Sunset Park
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Weekend Update
It’s been absurdly warm. Lots of trees are nowhere ready to shake off their leaves. Bumblebees, which can take 60 degree temperatures, you might expect to still be around, but some of the smaller bees were out and about, too. This metallic green bee of the Agapostemon genus, for instance. But it’s late October: there…
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Fall-ish
Yesterday was the first day it felt like fall, more than three weeks past the equinox. And then it dropped to 41 overnight. This morning the radiators were gurgling. Locally, not many leaves have turned yet, but these, fallen from a Nyssa sylvatica (Black Gum, Black Tupelo), are in the mood.This Eastern Phoebe was a…
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Tyrannus tyrannus juniors
Yesterday I noticed a large corvid being chased by something small. I couldn’t get on either of them quick enough tell who was who, but afterwards I noticed an Eastern Kingbird perched on one of the London planes lining the northern edge of Sunset Park. Could this have been the pursuer? They don’t call them…
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Opossum
Our only marsupial, the Virginia Opossum, Didelphis virginiana, commonly called possum, is plenty familiar with the city. But, being nocturnal, they aren’t seen all that often. This one seems to have lingered past sunrise, at a favored food source: the garbage pails.Remember, these critters are highly resistant to rabies. If they’re snarling at you it…
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Hackberry
A hackberry drupe. Can we call it a “hack”? It is surprisingly smooth at this stage of unripeness, and extremely difficult to photograph. This is through a 10x loupe. Other names for the tree include nettletree, sugarberry, and beaverwood, but why hackberry? One source says the Scottish “hagberry,” for a Eurasian bird cherry (Prunus padus),…
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Raptor Wednesday
The absences must be marked as well as the presences. Last spring, a pair of Osprey nested on this very tall light post above the parking lot at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal. Barely a twig remains. To my knowledge, this was the first such nest on the New York Bay edge of Kings County. (You’d have to…
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Bipunctata in Sunset Park
Two-spotted Ladybug (Adalia bipunctata). Back in 2012, I reported to the Lost Ladybug Project that I found some of these critters in catalpa trees in Brooklyn Bridge Park. From the LLP, I learned that mine was the third New York State record for this species, and the only one in NYC. There was much rejoicing.Yesterday,…
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Naturalist Notes
Viola canadensis, a native violet.It was cool, so this Robin (Turdus migratorius) was hunkered down on those blue blue eggs.A Red Velvet Mite of the family Trombidiidae. Predators of the leaf-litter zone, as large as a blood-gorged tick and, being mite-y, rather looking like one.So many vocal White-Throated Sparrows (Zonotrichia albicollis) in the Ramble!And a…
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Raptor Wednesday
As I glanced out the window one fine morning… There was a zoom here and a zoom there and a Cooper’s Hawk on patrol took a fairly longish break, for a Cooper’s Hawk, on a fire escape, to watch the local Starlings and Rock Doves and Sparrows recover from their fright. Not a bad shot…
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Raptor Wednesday
Sometimes all you get is the general shape of the critter. The big-headed American Kestrel (Falco sparverius), for instance. Other times, you take your best shot. I thought this might be a Kestrel, too. But it sure was spending a lot of time up there, a behavioral characteristic I haven’t seen so much with Kestrels.…
Backyard and Beyond 