Nature Notes

One morning, around 6am, I saw a wake from something swimming along the edge of the pond, and, looking more closely, saw a muskrat, its head just poking out of the water. I don’t often see muskrats at the pond, but when I do, it’s always this time of year. March 3 – Purple flowers at the Arboretum March 4 – Jonquils coming out along Brewer Street; tulip leaves poking through the soil. March 5 – On our early morning dogwalk, I heard a scrambling at the corner of Brewer and Eliot Streets and looked up to see a raccoon clambering up a tree. Once it got to about 15 feet up, it stopped for a bit, looking down at Maddie and me, then clambered further up. After awhile, it disappeared, possibly going into a hole in the tree trunk. Maddie was oblivious of the entire thing, snuffling at some leaves on the sidewalk. Unlike Toronto, we don’t see raccoons here often. March 13 – Daffodils starting to bloom across the street from our house. March 14 – Magnolias starting t...

February 2020 Often I walked along the Emerald Necklace, past several ponds, carrying my binoculars, doing a little bird watching along the way.   At Leverett Pond, I often saw Wood Ducks, sheltering under an overhanging bush near one of the small islands.  For a couple of weeks, there was a group of 4 or 5 Common Mergansers, the males with their shimmering white feathers and black highlights, the females with their Mohawk style feathers standing erect along the crest of their heads.  Often, a pair of hooded mergansers at Jamaica Pond. One day, on the way home, I saw a bird flying across the little Willow Pond, landing on a tree branch about 10 feet above the pond – a Kingfisher, holding a small fish in its bill, perpendicular to it. I watched the bird twirl the fish around to align it with its bill, swallow it, and finally, repeatedly open and close its bill, as if to say “Ahh, that was good”.  I was surprised to see the Kingfisher, as they fish in freshw...

January 3 - Walking along the Emerald Necklace, in the quiet, wooded gully surrounding the small, nearly circular Ward’s Pond, I saw something large-ish fly across the pond and land in the trees.  A few minutes later, walking along the boardwalk, I saw a hawk - maybe a Cooper’s Hawk - in the same place and walked along until I was right beneath it. Loved that it stayed put long enough for me to take a photo.  January 6 - First shoots coming up out of the ground, during an incredibly mild winter with almost no snow and day after day in the 40s and 50s, with intermittent spells in the 20s. Notice the lack of snow in the photos that follow… January 7 – After I admired my Canadian friend Alison’s chickadee hat, she knit me a wonderful wood duck hat, which has brought many compliments.  It was particularly appropriate as we had seen wood ducks on the ponds along the Emerald Necklace on her last visit in the fall.  Thank you so much, Alison! January 10...

As many of you who visited Jeannie over the last year know, I bought Jeannie a couple of stuffed animals to entertain ourselves with:   Foxy Fox and the Sloth, her sleep mentor.   For many months, we joked that Foxy Fox wanted to go to Allandale Farm, about a mile from our house, to check out their chicken coop. Allandale is a wonderful place – a combination of farm/farm stand/gardening center with a couple of huge, shaggy, black, long-horned Highland Cattle, Willard and Curtis, out in the back field.   Next to their field is a small pond that sometimes has hooded mergansers during migration season.   Allandale is the last working farm in Jamaica Plain and neighboring Brookline and has been in the same family since 1665.   After months of joking about Foxy Fox going to the chicken coop, one day I finally took him there and got some selfies for him to show his fox friends.    A couple of days later, walking Maddie through the Eliot School y...