The Urban Pantheist

I got some pictures off my camera today, from a walk we took the first weekend of October. As it turned out it was one of Maggie's last walks, so I'm glad I captured it.

( 14 more pics )

My dad and I went walking near Brook Farm in West Roxbury yesterday. It was the last day of autumn.

Cavorting in the leaves with Jim, at Alex's new house.

This moth by my porch light is one of two species: either a winter moth, Operophtera brumata, or a Bruce spanworm O. bruceata. Bruce spanworm moths are more likely to be flying in autumn, but there's a chance that this is a winter moth flying early. The field marking that distinguishes them is a small spot on the underside of their hind wings.

This is a male moth, by the way, females of both above species are flightless.

My friend dedhamoutside and I co-led an Urban Nature Walk in the Dedham Town Forest (previously seen here). This sign is relatively new. On the one hand, it's nice for the town to recognize the Town Forest; on the other, now it's more visible for use and abuse. We set out with the intention to find mushrooms and other living things!

( Read more... )

On Sunday the weather started to clear.

( Read more... )

I was frankly dreading today's Fungi Field Walk, because we're in the middle of a drought. I don't think it's rained in over 2 weeks. I expected to find maybe some polypores and perhaps some little forest mushrooms like this one--probably Dacryopinax spathularia.

( Read more... )

The maples begin to succumb to the season.

Every year there's a sudden drop off of visible biodiversity in the North, as cold weather arrives and many of the insects disappear. This year was especially hard on me, as I spent one of the last weeks of the summer in Florida, where insects and spiders and large wading birds and giant reptiles are loose everywhere, all the time as far as I know. Then I came back to Boston on a change of weather day--everyone in Boston thought it was pretty cold compared to the day before, but it was like a 30 degree drop for me. I looked around my yard and it looked like I'd been away for months: the grass was brown, all the sunflowers had come and gone, the perennials and wildflowers had all gone to seed.

I just posted this on tumblr, with a mopey caption:

It's terribly blurry, but the wing veins are nice and visible, in case any entomologists want to identify it. I know it's a carrion fly but beyond that who knows?