Morse

Meet Morse Jones. They're a groundhog (he/she, we don't know). Morse, for obvious reasons, and Jones, because since the pandemic's worst days, when Green-Wood's side gates first opened permanently to the community, we have been calling a family of groundhogs that emanates from a burrow nearby The Joneses. 

Morse is very pleased with the grass situation, currently. Nice and tender.

Morse has been sending SOS's into the ether, but we're not sure any help is coming.

The Cold Edges

In January the white throated sparrows do not sing. Their song is high and sweet, and pierces the heart, somehow. When they do sing, you know that winter is leaving. I saw this one perched among bittersweet berries on the frozen edges of Jamaica Bay.

I was hoping to see snow geese, and testing an injured foot (how funny that you don't think of your feet until you realize that without them, you are lost).  There were no snow geese, but the usual mockingbirds were in residence, swallowing juniper berries and hunting for the last rosehips. Rosa multiflora is as rampant as it is on the East Coast because birds find the hips delicious. 

Canadian geese and seagulls perched on the ice, with downtown Manhattan rearing beyond them.

At home, on the dormant terrace, we see the same birds. Mockingbirds come to eat the blueberries I put out for them, and the sparrows, shelled sunflower seeds. Little juncos share the seed, and woodpeckers visit the suet feeder. Sometimes a raptor strikes, and feathers fly. The geese and seagulls are above, crossing the wide sky. 

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Gardenista: Pistachio-Fir Cookies

Inside and Out

At this end of our apartment, despite a welcome skylight, the afternoon light has become somber. The last roses have been picked, the first ripe yuzu have arrived (these are from Bhumi Growers in New Jersey, whose trees live in pots. They are protected from freezing by greenhouses in winter). And in the shadows is a bunch of mugwort, drying quietly for winter use ins soups, stews, sides...

Outside, the suet feeder has some regular guests. We've named the downy woodpecker Pique, because whenever they land they announce: PIQUE! There is also a much larger woodpecker, which I think is red-bellied. Even though its reddest part is its head... Possibly to be named Harris. (There is a very unfriendly hardware store nearby with a permanent sign outside: Got Ants? Get Harris! And yesterday we received some ant visitors, who had to be discouraged. But now...we got Harris.)

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Autumn Walks and Picnics

North

We arrived for a short break in Maine just in time for blue weather and sunshine.

The woods crowding right down to the water still awe me. 

Sitting beside the clear water, hearing the small sounds as the tide moves massively and delicately in and out, is beyond price. A seal surfaces, breathing. An animal swims across the smooth inlet - at first we think it is an otter. But when it walks onto the island nearby it is clearly marten-like. It is a mink. And not in coat-form. Just doing its private mink-things, where it belongs. Later, in the woods, we see two porcupines in a maple tree, talking to one another

I don't know how to value these experiences. Watching the Frenchman, who has been working seven days a week for a long time, is like watching fresh life being pushed straight into his veins.

European sea rocket (Cakile maritima) grows on these pebbled shorelines. In New York we have the native America species, C. edentula. Both have horeseradish-strong leaves and young pods.

Under the trees, on springy soil rich with layers of fir and hemlock needles, we walk along small trails and pause often to look. At ferns, at bark, at mushrooms, at red squirrels.

Honey mushrooms, is my first thought. But the essential (if you're thinking about dinner or want accurate identification) spore print I take is tan. Honeys have white spores. They turn out to be a species of Pholiota, also edible. The other possibility is a species of Gallerina, which is exceptionally toxic. Mushrooming is always humbling. We didn't eat them.

And a vivid Hygrocybe. 

More mushroom challenges. I still don't know what these are. They grow flush with the deep quilts of moss that cover the duff under needled evergreens. Their caps are solid, dense, and dimpled downwards, so that each is concave at its center. I collected a flock to make spore prints (white) but still have a clutch of possibilities and no real idea.  Possibly a species of Lactarius (milky cap), although the solid texture suggests Tricholoma. I know: Talking to myself. 

But it's all so interesting.

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@66squarefeet

Lilies, and the mighty eep

Regal lilies on the terrace. They opened in the night, and this evening we will sit down outside to a scented supper.

