Caption: Male downy woodpecker on Governors Island, New York City, December 16, 2016 The Downy Woodpecker By Matt Civello Tap, tap, tap. Methodical, deliberate and thorough, with distinct pauses between each tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap. The sound of a small sharp beak...

View Image Source By Kam Yau Riddle: Question: What has seven legs, two antennas, and rolls up into a ball? Answer: A rollie pollie! A rollie pollie (also spelled roly poly) is one of the many macro-organisms that can exist in a healthy soil or compost medium. Along...

Image Sources - Left: WikiWel |Right: Wikimedia Commons By Infinitae Stockton Holy Basil, (Ocimum Sanctum) is not the same as Basil (Ocimum Basilicum) typically found in your everyday culinary herb collection. Holy Basil goes by many names. It is known as Tulsi (in...

Slugs lay average of 30 eggs (see white eggs in center of the photo). They use their top 2 antennae for finding their way and their bottom antenna for smell and taste. Marisa DeDominicis and Infinitae Stockton This month's "Nature Celebrity" is the land slug....

"Formica polyctena". Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 de via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Formica_polyctena.jpg#/media/File:Formica_polyctena.jpg by Marisa DeDominicis + Charlie Bayrer Our beloved decomposer friends, the ants, make up 15-25% of the...

David Granik (left), seasonal apprentice, creating a batch of Bokashi. Marie Farrell (right), seasonal apprentice, trenches this two-week old batch of fermented food scrap in our Soil Start Farm's lasagna compost bed. by David Granik and friends   Bokashi composting...

Syed Arif Mumtaz, our farm manager (assistance by Chris Thompson), pulls off radish sprout cover. By Marisa DeDominicis Why Radish? Every spring since I came to NYC, I have planted radishes in several community gardens including Sunnyside Community Garden (bulldozed...

These are the type of spores that we incorporated in Mushroom Village last autumn. This image was created by user Ann B. (Ann F. Berger) at Mushroom Observer, a source for mycological images. You can contact this user here. By Bill Koehnlein We revere them; we’re...

By Bill Koehnlein The statistics are in and it turns out that this past February has been the coldest one New York City has seen since 1934, and the fourth coldest on record. Even penguins couldn’t take it anymore and sought shelter wherever they could find it. So it...

By Marisa DeDominicis and Bill Koehnlein Chickens, as most Newsletter readers probably know, reside year-round at Earth Matter’s Compost Learning Center on Governors Island, and from late Spring to early Fall goats and rabbits make the Center their warm-weather home...

By Annie Barry The osprey, a large raptor, is a common sight along shorelines throughout North America in the summer months. Ospreys can be found on Governors Island during the fall and spring migrations, but they pause on the island for only a day or so to fish the...

By Emmie Campbell On a rainy day, Earth Matter was given a damp cardboard box by Governors Island Security. When I first glanced in the box, the contents appeared to be a pile of damp rags. As it began to move about, it became apparent that it was a baby bird! When...

In the Buttermilk Channel, the small tidal strait between Governors Island and Brooklyn, and in the surrounding habitat, terns feed on small fish, such as Summer Flounder. Like most fish, Summer Flounder (also known as Fluke or Paralichtys dentatus) hatch with an eye...

By Bill Koehnlein Our GI hawk dives down on Earth Matter chickens on a regular basis! In 1991, Pale Male, a yearling red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) who was hatched during the previous year, took up residency on a window ledge of a tony apartment building at Fifth...

Elegante, RIP 5.15.13 to 12.21, 2013 Elegante came to us at age 3 days. The little cotton ball tuft on of her head grew into a wild and crazy hairdo. Elegante was a “show stopper” for everyone that visited our Center. One of 2 golden crested Polish chicks, Elegante...

Island Visitors by Annie Barry People are not the only ones that enjoy visiting Governors Island. Peregrine falcons are also frequent visitors to the island, where they can be seen perched on trees or tall structures. The falcons are looking for prey. When a tasty...

Order: Hymenoptera is the same order as ants, bees and other wasps. Braconidae are popular "biological pest control agents." Each white oval in the photo is actually a wasp in its pupae stage (cocoon). We discovered this hornworm caterpillar crawling on one of Little...

Pick up some soil or compost, and you may have hundreds of soil nematodes roaming around in your hand. These invertebrates are often called worms, but they actually have very little in common with the well-known earthworm. There are thousands of different species of...

This mechanical “animal”, with jaws that pulverize coconut shell, compostable serviceware and 3” diameter tree limbs into “dust”, is our celebrity this month. With generous funding from the Department of Sanitation’s NYC Compost Project, this tool has enabled us to...

order: Odonta, family: aeschnidae On many summer days on Governors Island, you can witness up to 20 dragonflies, lined up in a row, all at exactly the same body angle and posture - gracing the top of our snow fencing pickets. Position regulates body temperatures,...

Mantis is the name of our latest Aerated Static Pile compost heap. The inspiration for it's name came from the live mantis that was discovered in the tall weeds near the beehive at the Compost Learning Center at Picnic Point while creating this pile.

When Penny, our red hen, crossed the road to get her chicks to the other side on August 13, 2013, we asked, “how can the chicks all hatch at almost the same time?” We knew that a hen in her prime ovulates every 25 hours, and it takes 21 days for the egg to hatch. At...

Yankee, Tango and Lima Piers can be found on the Buttermilk Channel side of Governors Island. And on those piers can be found a secret treasure, for they play host to the island’s very own common tern breeding colony. Hundreds of common terns return to these piers...

Q: What has 4 stomachs, teeth that continue to grow throughout their life, and poops gold? A: The compost workers on Governors Island come in a variety of sizes, ages, genders, and….species.  Every summer Earth Matter imports 2 baby goats (kids) from Goodale Farms, a...