autrpy's Favorites

Photo taken by Derek Odendaal of the HAT of the MCSA/Outramps. His description - Altitude 1298 m. The site is about 60 m west of the summit beacon. It is rather flat with sedges, short grass, many Watsonias and some Mimetes. A community of about 10 plants in close proximity. I looked out for more of these plant when going down (northern slope), but saw none. The plant is low growing, about 300 mm high with dense stems. The stems with leaves are between 10 and 12 mm in diameter and rather firm.

Photos starting with photo#7 show a comparison of male flowers with the female flowers. Male flowers have anthers held up by long stamens. These anthers will look yellowish reddish when fresh and with pollen covering them. I believe the anthers turn purple when the pollen is spent (I could be wrong about that, but the photos illustrate both). The female flowers have red tendril like styles. Photo 5 shows the peeled open red bud scales and clusters of female flowers, each with several styles.

Red maples are predominantly dioecious, meaning that a tree will have either male or female flowers. However, sometimes a tree may have both female and male flowers, ie monoecious.

The Red maple has a lot of plasticity in terms adapting to various environments. Typically, it's a bottomland species that likes moist soil. It's often found growing alongside Silver maple, American elm, Swamp white oak and Black ash. The last three species I don't see too much here in Queens, though. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a Black ash here in NYC.

More info here:
https://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/fmg/nfmg/bl_hardwood/eco/spechar/maple_red.html

Dense hummock with tightly packed rounded capitula. Branch leaves straight. Spreading branches are long down turned and white tipped. Stem leaves seen in last photo are triangular at the tip and no fimbriation(fringe) or notch. I think this is Sphagnum Capillifolium subspecies Capillifolium

Male Pachydiplax longipennis being eaten by Opheodrys aestivus

Like a lot of these predation shots I heard the irregular beat of frantic, chafing wings before locating the scene.

I was taken aback when I first realized what was happening. That quickly wore off though and I was on the ground trying to get as close as possible without disrupting or having any meaningful influence on the situation.

Two great predators. In the end the dasher broke free and clumsily flew off (though he was lucky there were birds looking for an easy catch). I can't say for sure whether or not I played any part in the snake not succeeding in this struggle. If it were venomous I think (though I don't know if venomous snakes spend their venom on dragonflies or if they specialize in more protein-rich options) the dasher would've been done for.

But, the snake maneuvering his jaws to clamp down on the dragonfly gave some room for escape--especially since his jaws were over the thorax and wings, which were already beating trying to escape.

Este é uma Seriema Jovem que foi anilhada com +/-28 dias de vida e monitorada com o auxilio dos usuários deste campus universitário. Todos os resultados estão disponíveis no artigo:
Alexandrino et al.. (2019). Large Terrestrial Bird Adapting Behavior in an Urbanized Zone. Animals, 9(6), 351. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/9/6/351/htm

One of the street trees on my block is a mature female gingko, and it makes numerous stinky fruit every year.

Here is one of the nuts that is sprouting right there on the soil of the tree pit. This happens every year without any human intervention.

I usually end up pulling up all of the seedlings, as the tree pit cannot support an entire forest of ginkgo.