A pair of Northern Pintail ducks – like a mirror image – with their reflections.
Tag: Julie Feinstein
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 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 […]
A Bubbling Bee
A while ago I wrote a blog about the fly pictured above.I’d caught it in the unlikely act of blowing a bubble. Although no one knows why flies blow bubbles, theories range from concentrating liquid food by evaporation, to aerating to reduce some kinds of microbial activity, to fly sickness, cleaning the mouthparts, cooling off […]
Summer Azure
Summer azure butterflies are all over Brooklyn’s flowers right now. The place is teeming with them. But they are small and often overlooked. Their wingspan is about an inch, so the one pictured above is just half an inch tall. They are white underneath and usually hold their wings closed over their backs. It is […]
Lost Ladybug
The two spot is one of three species that the Lost Ladybug Project is hoping to hear about from ladybug spotters like me — and you. Basically, the ranges of some native ladybugs are shrinking and the group is trying to find out why. They encourage everyone to take pictures of local ladybugs (all of […]
Milk Snake
I saw this milk snake, Lampropeltis triangulum, being moved from a dangerous parking lot into the woods at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in northern New Jersey last year around this time.