I was admiring this photo of a great blue heron and its shadow when I remembered the poem “Heron Rises from the Dark, Summer Pond” by Mary Oliver: So heavy is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, always it is a surprise when her smoke-colored wings open and she turns from the […]
Author: Julie Feinstein
I am a Collection Manager at the American Museum of Natural History, an author, and a photographer. I live in New York City. I recently published my first popular science book, Field Guide to Urban Wildlife, an illustrated collection of natural history essays about common animals. I update my blog, Urban Wildlife Guide, every Sunday.
Time for Cape May
Hawks are migrating now and one of the best places to see them is Cape May, New Jersey. Lots of the birds flying down the Atlantic flyway get channeled into the southern tail of New Jersey and end up concentrated at Cape May Point. They often wait there for weather favorable for the flight across […]
It is the end of September already!
I am on vacation. Here’s a poem by Sara Teasdale entitled September Midnight: Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper‘s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The […]
Camouflaged!
“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” Henry Miller
Laughing Gull Season is Almost Over
I keep noticing laughing gulls, Leucophaeus atricilla, around New York and thinking about how they will soon be gone for the year. Laughing gulls that breed in the northeast fly south for winter to the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and to Central and South America.I bet they are beginning to feel the pull. We […]
A walk in New Jersey
I took a nice long walk in New Jersey today. I was about an hour’s drive from New York City in Hopewell. It looked like this…
A Four-toothed Mason Wasp
This lovely wasp can be found drinking nectar at flowers throughout the eastern United States right now. It is a good wasp to have around the garden because the females round up leaf-rolling caterpillars — the kinds that eat your plants — to provision their nests. When it is time to reproduce, the female wasp […]