September 2021

September 2  The remnants of Hurricane Ida came through Boston last night and this morning, dropping 4.7" of rain between 6pm and 6am.  Torrential rain in the night, loud enough to wake me at 3am.  Maddie was hunkered down in the closet, hiding from it all.  When she came out, reluctantly, for her morning walk around 6:30 we found a large oak downed at the end of our street, along the Arborway.  The road department had already had machinery out to drag the fallen branches off the roadway. And by the time we went out for our afternoon walk, around 1:30, there was nothing left to see: it had been cut down, sawn into smaller pieces, put through the chipper and even the stump ground down. A little startling how quickly it was dispatched.

At Jamaica Pond, the little beach by Eliot Street had disappeared entirely, with the higher water in the pond.

Went out for a short bike ride to the Muddy River in the evening and saw 3 juvenile wood ducks paddling along. 

September 4 Saw these flowers in the neighborhood this morning, loved their crisp whiteness.  

Went to the DeCordova outdoor sculpture museum in Lincoln, about a 1/2 hour drive away, this afternoon.  Perfect weather, 75F, sunny, gentle breeze.  Lots of families with kids running about, some picnicking. All rather wonderful.

September 5  Went to Plum Island, a north-south spit of land along Atlantic shore north of Boston, for a morning of birding.  Found this sign at the entrance: it's tree swallow migration time.

And 2 minutes later, at the first parking lot, I looked up to see dozens and dozens of tree swallows flying overhead, just above the visitor building.  When I looked out over the marsh across the road, a couple of dozen egrets were in flight, descending, disappearing into the tall grass as they landed.

At the second parking lot, I walked along the boardwalk to the beach, amazingly deserted: it really is the end of summer.  

 

As I looked out over the ocean, I noticed a flipper, close to shore, appearing out of the water, over and over again.  I showed this video to one of the rangers and he agreed it was probably a small whale!  Not what I was expecting to see today. Pretty cool.

Moving on, at the salt pannes, there were dozens of great egrets and snowy egrets congregating in the shallow water.  Along with some shorebirds and a few mute swans.

In the parking lot at one of the wildlife observation areas, I just stood and watched the tree swallows flying overhead, in awe at the number of them. As I watched, I overheard a few people commenting on a small mouse, its body less than a couple of inches long, at the edge of the pavement.  When I went over to look, someone identified it as a jumping mouse.  It had an incredibly long tail, a couple of times its body length, and relatively huge hind feet, the better to jump with. It's just below the junk food wrapper in the photo and you can see its big right hind foot sticking out.  There are two species of jumping mouse that live in Massachusetts: meadow and woodland (thanks, Alison). I think this one is the meadow jumping mouse (two-toned body and no white tip on its tail).  I like its Latin name:  Zapus hudsonius.

Near the parking lot was a pool with lots of cormorants, a few dozen yellowlegs, a great blue heron, a few semi-palmated plovers, maybe a dowitcher (?).  At one point, a group of yellowlegs all took off as a Cooper's hawk approached, flying low over the bank of the pool.  The hawk then swerved up, landing near the top of in a tree - got a good look at how slender it was compared with the bulkier red-tails I see regularly in Boston.  

And more and more tree swallows. At several points, great swarms of them over the marsh, looking a little like a murmuration of starlings.  If you look at the sky just above the hills in the photo below, each of the tiny dots is a swallow. 

 Just standing, there were dozens flying overhead every few seconds.

Some of the articles I looked up say that hundreds of thousands of tree swallows can flock together to roost overnight.  Check out this video I found online - it's worth watching until the end.

And for those of you from out of town who don't know Plum Island, here's a photo of the salt marsh, also known as the Great Salt Marsh, which extends over about 25,000 acres (about 40 square miles), the largest salt marsh north of Long Island.

September 6 Biking at the Arboretum in the morning, I saw a great blue heron at the edge of one of the small ponds.  As I stopped to watch, it walked up onto the bank of the pond with its back to me, struggling with what I thought was a fish in its bill.  When it turned, I realized that it wasn't a fish, but a great big frog, all spreadeagled. The photo is fuzzy, but you can just make out the yellow belly of the frog, with its front legs splayed out. I think the heron was having trouble figuring out how to get the frog into its mouth and down its very long neck.

September 8 Heron on the dock at Jamaica Pond in the early morning.

September 10. Walking at the Arb with Maddie, was struck by the metallic sheen on this remnant of a clematis flower.

