October 2022

 October 1 Fall colors starting to happen around Boston. I liked this red flare of ivy on a wall in Susan's neighborhood.

 And the next day, this single tree turning color across the street from my house.

The next few days were blustery and cold, some hard rain, feeling like fall is really happening.

October 5 Sparrow at the Chestnut Hill mall, right by Bloomingdales.

October 7 Bicycling out to Race Point on the Cape this morning, passing Herring Cove beach, flocks of blue jays, dozens and dozens of them, flew from the woods across the road.  I wondered if they were migrating as it's unusual to see so many together.  Even though we see blue jays year round in Massachusetts, it's possible that our summer birds go south and more northern ones come here for the winter.

Susan's friend Christie came over this morning, all excited, having found chicken of the woods mushrooms, great sheets of them, all orange and yellow, growing on a tree right near her house.  Said she'd been willing them to appear for years, and this morning, there they were.  She offered to give us some if we cut off the edible bits around the outside of each sheet and cleaned them.

 

On our afternoon walk, we found more mushrooms, too: two big edible boletes, just a couple of minutes from the parking lot;

plate-like, nearly perfectly circular, amanitas (not edible);

and these, too, which I just liked the look of:

 

October 8  We went for a walk in Wellfleet, through some woods and then out onto the bay side beach. As we walked along the beach, we spotted a Northern harrier, flying along the dunes, back and forth, just below the top, close enough that its shadow was sharp against the sand in the afternoon sun, flying along in parallel, a little below the bird itself.  Northern harriers were formerly called marsh hawks, as they live in wetlands and grasslands with low vegetation.  They have a distinctive white rump patch that distinguishes them from other hawks in the Northeast.

October 10 Walked along the Old Colony rail trail, right in Provincetown, and into the white cedar swamp (wet, even after this summer's drought) that is part of the Fox Run Conservation Area, named for the pregnant fox that was seen there in the year it was protected.  The website notes that white cedar swamps in the Cape are typically glacial kettle holes, with the cedars on hummocks within the basin - you can see the hummocks in the photo I took.

October 11 Walked in Truro today, through the woods, where we saw honey mushrooms, growing in clusters on an old tree stump.

The trail led us to the dunes on the Atlantic shore.  Wonderful views.

And on the way back to the car, we passed the Bog House, once home to a family of cranberry farmers.  The cranberry's long white flowers and red stamens reminded colonists of a crane, leading it to initially being named "craneberry" which then got shortened to cranberry.

Seeing the white cedar swamp and cranberry bogs around Provincetown prompted me to look up the differences between swamps and bogs. I'm also reading Annie Proulx's new book:  Fen, Bog and Swamp.  The US Forest Service website has a nice description of the different types of wetlands:

"Wetlands are ecosystems where the water table is at or near the ground surface for most of the growing season on most years, and as a consequence, the substrate is poorly aerated, and inundation or saturation last long enough that the dominant plants are those that can exist in wet and reducing conditions.

Swamps are wetlands that are dominated by woody plants.

Bogs are peatlands that receive water and nutrients only from the atmospheric precipitation.  

Fens are peat-forming wetlands that rely on groundwater input and require thousands of years to develop and cannot easily be restored once destroyed. Fens are also hotspots of biodiversity. (Weixelman and Cooper, 2009)

Peat is organic matter (the dead remains of plants) that is deposited under water-soaked conditions as a result of incomplete decomposition.  A peatland is any type of peat covered terrain with an accumulation of at least 20 to 40 centimeters of peat within the upper 80 centimeters of the soil profile in the United States and Canada.

Marshes are wetlands that are frequently or continually inundated and are dominated by herbaceous plant species adapted to these hydrologic conditions." 

 October 16  We went for a walk in the Arboretum to see the trees turning color.  Also drove through the Forest Hills Cemetery, where the colors were even more stunning.  Stopped at Eugene O'Neill's grave (1888-1953); loved that people had left pens on his gravestone as well as stones of remembrance. At one point, he lived in the building where Susan's condo is in Ptown.

  

October 17 Drove to Ithaca to give a talk on the materials science of feathers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (or Lab of O, as they call it).  I arranged to give my talk in mid-October so that I could see migrating ducks and geese at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour north of Ithaca, on my way there. Stopping my car along the drive that goes around the marsh, I first heard the birds: wave after wave of hundreds of Canada geese, high up, honking, quickly descending, their neat V formations disassembling, wobbling as they came down.  All approached from the south, so I assume that they must fly past the marsh and then circle around to land. 

 

Migrating ducks on the marsh, too, again in huge numbers, many close enough to the road to get a good look: pintail ducks, green-winged teal, wigeon, gadwall and ring-necked ducks.  Interstate 90 runs right through the refuge - you can see the traffic on the highway, past the marsh, oblivious to the wonder so close by.

 And a bald eagle perched in a leafless tree along the roadside.

October 18 Visited the Lab of O, met with students, staff, faculty; birds, birds, birds, all day long.  Talked about my bird book project, their projects, their online bird courses.  At one point, one of the long-time faculty said he remembered a meeting decades ago where someone asked: Do you think we should have a website?  Today, their website is probably the most utilized source of information on birds anywhere.

