Staten Island
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Skimmer Fore and Aft
Female Twelve-spotted Skimmers (Libellula pulchella) seen on Staten Island and Brooklyn.
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Staten Inferno
On Wednesday, I offered up a little slice of heaven in New York City, a NY-state protected piece of Staten Island. Sadly, though, a lot of Staten Island has been turned into hell, another slab of the undifferentiated suburban sprawl that has trashed so much of the rest of the US, through mis-guided development, greed,…
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Butterfly Meadow
The glorious meadow at Mt. Loretto, a New York State “unique area” at the southern end of Staten Island. (Used to be a lot more like it, of course… SI’s development mirrors the post-war suburban destruction of unique areas.) It was abloom with butterflies recently. Here are a few of the species I saw: Pearl…
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Fragile Forktails
A mature female Ischnura posita. An immature female. Inch-long damsels, these. Eat more mosquitos, ladies! A mature male. The exclamation mark on the shoulder is tell-tale for this species, but it can fade with age.
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Shorewalk
“Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the products of sea-slime.” H.D. Thoreau on Cape Cod. I walked from the Lemon Creek Fishing Pier to Conference House Park along the Raritan Bay shore of Staten Island recently. The red glacial till of the…
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Incoming!
A Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) was raising vocal hell. Then it started to fly straight at me, arrow-like. I instinctively flinched as it passed over head. No fool I. The bird spun around, and returned for another strafing. I’ve been here before. This kind of dive-bombing is classic nest protection strategy for terns; that little…
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Killdeer
A Killdeer blends in nicely with these beach pebbles along the southwest shore of Staten Island.But note this binomial: Charadrius vociferus. I heard three of them long before I ever saw them.
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Locust Borers
…making more Locust Borers (Megacyllen robiniae). This wasp-like longhorn beetle feeds on goldenrod and lays its eggs on Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) trees, into which the larvae bore…
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Yellow Bear Crossing
Yellow Bear caterpillar (Spilosoma virginica), a.k.a. Virginian Tiger Moth. The very long hairs here are key to identifying this species, since they can be quite variable in coloration, starting cream to yellow and darkening with age, some becoming black. We saw a few of the older ones as well on the paved trails at Fresh…
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Rough Stinker
One of the Brochymena genus Rough Stink Bugs. I think this may be an instar of B. quadripustulata, since it has the four spots or bumps, but the shield pattern isn’t quite like an adult’s (yet). These stink bugs are cryptically colored to blend in with bark, but they really stick out on a leaf.…
Backyard and Beyond 