September 11 Heard what I thought was a screech owl in the night, just outside my window.  Picked up my phone and used the Merlin "Sound ID" to record and confirm it.  I've heard of "birding by car" where you drive from one birdy spot to another. But this is birding by bed.  Very comfy.  

A few mornings this week, walking with Maddie, I've used the Sound ID to identify a Carolina wren singing at the same spot each time.

Biking in Concord, perfect fall day, stopped at a marsh with a beaver lodge (the mound just behind the circular grate in the water, with vegetation growing on top of it) and small beaver dam.  Nature's engineers have been thwarted by human engineers installing pipes to keep the water flowing.

September 14 Walking at Jamaica Pond at dusk, saw an osprey circling over the water. Also 5 common mergansers in the middle of the pond.  About ten cormorants perched high in the single willow on the tiny island in the pond. The island is now submerged after all the rain we've had recently.

September 15 Walking around the pond this morning, saw a baby squirrel, about 1/3 adult size, contemplating its next move. Love its big head and feet attached to a small body.

And then further along, a baby turtle, similarly contemplating life.

September 17. Drove to Wellfleet on Cape Cod today, stopping at the Long Pasture Audubon sanctuary in Barnstable, on the bay side of the Cape.  

 

Just as I got out of the car to walk to the visitor center, a red-tailed hawk swooped down, landing in a tree just in front of me.  Wonderful to see it so close up.  One of the Audubon staff told me it hangs around the visitor center area a lot; sure enough, an hour or so later I saw it just standing on the ground near the parking lot.

When I got to Wellfleet, further up the Cape, the mist so heavy that the Atlantic nearly disappeared.  

 

September 18 Birding at the Wellfleet Mass Audubon sanctuary, with its salt marsh and beach on the bay side of the Cape.

At an inlet near the beach, I watched a kingfisher dive and come up with a small fish in its bill, flying right overhead, then off to one of the blue cubic boxes on stilts in the marsh to eat it.  2 northern flickers on the trunk of a dead tree.

In the evening, at Powers landing beach, hundreds more tree swallows, darting about, catching insects, sometimes groups swirling around like a mini-murmuration.

September 19 Early morning walk at the Wellfleet sanctuary, saw a flock least terns (I think, small terns, anyway) flying in to land on the bay beach, then taking off in a moment, all together, at some disturbance. 

Walking along the Goose Pond trail, I saw a couple of guys carrying plastic storage containers, looking like they were on some sort of mission.  When I caught up to them and chatted, they said that they were releasing diamondback turtles that had been caught earlier in the spring as hatchlings. 

Further along the trail, I spotted two juvenile black crowned night herons on the sandy bank of the inlet near the beach, along with a yellowlegs, nearby, probing the edge of the inlet.  Also a kingfisher in flight.

Later in the morning I drove to Race Point beach in Provincetown where I saw this guy towing his dog, barking all the way, in a bike trailer.

September 23 Biking along the Muddy River, heard a kingfisher, the first I'd found in Boston since early spring when the one at Leverett Pond, that had been there all winter, left.  A moment later, saw it perched on a branch overhanging the water, then it took off, flying along the river.  Further along, I spotted a great blue heron standing on a downed log in the middle of the river, hunched over.  I rode into Cambridge, to MIT, and then turned around to come home again.  And when I passed the same downed log, maybe 20 minutes later, the heron was still there, in pretty much the same pose.

September 25 Awake in the night, heard a screech owl just outside my window, maybe sitting in the tree in my front yard or in one of those of a nearby neighbour.

September 27 Feeling more and more like fall:  distinctly cooler, this morning 55F (13C), and the days getting noticeably shorter - when Maddie and I set off on our morning walks at 6am it's still dark and when we get back from our evening walk at 6:30pm it's dusk.

On our morning walk, I was tickled by all the open nut casings on the cover of this pickup truck, looking like the leftovers of some grand squirrel feast.

And I love the way the pale central parts of these morning glory flowers look like they're illuminated from within.

Throughout the day, I was delighted by dozens of monarch butterflies passing through my yard.  Puttering around the garden, looking out the kitchen window into the back yard, sitting in my study on zoom, glancing out the window, there they were, every few minutes, gently meandering along in a generally southerly direction.  The US Fish and Wildlife service website says that a single generation makes the journey south, starting in mid-August and arriving in Mexico's central highlands in early November. There are reports of monarchs travelling 25-30 miles per day during migration.  A bit hard to believe when you see them circling here and there, not in any particular hurry to get anywhere, seemingly the most casual of migrants, with none of the frantic flapping of a migrating duck.