Take a second look …
The yellow eyes of the Saw-whet Owl are so startling, their gaze so steady, that we tend to ignore everything else. It’s easy to miss the trace of blood just below the owl’s bill, a smear of something that changes the way we look at the bird, that deepens our understanding of it. What discoveries might we make if we took that second look more often, if we trained ourselves to see?
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Moths, an introduction
With butterflies, it’s color that attracts us first, but with moths, it’s their names. Just to scratch the surface, to get a hint of what they offer in North America, let the following names fall trippingly from your tongue: Rufous-banded Crambid, Pigeon Acrobasis, Frosty Olethreutes, Crepuscular Rock-rose Moth, Spun Glass Slug Moth, Ferruginous Eulin, Feather-duster Agonopterix, Gray-blue Swammerdamia, Ruddy Metarranthis, Black-blotched Schizura, Wavy Chestnut Y, Large Mossy Glyph, Spectacled Nettle Moth, Marble Green Leuconycta, Rosy Rustic, Reniform Helotropha, Pavlovski’s Monopsis, Pale-winged Midget, Wheat Head Armyworm, and the Owl-eyed Bird-dropping Moth. Some names express a not-very-subtle moral judgement on a creature … Read more
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Tulips
My wife and I spent a week in Amsterdam last August, and one day we walked over to the Tulip Museum on Prinsengracht. The museum occupies the first floor of an old house. When you come in off the street, there’s a souvenir shop and a counter where you buy tickets to tour the rest of the museum. When the woman by the cash told us how much tickets cost, I asked if they offered a senior’s discount. “What’s a senior?” she said. “Anyone over 65.” “Are you over 65?” “Yes.” “All right. Then you can have a discount. How … Read more
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Spring migration
Well, there went May in its hurried fashion: the height of spring migration and the busiest month in the garden allotment. Here are highlights from that first field of activity. Those from the garden will come later. I keep a list each year—part of a friendly rivalry with a fellow-birder—of the spring warblers I see. This year the total was about average at 24, and the undoubted star the Kentucky Warbler that inhabited the Wet Woods on the Leslie Street Spit for a full week. I had to go twice to see it. First on a Friday afternoon, when I … Read more
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