May 2025

Thursday May 1 On my way to Princeton to give a talk I stopped in Morristown, NJ, to go to the Frelinghuysen Arboretum, 127 acres of trees and gardens with trails throughout. Lots of blossoming trees; spring is ahead in New Jersey, compared with Boston.

Friday May 2 While waiting to meet with my colleague, Cassie Stoddard in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, I admired a few prints on the wall.

 

I sent the bat print to my friend, Sharon Swartz at Brown, an expert on bat flight, who told me: "That print is by Jonathan Kingdon, a very famous mammologist and illustrator based at Oxford who focuses on the mammals of Africa, especially East Africa. He published a seven volume series of books on the mammals of East Africa that I obsessively devoured as a graduate student."

And I was taken with the print of elephant shrews, with their elongated snouts. Elephant shrews are, it turns out, not shrews at all. They're more closely related to elephants than to shrews. More about this here.

 My first meeting was with one of Cassie's postdocs who was excited to see me because he had taken my online MIT courses. It's happened a few times, that I've run into someone who took the online courses - it's always a bit disorienting for me, as they "know" me, but I don't know them at all.

The next order of business is a morning birding outing with my colleague Cassie's students, around the campus and down to the Carnegie Lake (lake is a generous description of the narrow, river-like body of water next to the Princeton campus). One of Cassie's students, David Ocampo, found several bird nests, including a Baltimore oriole nest under construction - just a few threads of spider silk and grasses barely holding together. His nest-finding skills have been honed by his PhD project on the evolution of bird nests.

Spent the rest of the day meeting with Cassie's group and giving my talk on desert sandgrouse belly feathers that trap water to carry back to their chicks at the nest in the desert. Fun.

Monday May 5 There's a new short 9 minute film on Norm Smith and his amazing work over the last 40+ years capturing snowy owls at Logan Airport and releasing them on the shore, north or south of the city. Scroll to the bottom of the article at the link to see the film.

Thursday May 8 The MIT Museum had an "After Dark" event on birds this evening, with 600 people attending. I had put the museum in touch with Mass Audubon who put together a few art programs. In one room, they displayed some of the original artwork in their collection and had tables set up for people to make their own drawings and paintings of birds. In another, they were gel printing birds and other nature themes. On the giant screen in the lecture space, they had a slide show of Audubon's art collection. And I gave a couple of talks which were well received. A fun evening!

Jennifer Tafe, Director of Audubon's bird art museum

 

Sean Kent and Chris Paddock gel printing

Friday May 9 Met up with a friend at a cafe in Roslindale and saw this print of a coyote on the wall. Love the clever mark making!

 

Went to the Arb to see their impressive lilac collection covering one hillside. This Sunday, Mother's Day, is Lilac Sunday and the Arb will be packed, so I thought I'd get a peek a little early to avoid the crowds.  

 

On the way back, a Baltimore oriole flew over the road and into a tree.

Sunday May 18 The pond this morning.

 

Tuesday May 20 Over at Ward's Pond, the swans are nesting again, on the same nest. I suspect it's the same pair as last year; Cornell's All About Birds website says that they often reuse a nest from the previous year, adding to it.

Wednesday May 21 Remembering Jeannie at the Arb this morning, on our anniversary. We got married in the rhododendron garden, by a Canadian hemlock tree. The flowers were gorgeous today.

 

When I walked over to check on one of the trellis in my back garden, a baby bunny dashed out from under an ornamental grass.

Friday May 23 I'm taking an online nature journaling class from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Today's exercise was to copy a bird drawing, but looking at it upside down to focus on drawing the shapes that you see; this is what I drew.

Saturday May 24 Birds heard at the pond this morning (according to the Cornell app, Merlin), just stopping several places for less than a minute: Northern parula, American redstart, Eastern kingbird, warbling vireo, blackpoll warbler, chimney swift, Baltimore oriole, and its cousin, the more rusty orchard oriole, along with the familiar robin, blue jay and mockingbird.

I also heard a woodpecker pecking and a red-bellied woodpecker calling. A great blue heron was standing on a downed branch over the water. Also a single ruddy duck, with its head tucked in, and several tail feathers missing. I wondered if it's ok as the flocks of ruddy ducks that were here earlier in the spring left weeks ago.

Sunday May 25 A female wood duck with eight ducklings trailing after her, all paddling across a bay at one end of the pond this morning.  Dozens and dozens of chimney swifts twittering above the trees on my street and at the pond. Great to see them all as their numbers have declined dramatically, by around two thirds, over the last 60 years, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. 

Out on an errand, I spotted these astroturf hippos in a plaza near Fenway Park.

 

And on my way back to the car, at an outdoor sculpture exhibit along the Muddy River, there was this piece, "Dragons Love to Read", by Dawn Evans Scaltreto.

 

Wednesday May 28 I had my dogwood tree in the front yard pruned earlier this spring. I think it's happy as it's now covered in blossom.

Thursday 5-29-25 The MIT News Office points out that "Today marks the last in a string of palindrome dates that began on May 20 (5-20-25). [At least with the US date convention.] To mark the occasion, and in honor of the afternoon's OneMIT Commencement ceremony, the Institute's own Barry Duncan, a renowned palindrome poet and bookseller at the MIT Press Bookstore, penned for our collective enjoyment in this entirely reversible ode to the Class of 2025 and its Commencement speaker." The palindrome poem is a bit forced, but still pretty amazing!

[H.G = Hank Green; SciShow is his YouTube science show; CS = computer science]

Sunday June 1 At the pond this morning, saw the female wood duck with her ducklings, now reduced to 7 from the original 8.

 

 

As I stopped at a Baltimore oriole nest I found a few days ago, a flashy male oriole carrying a worm in its beak flew in, delivered the worm and instantly took off again. A couple of minutes later, it returned to deliver another worm.