Nature Notes January 2020

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 – Bright red holly berries in a garden on Myrtle Street in JP 

 January 13 – Walking along the Emerald Necklace, near Willow Pond, saw a tree stump being used as a dinner table by the squirrels and a small evergreen in the woods, decorated with Christmas balls for the holiday season.

January 14 – Tiny leaves starting to come out on a bush

January 19 – Witch hazel out in the Arboretum (and, finally, there is a little snow on the ground.)

History of the Arnold Arboretum, from the Arboretum website:

“The Arboretum was established in 1872 when the trustees of the will of James Arnold (1781-1868), a whaling merchant of New Bedford, Massachusetts, transferred a portion of Arnold’s estate to the President and Fellows of Harvard College. In the deed of trust between the Arnold trustees and the College, income from the legacy was to be used “for the establishment and support of an arboretum, to be known as the Arnold Arboretum, which shall contain, as far as practicable, all the trees [and] shrubs . . . either indigenous or exotic, which can be raised in the open air.
 
According to the terms of the thousand-year lease [with the City of Boston], the Harvard-owned land on which the Arnold Arboretum was established became part of the city park system, but control of the collections continued to reside with the Arboretum staff….As a result of this unique arrangement the Arboretum became part of the famous “Emerald Necklace,” the 7-mile-long network of parks and parkways that Frederick Law Olmsted laid out for the Boston Parks Department between 1878 and 1892.
 
The Arnold Arboretum occupies 281 acres of land in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. As of November 2019, the living collections consisted of some 17,105 accessioned plants representing 3,846 botanical and horticultural taxa, with particular emphasis on the woody species of North America and eastern Asia and an especially comprehensive representation of Fagus (beech), Lonicera (honeysuckle), Magnolia, Malus (crabapple), Quercus (oak), Rhododendron, and Syringa (lilac).”