In all the years that we lived with Don Estorbo de la Bodega Dominicana (our big black cat, with a mighty eep) he never tried to nibble a lily (they are highly toxic to cats). I suspect this is because he was an outdoor cat and had grass nearby. He'd actually run after me on the roof if he saw me weeding, and beg for a blade of green. He also never showed the slightest interest in hunting birds, which was also strange, but welcome.  He did hate pigeons, though. Typical New Yorker.

But this is a post about lilies, not dead cats. I am ready for a new cat. It only took eight years. That kitty left huge paw prints to fill.

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Into the Wild(s...: of Brooklyn)

In Green-Wood Cemetery there was a hornet's nest in a Turkish hazelnut tree. It is exquisite. If it was Art, people would line up and wait.

Under a young oak tree nearby there was a young raccoon, foraging for acorns. 

In Prospect Park a downy woodpecker stood silent for a minute. Was she listening or resting? Or dreaming woodpeckerish dreams?

In a patch of jewelweed where storm-fallen trees have created a slash of sunlight, hummingbirds feasted and fought among the flowers. Then they rested. Tiny as moths, fierce as fundamentalists.

They perched on the roots of tilted trees, preening and scratching, itching and plotting.

And at home, on the small terrace, a monarch found the milkweed, at last.

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Find me on Instagram @66squarefeet

Dear Mr. Springsteen - thank you for the snow buntings

Dear Mr. Springsteen,

Thanks to you, the Frenchman (that's my husband) and I saw snow buntings for the first time last Sunday. At Sandy Hook, in New Jersey. They were minding their own business, just like you, when you were booked on a bogus DWI charge that made headlines three months after the event. 

(Snow buntings are a bird, by the way. Winter migrants in these parts.) 

Also, we saw Sandy Hook itself for the first time, minus the hordes of summer. It was covered in snow, from shoreline to shoreline. It was surprising, and stunning.

Until spotting a recent breaking-news headline of your arrest last year, I had not realized that Sandy Hook was a very striking park, or part of the National Gateway Recreational Area within easy driving-reach of the city. So I Google-mapped it. Just over an hour! We packed hot soup and a hot toddy and headed out from Brooklyn.

The articles about what seems like a nothing-event have riveted me. I don't read tabloids, and I avoid celebrity gossip. But there this was, in the upstanding New York Times. Whose reported version of the events keeps changing. The original articles are nowhere to be found online, thanks to the "Updated" loophole in digital media that erases former iterations. 

Those first - now missing or very padded - articles omitted a pertinent fact, and simply reported a report: the now super-repeated observations by one fastidious ranger, Officer Hayes. Which made you sound dead drunk. Not one initial article mentioned your blood alcohol level: one quarter of the legal limit. You had several shots to go.

Since this was such a minor event made major only by your celebrity status, I was very curious about who leaked it, and why. It was a shitty thing to do. But mostly it was a sense of bafflement: Why are they writing about it?

One of the first versions, in the breaking news column (seriously, this is breaking news? Oh, hi, clickbait) mentioned only, in That Ranger's words, that you were "visibly swaying" and smelled of alcohol. Later one said that you said (in exactly that disbelieving tone) that a fan had given you a bottle of Tequila. Where, it asked indignantly, was the evidence of this and why had no fan posted this on social media? 

A self-righteous op ed in the Chicago Tribune by JD Mullane wagged its finger at you, you naughty old man and concluded, "At 71, it’s foolish. Tipsy, alone, riding a motorcycle. Ranger Hayes may have saved an American legend... Or maybe it was a call for help, that Bruce is suffering on a level far deeper than we’d expect."

Really? What should you be doing at 71? Knitting in a group circle? Checking into senior living? Looking dapper (a patronizing word reserved purely for the respectably-dressed and old) on your way to church? Whatever you do, don't get on your motorbike and have fun.

Clearly you are begging for help. And Ranger Hayes should go on dog doo-doo duty for a month. Or six. Take JD Mullane with you.

