August 2024: Provincetown, New Haven, Jamaica Plain
Sunday August 4 We've been having some blustery, wet weather in Provincetown. I like the clouds in this photo from Susan's condo, taken at low tide.
Wednesday August 7 I sometimes go out for a morning bike ride along Commercial Street to the breakwater and salt marsh, around to Herring Cove Beach, then to the National Park Service Visitor Center and back via the Beech Forest to town.
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| The salt marsh by the breakwater |
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| The bike path at the Beech Forest |
Friday August 10 Susan and I went for a walk through the woods in Truro and out to the Atlantic coast this afternoon. Saw this striking scarlet mushroom along the way.
Gorgeous views from the dunes over the ocean. A couple of seals slowly making their way along the shore, close in to the beach.
Driving along the road away from the parking lot, we spotted a turtle slowly crossing the road, so I stopped the car and hopped out to take its photo. An Eastern box turtle (I think). Love the patterning on its shell.
Monday August 12 We went on a whale watch this morning and had a great time. Just north of Race Point in Provincetown is the southern edge of Stellwagen Bank, a plateau on the ocean floor where the fish and krill congregate, attracting humpback whales who feed on them. It's a short boat ride out to see the whales.
Saw several humpbacks feeding, sometimes quite close to the boat. Saw them bubble feeding, creating a cylinder of bubbles that confuses and traps entire schools of fish that the whale then swims vertically through, huge mouth wide open, capturing the fish and filtering out the water with its baleen. One of the whales breached, leaping up out of the water and crashing down again - very exciting!
Walking back to the condo we saw these huge sunflowers blooming.
Wednesday August 14 Back in Jamaica Plain. On my morning bike ride along the Emerald Necklace path, I stopped to look at the outdoor sculpture exhibit by the Muddy River, put on by the Mass College of Art and Design. I especially liked this one, called The Art of Change, of caterpillar chrysalises, maybe monarch, hanging from a tree branch.
And for comparison, here are a couple of monarch chrysalises our neighbor in Ptown was looking after in 2022:
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| Susan Brand |
On the way home, I stopped at Ward's pond to check on the swans and their last remaining cygnet. They were sitting together on the little sandy edge of the pond, preening. I noticed that the cygnet had a few mature white feathers growing in on its back or wings (I couldn't tell which), replacing the fuzzy grey feathers.
My neighbor, Mary, has been following a family of downy woodpeckers that come to her feeder regularly. She sent me this photo of three of them today.
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| Mary Horst |
Thursday August 15 On the way to the Arboretum this afternoon, I saw this U-Haul truck on my street. Love the moose and Saskatchewan info - very Canadian!
At the Arb, spotted a silk tree, full of pink blossoms, and next to it, a pagoda tree, covered in pale yellow blossoms. As I passed by them, I noticed that there were lots of bees crawling over the blossoms that had fallen on the roadway - I guess it was easier for them to get pollen from the fallen blossoms than those still on the tree.
Saturday August 17 Visiting my friend, Barb in New Haven, we went to newly renovated Peabody Museum, Yale's natural history museum - fantastic! Next to some of the fossils, models of the animals they came from, with the fossilized bones highlighted, so that you can see where the bones fit in the skeleton. Giant dinosaur skeletons, newly remounted to reflect modern research on how they moved and held their bodies. And a sense of humor in the labeling. Notice the spiked end of the tail of the stegosaurus below, called the thagomizer.
Paleontologists came up with that mouthful of a name from this Larson cartoon.
The museum is well worth a visit. The renovation was written up in this NY Times article.
Chatting with Barb at home in the evening, she mentioned some of the animals she's seen in her back yard, on the outskirts of New Haven, including deer, fox, coyotes and even a bobcat!
Monday August 19 On my way back to Boston, I stopped at Brown University in Providence to see my friend Sharon Swartz, who studies bat flight. She has a wind tunnel for the bats to fly in; it's a little like a treadmill for flight. Much to my delight, this month's National Geographic has an article on bats, featuring her work. Her hands, releasing one of her bats, made the cover!
Tuesday August 20 At Allandale Farm today to pick up some corn, so good this time of year. As I walked around, I noticed bees on nearly every flower of echinacea in their garden store - kind of amazing to see so many bees buzzing around.
The black-eyed Susans in my garden are starting to go by, but these at Allandale are still looking good.
The diamondback terrapins at the Wellfleet Bay sanctuary near Provincetown have started hatching. Susan is working with other volunteers and Audubon staff to release the hatchlings from the cages protecting the nests. Some still have yolk from the egg attached to them and need extra care before they are released into the wild. The volunteers first wrap them in a wet paper towel to keep the yolk moist and then bring them back to the sanctuary building for a few days for them to mature a little more. The volunteers refer to the wrapped hatchlings as "dumplings" - you can see why from the ones in the container in Susan's photo. You can also see the broken egg casings on the lower right.
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| Susan Brand |
Thursday August 22 Took this photo while walking at Jamaica Pond this evening. Love having the pond close to my house.
Saturday August 24 My neighbor Sue is fostering a litter of 5 day old Bichon/Poodle puppies for a few days, until the longer term foster family returns from out of town. Seven pups - 4 brown, 2 black and white, 1 white. Very cute!
Sunday August 25 On my early morning walk around the pond, spotted this tree starting to turn color. It's always one of the first to do so.
Went to Allandale Farm to pick up some corn and saw a hawk perched on a stone post by the parking lot. I think an immature red-tail.
Walking around Ward's Pond later in the day, enjoying how lush everything looks around the boardwalk.
The pond itself is covered in green algae, which the swans don't seem to mind. Also spotted a juvenile male wood duck paddling at the edge of the pond.
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| Coast Guard Beach |
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