Walking around the building, there was bird art everywhere: a great horned owl on an office door

Charley Harper's Tern, Stones and Turnstones on a hallway wall,

 

a print of a hawk owl in a graduate student office.

 

A highlight of the day was the tour of the vertebrate museum's ornithology collection.  This drawer of peregrine falcons shows the diversity in their size and coloring (in raptors, females are larger than males).

The ornithology seminar, with undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, staff and faculty, loved the talk I gave on iridescence and water repellency in feathers and I got a big kick out of doing it.  At the reception afterwards, I talked with a student who had been a camp counselor at the Wellfleet Mass Audubon sanctuary this past summer; he was just brimming with enthusiasm for birds, for the camp, for the opportunity to spend his summer on the Cape.  Another student I talked to was in law school, but had taken up birding just before the pandemic hit; it was clear he loved birding more than he loved the law.  One of the delights of the visit was the pure joy of so many of the people at the Lab, loving being able to devote time to their passion for birds.

October 20 Back in Boston, a new Olmsted quote, spelled out in moss, on the boathouse.

 

October 21 In Brookline, biking home from MIT along Chapel St, towards the Longwood T stop, I spotted something out of the corner of my eye, glanced up and saw a hawk flying towards me, heading right down the middle of the other lane of the road, just a few feet above and to the left of my head. It just took a second to pass me, but seeing it in flight, so close up, has stayed with me. Amazing.

October 22 I liked this gate in Susan's neighborhood, with the grasshopper and snail.

 

In the afternoon, we had a wonderful time at Wachusett Meadow, an Audubon sanctuary in central Mass. Eating our picnic lunch, lots and lots of ladybugs: on our clothes, on our heads, on the table, just about everywhere.  Perhaps the mild weather (it was about 65F) induced them to become active.  Walking through the woods we came upon a pond with a beaver dam and lodge.  And at the end of the day, at the main pond, we saw three otters doing shallow dives over and over, heads bobbing up, then diving, backs arching out of the water before sliding back in again.  Wonderful to see them, a real delight!

October 23 Went to Mt Auburn Cemetery this morning, both to visit the grave of Susan's wife, Gail, and to see the fall color in the trees.  Mt. Auburn was the first garden cemetery in the United States; Wikipedia says it is "credited with the beginning of the American public parks and gardens movement".  It's gorgeous: rolling hills, mature trees, a few ponds, peaceful. We went up the 62' high Washington tower to take in the view.

Walking around, Susan spotted these aphids on a milkweed pod - amazing coloring.

Among the people buried here: William Brewster, ornithologist at Harvard and first President of Mass Audubon; Fannie Farmer, cookbook author; Buckminster Fuller, architect; Ludlow Griscom, field ornithologist; Winslow Homer, artist; Horatio Hollis Hunnewell, philanthropist and amateur botanist (for whom the visitor center at the Arb is named); Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid; and Tom Magliozzi, host of NPR's Car Talk.

October 24 Out early with Maddie at the pond, misty, drizzly: mizzle.  Years ago, I read this word in Samuel Pepys' diary and it has always struck me as (a) perfect and (b) so English. In the dim light, I was startled by a ghost-like great blue heron taking off over the water from a few feet away: slatey bird, slowly beating its huge wings, blending into the greyness of the sky and water.

Later on in the morning, I went for a walk in the Arb; wonderful colors in the trees. I'm so lucky to live so close to the Arb and pond.

In the evening, reading from  Nature Writing for Every Day, I found this quote from John Lewis-Stempel:

"Tonight I see something I have never seen before, something I never even knew of.  It's late, and I have gone for a moon-time walk around the fields, because I love the solitude of dark.  While I am looking to the west and the unbroken night of mid-Wales, an arch of white light suddenly appears in the sky and spans the earth before me.  I feel afraid, as though I have been singled out for some almighty moment of revelation, that I have been entrusted with some Damascene vision, and several seconds pass before I understand what it is I am looking at.

I am looking at a rainbow at night. A moonbow."

I had never heard of a moonbow either. You can see some photos at this link.

October 25 Got up even earlier this morning, still dark outside, foggy and misty.  At the pond, saw a muskrat snuffling at the water's edge near the boathouse and a great blue heron fishing, near the spot where I saw one yesterday, maybe the same one.

October 26  On yet another misty day, the Arb was gorgeous with autumn color; the edges of Bussey Brook golden with fallen leaves.

And on the way back, we spotted this turkey at the edge of one of the little ponds, pretending to be a great blue heron. It had several friends who were heading down to join it.

By the evening it had warmed up so much, maybe to the mid-60s, that there was loud insect chirping in the bushes when I ran an errand at the Chestnut Hill mall; you can hear them in the video.

October 27 Walked from the house to Route 9, along the Emerald Necklace, past Jamaica, Ward's and Leverett ponds. More wonderful fall color. And migrating ducks starting to appear: about half a dozen ruddy ducks at Jamaica Pond and several groups of three to six wood ducks at Leverett Pond.  Love seeing the males with their classy coloring.  The mergansers will be arriving soon.

Ward's Pond

October 30  On the Cape, walking the Provincelands bike path, the trees aren't particularly colorful, but the huckleberry bushes, now a carpet of red on the forest floor, try to make up for them.