May 2024 Spring, Goat kids, Northern Lights, Glass Flowers, Cygnets

Friday May 3 When we went to see the lambs at Drumlin Farm a few weeks ago, they said that the goats were due to give birth at the end of April. So today, off we went to see the goat kids. Two of the moms gave birth last week - one set of twins and one set of triplets. The triplets were just sleeping in a big furry pile, but one of the twins was frolicking around, doing little leaps, then nuzzling up to its mom.

Monday May 6 Goslings have appeared at the pond, always sticking close to their parents. Here you can see a couple of gosling butts under the parent's wing.

I continue to see the wood ducks swimming at the pond or perched up on a tree branch by the water.  I still think they must have a nest somewhere around there.

I went to a talk on feather color at Harvard's biology department this evening.  I love their building, with the pair of rhinos guarding either side of the main doors and the frieze of animals going all the way around the building. You don't see this sort of stuff on engineering buildings....

Wednesday May 8 On my morning walk, I ran into this guy, who fishes at the pond most mornings. He's usually quite solitary, not even wanting to say hello. But this morning, he caught a huge brown trout and was proudly showing it off, letting people take his photo with it, chatting about it. Made me smile.

Later in the day, walking in the Arb, Susan and I spotted the trilliums blooming.

Thursday May 9 The spring blossom this year has been spectacular - deep pink azeleas, pale pink honeysuckle, purple wisteria, dogwoods covered in white blossom, cherries, apple trees, lilacs. Thought I'd just include one photo here.

On my morning walk today, I did a loop around Ward's Pond and Leverett Pond. On the way back, along the little stream that runs by the footpath, I saw a mother duck with 10 ducklings, all making their way up the stream towards Ward's Pond. There's a bit of a slope between the two ponds, and the little ducklings were busily paddling along, keeping up with their mother, who kept looking back to check that they were coming. At one particularly steep spot, I thought they might not be able to make it up against the current, but they clambered out of the water and hopped between the rocks at the edge of the stream, making their way up. Here they are, all together, just after making it past the steepest point.

Back at home, I spotted a squirrel splayed out flat against my garage roof, napping, taking in the morning sun.

Friday May 10 There have been news reports that the northern lights might be visible in New England tonight, so we went out around 10pm to see if we could see them. We headed up a large hill in Arlington, the next town over from Cambridge, to a park and were excited to see a purplish-pink hue in the sky. We then thought we might see more further outside of the metro area, and drove out to Carlisle, about 45 minutes west, but at that moment, they had disappeared. Somewhat surprisingly, the colors were brighter and more visible through our smartphones than with our naked eyes.

Saturday May 11 The garden in front of Susan's condo building is full of bluebells, one of my mother's favorite flowers. When I was 4, we lived in England and would go to Guyzance to see them along the banks of the river Coquet. My parents so loved the countryside around the river Coquet, that my brothers and I scattered their ashes into the Coquet at Rothbury, up in the border hills.

On the way back from walking Susan to services at Hillel in Harvard Square, I decided to stop at the Museum of Natural History to see the glass flowers, remarkably accurate models of flowers and their interior structures.  They were crafted by Leopold Blaschka and his son Rudolf in the late 1800s and early 1900s, commissioned by Harvard Professor George Lincoln Goodale for use in his botany lectures. There are hundreds of them, all amazingly life-like.

While at the museum, looking for the bird collection, I saw their moa skeleton. These birds were huge, up to 12' high and weighing over 500 pounds. They lived in what is now New Zealand, but were hunted to extinction after people settled there about 700 years ago.

Monday May 13 On my morning walk, lots of bird song - Merlin says warbling vireo, yellow-rumped warbler, black-and-white warbler - didn't manage to spot any of them. Did see chimney swifts, tree swallows, and a belted kingfisher, flying out from the little island, darting down to the water and flitting back to the island again. My pond friends, Andrea and Jon, let me know that the mute swan eggs at Ward's Pond had hatched - 7 cygnets. 

After lunch, I head over to Ward's Pond to look for them. I see one adult on the nest and another sitting on the little sandy patch by the stairway that leads up to the Jamaicaway. Walking around to the nest, I still can't see any cygnets. But as I watch, the adult stands up, and I can see a mass of fuzzy grey cygnets, all in a pile, below it. After a few minutes, they start coming out from under it, and eventually I see all 7 little heads, looking perky. One started poking around the edge of the nest, maybe thinking about getting in the water. 

The cygnets are just in front of the adult on the nest.

Tuesday May 14 Went back to the swans, this time with my telescope. Got some good photos of the cygnets swimming in the pond, their parents nearby. Quite a few people were watching them, delighted. But after awhile, one of the adults led the cygnets back to the nest. After the adult climbed up onto the nest, the cygnets had to scramble to make their way up to the top of the nest.

I heard a red-bellied woodpecker calling in the trees by the boardwalk and managed to get some photos of it, too.

A pair of wood ducks was also swimming around in the pond.

Friday May 17 Went to Mass. Audubon's Broadmoor sanctuary in Natick, just west of Boston, for a walk. A group of birders were gathered on the boardwalk by the pond, watching an Eastern phoebe; I spotted it, too. The Merlin app picked out songs from a song sparrow, a brown creeper and an Eastern wood-pewee.

Also by the boardwalk, a tangle of snakes, mating.

I remember as a kid, one spring going to the Ball's Falls conservation area, about a 30 minute drive from Niagara Falls, and seeing hundreds and hundreds of garter snakes in balls, writhing around - incredible. Years later, when I was living in England, the BBC aired David Attenborough's Life on Earth series. Watching the first episode, I was so tickled to see him, I think at Ball's Falls, filming snakes doing their thing. To get an idea, google "snake mating ball images".

Monday May 20  Sometime in the last few days, two of the cygnets at Ward's Pond have disappeared, presumably killed, perhaps by a turtle or hawk. And I noticed that there's an unhatched egg, still on the nest.

Friday May 24 We're in Provincetown for the long Memorial Day weekend. Today we walked along the bike path from the Beech Forest to the Provincelands Visitor Center to look for lady slippers. Saw lots of them in the woods by the path.

Susan Brand

Along the way, Susan spotted an Eastern towhee, with its black head and back and rusty sides in a low tree. On a dead snag, an Eastern kingbird was perched at the top, up high. Further along, I saw a nuthatch whizz past, just a bit higher than my head, and zip into a hole in a large tree branch, seconds later flying out, and then returning again; the hole is probably its nest. Back at the parking lot, we spotted a great crested flycatcher - a bit of a scruffy crest on its grey head, lemon yellow breast and sides, longish tail.

 Tuesday May 28 Gardens here bursting with spring flowers - a couple of last photos.