the Upper Pool. I went hoping for a repeat of the previous night’s phenomenon, which I heard about from two witnesses: masses…
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Coincidental Juxtaposition
A flash of yellow in a flock of House Sparrows caught my eye in the Nethermead. The bird quickly flew back down to the ground from its temporary perch. Melopsittacus undulatus, no? The same day I saw four Red-tailed hawks kettling above the Lake. Later, one flew low over the Nethermead. And then later still,…
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Webs
A complex of webs connected to a seven-foot-long horizontal piece of spidersilk. Remarkable. A view from the side of the complex, showing another web, making for one large and three satellite webs.The only spider in evidence was sucking on dinner.
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Chestnuts
American Chestnuts (Castanea dentata). Be careful handling these burrs, or pods: the spines are v. sharp! Most of the nuts produced by these young trees are scrawny, undeveloped things, quite fibrous inside, but they still seem to disappear into the maws of the squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis).This one was vocally displeased with my poaching of the…
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Yellow Bear
Yellow Bear caterpillar (Spilosoma virginica), sometimes known as the Yellow Wooly Bear. Compare with one I photographed last year: they come in a great range of colors. According to Wagner, the pale early instars are gregarious, the older instars wonder lonely as a cloud. (I may have hopped-up Wagner’s description a bit.)
Backyard and Beyond 