And sad? A famous guy getting on his Triumph (very classy bike, by the way) and heading out alone, minus entourage, minders, or social media circus, to visit a favorite wild spot isn't sad. It's refreshing. And he has a shot, maybe two (like you said), of Tequila after a fan spots him and waves a bottle. That was a gracious thing to do. Fans can be a pain in the butt. 

Let's talk evidence. Why did it take several news cycles for that pertinent fact, your blood alcohol level, to be reported? 0.02%. The legal limit is 0.08%. Sorry, shouting. And why wasn't that the first fact to be quoted in any subsequent story? I know, because that would have un-story-ed it.

I'm not sure why I am this disgusted. Maybe it's the feeding frenzy. There is so much real hurt cascading down on us. But the relentless pursuit of meaningless clicks continues. The minute attention span to which we have agreed to become hostage drives everything information-related. The business model that makes it necessary for reputable news sources to bow down to their advertisers - who need eyeballs on ads - at the cost of proper reporting. The pressure that serious media are under to simply stay alive. I have no doubt that this blip boosted sales.

And today, in the breaking news column, bottom right, just where the first non-event broke over ten days ago, is the headline: Bruce Springsteen Drunk Driving Charges Dismissed. 

No kidding. Never saw that coming.

You can read the updated version of the updated update, here.

Ugh.

I'm going on a media diet.

But thank you for going to Sandy Hook. It's beautiful. The water, the view of Manhattan on the horizon, the dunes for days, and the tallest holly trees I have ever seen, growing in the sand. 

And for the snow buntings, visiting from the Arctic highlands.

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Forage On

Winter, with wings

          Photos: Vincent Mounier

I give you: gratuitous bird-feeding pictures. A February pleasure, apparently. It has been over a decade since I fed North American birds from my hands. And that was in Stanley Park, Vancouver. (There was a weaver, in South Africa, inbetween.)

Titmice and chickadees in Brooklyn. (Why not the song sparrows, hopping at my feet? Or the bold cardinals?)

It is precious, the minute pressure of tiny bird feet on your skin.

And it feels for a while as though this is the only thing.

The pictures above were taken in Green-Wood Cemetery. The monarch butterfly mask is from Society 6. The artist who makes this one is  Eclectic at Heart and I like their other masks, too. They are all double-layered, with space for a filter-insert. But they do get loose after a lot of wearing and washing. So (after six months of daily wear) I will order some more. (For grocery shopping we now wear double masks: a surgical mask under the cloth. Yay.)

Pensive chickadee. These pictures (different jacket! Maskless!) were taken up in Pelham Bay a couple of weeks ago, in the Bronx. Then, as now, we walked into the city wilds to enjoy the snow. There were very few people, so I was relieved to de-mask. (Although, an hour into our walk, post-picnic, we bumped right into our friends Stephen and Chad on a narrow, snowy path. Which seemed surreal and perfectly normal, at the same time. We re-masked to greet one another with sounds of muffled effusion.)

I want my own chickadee.

Look at the two birds. It doesn't seem real. Very fast shutter speed on that long-lensed Canon of the Frenchman's.

We saw a family of deer in these woods, sitting in the snow, and chewing whatever deer chew in snowy February. Their coats looked thick and warm. 

Mostly, there was silence. We are becoming connoisseurs of where to find it.

Tomorrow, we will look for some more.

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Find me on Instagram @66squarefeet

The winter wilds

Inbetween rainy days the Frenchman and I made our first 2021 visit to Mt Loretto Unique Area, the state park on Staten Island that is a regular escape for us within the city. It's about a forty minute drive from home and almost always offers us something interesting. Then again, we may be easily pleased: Even rabbits and groundhogs amuse us. But not in January. We could almost hear the groundhogs snoring. 

The spirit of my friend David Burg walked with us - he knew and talked a lot about this place, which he helped conserve. He died suddenly last summer. One of the many shades of 2020.

We walked to the beach, a rocky and eroded shoreline, equal parts crumbling infrastructure, New York Harbor detritus, pebbles and seaweed. 

We settled on some low tide rocks to picnic, and just as I had poured our steaming soup (borscht) from a Thermos and opened the container of flaky pastry oyster mushroom rolls, the Frenchman, always scanning the water, spotted splashes, and quivered. Soon, we could see a seal.

