July 2025

Tuesday July 1 Canada Day! Susan has been organizing a group of friends to participate in Visibility Brigades, holding signs over highways, protesting the Administration. Visibility Brigades have been happening for the last few months all over the country, sometimes with the same message at the same time at bridges over a single Interstate for hundreds of miles. We do our protests on the Minuteman Bikeway in Lexington over Interstate 95 during rush hour every week or two. (For my non-American friends, Lexington is the site of the first battle in the America Revolution, on April 19, 1775.) Here's today's sign, along with the special shirt I got in honour of Canada Day. I know this isn't exactly a nature note, but I couldn't resist.

 

Thursday July 3 Went to Ward's Pond to check on the swans and their cygnets - everyone is fine, still 5 cygnets. There was also a female wood duck with 11(!) ducklings, still fairly small. The wood duck mom swam over to the swan nest and clambered up onto it, followed by the ducklings. On my way around the pond, I also spotted this cute chipmunk posing on a tree stump. 

Friday July 4 Independence Day!  Just as I started my walk around the pond this morning, I saw a little flock of cedar waxwings flitting about, landing on a tree branch, then taking off again. Maybe going after insects. Gorgeous with their swept back tawny crest, black mask, soft grey back and bright yellow tips at the very end of their tail feathers. 

Later on, biking through the Arboretum, there was this sign:

I've been noticing that sweet scent from the linden trees along my street; they've been dropping their flowers for the last week or so, carpeting the sides of the street.

Saturday July 5 I've rented a cabin in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod for a week and drove there today. On the way, I stopped at the Cape Cod Natural History Museum as I'd been curious about it. Mostly there were displays for kids, along with an extensive aquarium. The section on biomimicking, learning from nature, had a display of a new type of glass that reflects ultraviolet light that birds can see but we can't. (People have three cones in their eyes that detect the wavelengths of light of the visible spectrum: violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red. Most birds (but not owls) have a fourth cone that detects ultraviolet.)

 

 

Further along, I stopped at Mass Audubon's Wellfleet sanctuary for a walk through the woods to the marsh. Willets flying over the marsh, calling out. One perched in a tree near this spot flew towards me about 20 feet up in the air, then darted around above me before returning to its perch. After a minute or so, it flew directly towards me again, just a few feet above the marsh and swerved away just in front of me (I actually ducked it came so close). I wondered if it had a nest near the footpath. After that, I turned around and left it alone. (All About Birds says they nest on the ground "in cordgrass, saltgrass and beachgrass near salt marshes".) 

It's the time of year that diamondback terrapins (a type of turtle) nest along the bayside shore of the Cape. Volunteers (including Susan!) find nests and protect them from foxes and raccoons with chicken wire. Later on in the summer, the volunteers return to release the baby terrapins after they've hatched. 

The cabin I rented has a spectacular view over a bay; I've been enjoying watching the tide come in and out.

 

Sunday July 6 Went back to the Audubon sanctuary early to try to see more birds. The purple martins were active at their nest boxes - about a dozen flitting around, coming to the boxes, squeezing in the narrow rectangular hole to deliver insects to their young.

 

As I watched them, a young coyote pup, about half adult size, ambled across the field, stopping to sit, have a scratch, look at me, ant then trot off again. The woman at the nature center desk told me three pups were born in April; sometimes the staff see them together, sometimes alone. 

At the back of the field, a pair of osprey have nested on a platform installed by the nature center. One of the adults was on the nest with the two juveniles. Other birds: several snowy egrets, one flying over the marsh, showing off its bright yellow feet, the color of a rain slicker; more willets; a piping plover on the sand at the edge of the bay; tree swallows; a barn swallow; and a song sparrow perched at the tippy top of a tree, singing away.  

After dinner, drove out to Wellfleet's Great Island, a narrow peninsula with salt marsh on one side and sand dunes and beach on the other. On the way back to the cabin, I had to stop for a one-way temporary bridge where they're rebuilding a bridge over a small creek. As I was looking at the huge crane on the site, I noticed little specks decorating the steel lattice of the crane: double-crested cormorants. 

