Nature Notes

  Tuesday February 10 This very red, very large heart appeared on the little island at the pond this morning, a few days before Valentine's Day. I wondered if a marriage proposal was coming.  It's been bitterly cold for the last couple of weeks, so cold that I didn't walk some mornings (temperature -3F (-19C), wind chills -17F (-27C). Brrrr! The pond has frozen solid, and people have been walking and cross-country skiing on it (but I'm thinking that's not a great idea). Later on this morning, I went to Mass Audubon's Broadmoor sanctuary in Natick, just west of Boston. On the way, stopped at the little weir on the Charles River to admire the light on the snow and the smooth curve of the water dropping over the weir.  At Broadmoor, heard woodpeckers pecking. In the video, first a small woodpecker and then, in the last couple of seconds, a pileated woodpecker hammering (I think). Love the curves of the water and snow mounds in the marsh.   Saturday, February 14 N...

   Saturday January 3 Gorgeous sunrise this morning, with the light making the ice on the pond glow.   Checking eBird last night, there were reports of 3 snowy owls at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in Newburyport, on the north shore. Went up there this morning, but no luck with the owls. Did see a juvenile bald eagle and a couple of  northern harriers , one flying low over the bushes near the footpath, along with some  common eiders , a couple of  surf scoters , with their wacky beaks, on the ocean and  black ducks  on the marsh. Lots of people there, all hoping for a snowy, but no one I spoke to saw one. Full moon rising over the pond tonight. Friday January 9 There was a deer carcass on the ice on the pond this morning! I'm guessing that a pack of coyotes chased it onto the ice and brought it down. Pretty amazing! I went back again in the late afternoon and saw an adult bald eagle standing on the ice, not that close to the deer. I ...

  Sunrise Jamaica Pond December 16 Monday December 1  While this is not strictly a nature note, I couldn't resist including this new Massachusetts license plate, featuring the Cat in the Hat, to celebrate a Springfield, Massachusetts native, Ted Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. I spotted this one in the main parking lot in JP.   When I was a kid, my brothers and I used to play the license plate game, trying to see a plate from every Canadian province and US state in a single year; Niagara Falls, where we grew up, is a particularly good location for this. My parents would drive us down to the Falls for an outing, and instead of looking at the Falls, we would check out the license plates on the cars parked along the road. The hardest plates to see were Newfoundland and Labrador; Yukon; Northwest Territories; Hawaii and Alaska: far away places with few people. The absolute best plate is the iconic NWT plate: white plate in the shape of a  polar bear . As you can...