Then more seals, who found rocks exposed by the low water, and basked. We watched for a happy hour.

Near our feet a gull spent at least half an hour trying to dive for something, very unsuccessfully, too buoyant, it seemed to get deep enough. But then triumph. A nice, fat clam, which was soon dropped from a height to shatter, before being picked clean. (The gull asked us if we had any hot sauce but we couldn't help.)

We walked back to the car through the wet fields, and drove home to Brooklyn, counting deer along the way before crossing the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and ending our Saturday holiday. 

Now, on a rainy Sunday, we are working, and sorting photos, and tidying away the old year, so that nothing clutters the new. Who knows what it will bring?

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NYBG Class, 21 January 2021

In closing

From the winter terrace, where the daily parade of small things is our entertainment.

Some of us have had a better year than others. Many have been stretched thin, or crushed by events and personal loss. If I remember one positive quality from 2020 it will be the generosity of others - kind words, cards, messages and money: Through donations here we have been able to help two families far away, suffering from the effects of COVID - loss of work, and the loss of a mother - without the means to tide them over in hard times. 

Thank you.

Wishing for you that 2021's peanut-filled pine cones are within reach. Even if you are not quite sure how to get back to where you began. 

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Find me daily on Instagram @66squarefeet

Breezy Point - Backroads and Beyond

With the season turning towards fall the Frenchman and I migrate like birds back to the open spaces of Fort Tilden and Breezy Point, situated near the end of the long and skinny Rockaway barrier beach (the very end is a very gated, very white community* - to reach the point itself we use our legs, walking along the beach). 

[*Since I posted this the New York Times wrote about Breezy Point's Trump enclave.]

The reason we go back now is simple: we're allowed to park in the fisherperson's lot, again. After June 15th and before September 15th you need a permit (and to obtain it you have to show up at the permit office with a fishing rod). 

I walked alone on the deserted backroads, which were fragrant with autumn clematis in its glory. The roads are the abandoned infrastructure of a Cold War nuclear missile base - ponder that. The Frenchman left in the opposite direction, on his five-mile run along the low-tide beach while his camera gear waited for him in the car.  

Autumn pokeweed berries have been eaten from their fuchsia panicles by transiting migratory birds (as much as gardeners may dislike poke - Phytolacca americana - it is an important and native food for birds; and humans can eat the cooked spring time shoots - see Forage, Harvest, Feast for recipes and more detailed information).

In mid-walk my phone rang, which it never does. Frenchman. Birds on beach! Big birds! Beautiful wings, red beaks! They sounded like skimmers. He was running back, fast, to the car for his new camera. I about-faced and headed towards him. We met on the beach and speedwalked back out to the point, into the bright western sun.

On our way we passed little furries of piping plovers sanderlings [see comments].

I love how they scurry back and forth, pursuing the edges of the advancing and retreating water.

And at last, after a mile-and-a-half or so, the big birds that had excited the Frenchman: beautiful black skimmers in flocks on the sand. I have only ever seen one bird at a time. They all pointed neatly into the wind. Summer residents up the Northeast coast, they are also on their way south as the weather chills.

Cars are allowed on this beach, with permits. With dwindling safe habitats for shorebirds, and increasing pressure on their populations, I have never understood this. Shoreline ecology is exceptionally fragile. Tire treads just kill it. If you want to fish, walk.

Conservation should be at the forefront of any administration's funding. Instead, it is a distant afterthought.

On our more sedate walk back we were treated to the extremes of human behaviour. This lone fisherperson wearing their mask.  

And a hundred yards behind him: A massive, unmasked, packed-like-sardines gathering of humans at the Silver Gull Beach Club (which lies at the eastern end of the gated Breezy Point community). Do they all have COVID-resistance? Are their parents or grandparents and children and friends immune? What about their colleagues at work? What about the staff working there? 

Is this what is meant by a superspreader event? 

We didn't even like walking downwind of them.

(Honey, is that a tickle in my throat?)

And that's all, folks (or perhaps the beginning, for some). 

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NYBG Class, 15 October