Oh, Hey.

Holy heck!
So I just started a new career as a New York City Public School Teacher. It has been quite an experience and as much as I am teaching, I am also learning ten times more. It has kept me on my toes and limited my outdoor exposure. Serious respect to teachers, you can never judge the job of a teacher until you step into their shoes (and hopefully they wear comfy shoes, because your feet get crazy tired).

Thankfully, I get a (brief) daily dose of nature. My bike ride commute involves cutting through Prospect Park. So I see things as I whiz by, including all the birders getting a final glimpse of migrants as they make their way south (JEALOUS). I also tend to see the sun rise, and last week, the moon rise after spending almost 12 solid hours at my school, doing what? I can't think back that far.

The following pictures were all taken in the same day- with my iPhone, enjoy the little things I get to enjoy:

A fly sits super still even within close range. The mornings have been cold and this fly can't take off in cool temperatures. He must get some warmth to recharge himself. He looked so beautiful on my landlord's flowers.

The sun rises over the lake at Prospect Park. It is probably just a touch after 7AM.

So this photo does the moon absolutely NO JUSTICE. The moon was rising over the horizon on my way home and it looked so large, I was stopped with a few other lunar admirers. This photo was taken at around 7:15PM

Stay tuned for more soon, I did make a brief escape upstate and even took a moment to see nature-y things!

The Summer Dumping of iPhone Images

The worst thing about having a camera on your phone? You take too many photos.
The best things about having a camera on your phone? You can take a million photos!

     I have way too many images on my phone. These all happened this summer... I will cry as I post them, because I don't want summer to end:

A rather large moth that decided to live in our classroom during summer camp. I dubbed him "James" so that way when a kid would potentially flip out, I'd just say, "Oh, no worries, it's just James the moth." He also camouflaged well with the floor.

At my coworkers picnic wedding, I decided this beetle complemented diamonds quite nicely- you'll notice how this bug bling becomes a personal trend...

A tiny mantis on my hand at my father in-law's house.

While biking to work in Park Slope on Prospect Park Southwest I heard a red tailed hawk, then I looked up and saw him perched on this building. I had to grab a shot.

A fledged robin at the Central Park Zoo in the Central Garden.

This guy got caught in the volunteer room at the zoo. I shut off the light and he flew out and landed right on me. I got him on my hand, grabbed a picture (bug bling) and returned him to a sunny bush where he could warm up.

These bushes right down the street from me got covered in mantids. I have only seen a mantis in Brooklyn one other time, and that was a few years ago.

Mantis Bug Bling. 

A little beetles on a tomato plant in the community garden by the library in Windsor Terrace.

A beautiful dragonfly right outside the Windsor Terrace Public Library.

Oh yeah! AND some videos! First is a snowshoe hare, from when we went to Maine. The other is a Mantid swaying like a leaf down the street here in Brooklyn.

Saying Goodbye to Summer...

     If there is one season I have the hardest time letting go of, it is summer. I like warmth, I like long days, I like green trees and grass, I like wearing shorts, I like my flip flops, I like my sad excuse for a tan. I really despise winter, it is cold and depressing, I really was meant to be a reptile.
     Things are changing not just in the seasons but in my life. For the first time in 7 years I am not working in an establishment that focuses on animals. I have (very sadly) left my job at the Central Park Zoo to focus on my career as a science teacher. So starting Monday morning I will meet my first class of four that I will be teaching. My life is about to get incredibly stressful as a public school teacher in Brooklyn, NY - but it will be a good challenge, and I like challenges!
     So the last 2-3 weeks have been me doing the best that I can to prepare for that very first day. I have had a lot to do, especially after being in the school, seeing the layout of my day, and seeing the students I will have. I decided that this girl needed a meditative moment, and for me, those moments always take me to Prospect Park...

This is what it is always like taking photos of warblers...

Fall warblers: they are here! American Redstart!

A great blue heron on the Lullwater.

A green heron fishes with some pals, some red-eared sliders. 

An immature male wood duck did not like that I sat and watched the green heron. Possibly the same duck I saw last week.

This green heron did not catch anything while I was there, but was always amazingly still. 

I think this is a blackburnian warbler... Fall warblers are notoriously confusing.

This is what a breeding male looks like in spring.

So blurry, but I kind of love it.

The robins were snacking on this sumac tree.

An easy one, a black and white warbler walks up and down tree trunks. This is what they look like in spring.

A common yellowthroat. This is what he looked like in spring.

Gantries and Grasshoppers

A gantry with some serious LI pride.