Tuesday July 8 Foggy early morning walk at the Wellfleet Audubon sanctuary - 4 great egrets fishing in a pool near the trail.

Wednesday July 9 Morning bird walk at the Wellfleet sanctuary with Mark Faherty, an Audubon ornithologist. Near the nature center, we watched the purple martins arriving at the nest boxes, insects at the ready for their young. Mark pointed out a barn swallow nest under the gutter of one of the sanctuary buildings, with a few little baby barn swallows in it, just waiting for an adult to arrive with insects. 

 One of the adult osprey was on their nest, with the two juveniles. Mark said that this is the first year they've nested there; last year they hung about for a bit, bringing a few sticks to the nest, but didn't lay eggs. In the trees near the nature center: a hairy woodpecker, cedar waxwings, Northern flicker and mourning dove. (Cornell's All About Birds says "Their soft, drawn-out calls sound like laments." Perhaps that's why they're called mourning doves.) A small flock of 4 or 5 turkeys crossing the field in the distance.

Near the native plant garden the berries on a mulberry tree attracted several Baltimore orioles and a couple of orchard orioles. A couple of great crested flycatchers darted about, sometimes chasing each other.

Walking by the salt marsh we spotted an American goldfinch, a Eastern kingbird, a song sparrow and several willets.

The highlight of the morning was two whimbrels (Numenius phaeopus) at the shore, amongst a group of willets. Their very noticeable distinguishing feature is their very long, downward curving bill, about half as long as their body, that they use to probe into the sand for fiddler crabs; the curve of their bill matches the shape of the crabs' burrows. Their genus name, Numenius, means "new moon" in Greek, for the resemblance between the shape of their bills and a crescent moon. Whimbrels only pass through the coast of Massachusetts during their migration from their breeding grounds in Alaska and the northern territories of Canada to their wintering grounds in the southern US, Mexico and Central America, so there's a only a brief window to see them here. (All of this whimbrel info is from Cornell's All About Birds.)

Also at the shore: a greater yellowlegs, a semipalmated plover, a snowy egret (yellow feet, black bill), a great egret (black feet, yellow bill, and much larger than the snowy), a flock of tree swallows standing on the sand, and a few barn swallows darting about.

Tuesday July 15 At lunch yesterday with MIT friends, we got to talking about fly fishing. My father loved fly fishing and made his own flies, some of which I still have.  

Checked on the cygnets at Ward's Pond - still 5, getting bigger all the time. The algae on the pond is a little startling but the swans don't seem to mind.

 

Wednesday July 16 Love the light at the pond in the early morning.

 Tuesday July 22 Watched a muskrat swimming along the edge of the pond.

My friend Beth let me know that someone saw two otters (!!) swimming in a marshy bit of the Charles River in West Roxbury (another part of Boston near JP) yesterday morning. Otters right in the city - amazing! Here's the link:

https://www.universalhub.com/2025/headline-writer-tries-fails-resist-temptation-exclaim-why-i-otter

Wednesday July 23 Went to MIT to have some specimens of different species of wood cut to the same size this morning for my upcoming wooden ship talk at the Arb. Went by the department forge and foundry, which has the best door handles ever: beavers, in honor of MIT's mascot, made by Tara Fadenrecht, one of the technical instructors in my department, just for these doors. I especially like the baby beaver (kit) trailing behind the adult.

Also love the stained glass blacksmith hanging in the forge.

At Ward's Pond, the swans are down to 4 cygnets. But they're starting to spread their mini-wings!

 Also spotted the wood duck family. 

Monday July 28 On my way back from my walk this evening, there was a mallard with two juveniles in my neighbor's yard. Not sure what they were doing there... a ways from the pond.

Tuesday July 29 My friend Beth Beighlie had a juvenile Cooper's hawk at her birdbath this morning, hoping for a meal. (There was a little wren flitting about, waiting for a drink.)

 And settling for a bath.

At Jamaica Pond over the last couple of weeks, the usual summer suspects: great blue heron, Eastern kingbird, warbling vireo, chimney swifts, wood ducks and cormorants (although fewer than in previous years).