Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

whales

  • There Were Whales

    D. Graham Burnett’s The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century is a whale of a book. He traces the… evolution (?) of whale science from the cutting room floor of factory ships by scientists who were more or less creatures of the industry, flensing their way through interesting collections of…

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  • Whalers, Ho!

    During the First World War, whale oil was used to make glycerin for explosives. The irony here is leviathan: huge numbers of whales were killed so that parts of them could be used to slaughter huge numbers of humans. Other fats could be used for glycerin, but the British didn’t want to use these other…

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  • Further Extracts of a Sub-Sub-Librarian

    I live in Brooklyn, located on the westernmost end of Long Island, but I also have a family connection to another island east of here. I graduated from high school on Nantucket, Mass., back in the last century, and go there still with some frequency. Between here and there there’s also a geographical connection: both…

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  • Here be Whales

    Thar she blows! Megaptera novaeangliae. We were off the Atlantic Highlands of New Jersey on board the Whale and Dolphin cruise of the American Princess out of Riis Landing at Fort Tilden on the Rockaways. And we saw a humpback whale spouting and rounding its bulk through the water. Whoa! A whale within sight of…

    mthew

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