     On Thursday, my good friend Shannon and myself hopped on our bikes and rode across the Queens border to Gantry State Park in Long Island City. It is very much like the High Line meets Brooklyn Bridge Park. You have repurposing of railroad tracks and ties, gardens full of flowering plants, and amazing, unobstructed views of Manhattan. The centerpieces of the park of the towering gantry cranes. These cranes used to lift rail cars off of car float (literally a floating track with rail cars pulled by tugboat) and place them back on rails to continue their journey out onto Long Island. Also, another sight within the park is the iconic "Pepsi Cola" sign. The sign is on the Northern end of the park and marks where the Pepsi bottling plant used to stand.
     The park itself I give a 4 out of 5, Shannon had me rate the days events on a scale of 5. I gave it a 4 because I wish the park had more trees and shady retreats. The park is very open and very concrete-y. I prefer grass over concrete. I also like trees, it keeps me from getting crispy, and boy did I get crispy, especially with my fair skin.
     The wildlife wasn't very diverse, but I did enjoy the grasshoppers. They were very abundant and beautiful in flight, their spread wings were black with a yellow border. Some of these grasshoppers were very large, I always get a kick out of seeing them. They remind me of my first grasshopper encounter when my dad brought one to me in an old baby food jar after mowing the lawn. I had never really seen grasshoppers on Long Island growing up, so they always seemed so novel to my sisters and myself. Anyway, enjoy some of the sights:

The Empire State and Chrysler buildings are shy today. The United Nations building is that giant blue-green one.

Some pollinators.

This blue winged wasp actually preys upon beetle larvae, making it beneficial to gardens that would normally be disturbed by the grubs living in the soil.

The Empire State.

A gull looks out to the East River from his own UFO lamp post.

The East River. Roosevelt Island is in front of Manhattan. The Queens bridge reaches across from Queens to Manhattan with a support for its span on Roosevelt Island. Roosevelt Island is technically partof the borough of Manhattan, I lived there for a year (it's an interesting place), you can get there by subway on the F line, by vehicle (only from Queens, though), and by aerial tram, from Manhattan. If you saw the first Spiderman Movie, you know the tram, spiderman rescues people stuck on it. Which happens, not the spiderman part, but the stuck part.

Some alliteration: A green grasshopper on granite in gantry park. Isn't this guy just fantastic? I think this is a differentiated grasshopper.

Part of the Orthoptera order of insects, grasshoppers are grouped with crickets, katydids, and locusts (not cicadas- people always call cicadas locusts, but locusts band together to form swarms, which can be destructive at times). 

A young mallard.

     Along with me on this trip, as mentioned was my friend Shannon. She is an amazing woman and has her own company, the Writing Whisperer, you should check it out. More information on Gantry Park can be found here: http://nysparks.com/parks/149/. Enjoy the summer while it lasts!

Butterfly Garden

     Last Sunday was spent at my in-law's home in Rockland County, NY. It was a special treat because we got to see our new niece and her older sister, plus our nephews. My brother in-laws and sister in-laws were there and it is always great to hang around with them. One thing that I always admire about my mother-law is her amazing garden. In spring through summer it is just full of flowers and the critters who are attracted to them, plus their predators. For some reason, the bushes around her home contain thriving populations of matids that prey upon unsuspecting butterflies visiting the flowers. The flowers, I think, are zinnia's and they are just beautiful, pop a butterfly on it, and its a special bonus. Enjoy:

A bumble bee packs away some serious pollen. It is so important that people understand how important bees and other pollinators are! They really are vital not just to the plants that depend on them for reproduction, but we also need them to pollinate our crops!

This is a silver-spotted skipper (pretty sure) and it camouflages incredibly well as a dead flower! Meanwhile in the background, a full on BBQ is taking place.

This mantid is actually a chinese mantis, they come in green or brown and are quite large!

It is not illegal to kill a mantis, growing up people always (and still) say that it is illegal to kill them. It's not true. But, I wouldn't start killing them anyway- they eat many pest insects and are considered beneficial in gardens.

The one in the foreground- not too sure what it is,  might be some kind of checkerspot or crescent??

A brown version of the chinese mantis waits in ambush, but takes a moment to cock its little head to check me out. I do love that about then, how they move their heads quite well.

'Yaking

The view from my kayak.

     It has been an entire summer and I finally took my kayak out for the first, and sadly, probably last time. My kayak lives at my parents' house out on Long Island because keeping a kayak in my apartment wouldn't be impossible, but it would be a challenge and a half. But if I had it here, I would probably find more time to go for a paddle.
     My adventure today took my mother, my best friend Pam, and myself to Empire Kayaks, the place where I actually purchased my kayak from. The people here are always nice to us, the salt marsh is full of stuff to find, and it is where my husband asked me to marry him (yes, in a kayak) so it holds a special place in my heart. If you want a nice place to paddle an explore, check out Empire in Island Park, NY, they rent kayaks of all kinds, they will show you the basics, and ocean kayaks, the kind I use, are very stable and you sit on top, so if you fall out, which isn't impossible (as I have done it), you can easily get back in.
     On our paddle we saw lots of birds, a few terrapins popped their heads up, one sad, washed up, dead eastern box turtle, which I am not sure if it was someones escaped "pet" or if they actually live around this area, and some fish below in the water. It was a beautiful day, and using my "real" camera on the kayak was a challenge, especially when you had to put down your paddle for a few seconds to snap a picture and the wind in that time blew you backward about 15-20 feet.

Lesser yellowlegs stand upon some dried seaweed.

A young semipalmated plover.

This gives you an idea of how hard it can sometimes be to spot a bird. When they move is really when you see them, otherwise they are fairly easy to just paddle right by. A young spotted sandpiper is foraging in the mud.

It seems like it's a day for immature birds, this is a juvenile yellow crowned night heron.  I wonder who his stylist is, love the 'do.

A shy snowy egret flies off.

No idea what this is... it kind of matches a semipalmated sandpiper, but, I am still puzzled by this one.