Nine Ponds

Even though it stormed last night, with .6 inch of rain in 12 hours, the ponds are low. My "tour de ponds" bike ride of 10.6 miles covered Gibbs Pond (a loon and a swan in addition to the gulls), three Wigwam Ponds (yellow-rumps and scaups), the three ponds on Pout Ponds Road near Norwood Farm, Almanac Pond and Jewel Pond. Sesachacha is now low, but because

the cut has cleaned it over the past week.

Jewel Pond

Pond at the Corner entrance
 to Norwood Farm

Third Wigwam  pond, with lily pads

Second Wigwam Pond

First Wigwam Pond

Norwood Farm, March 28

Red-Tailed Hawk, 
Buteo Jamacensis

 

Hiked Norwood Farm today in some light rain showers. Trees are still bare, highlighting a pearl grey landscape and sky. Peaceful.  Beneath the brown grasses,  there is a  hint of new green. Today I recognized that the path is lined with sheep laurel, and not just on either side of the wooden walkway.  A glimpse of British soldier’s lichen in bloom surprises me. 

Met another woman hiker; neither of us wearing masks and deciding not to put them on as we passed each other.  A flicker wik-wik-wik-ed;  a beautiful red tail hawk perched on a tree. It’s white breast gleamed amidst the grey until it flew off.  Blue jays  were energetic, a flock of 20 robins fed in a field.  No ducks sheltered on the ponds.

Birders are viewing  to report “first of year” sightings:  first Oystercatcher (March 23) first great egret, first phoebe, (March 26), first osprey ( March 27).  It’s a March of firsts.

This is the time of the March full moon, called the Worm moon, but also the Paschal Moon.    Passover starts on the evening of the first full moon after the northern vernal equinox.  Easter is celebrated the Sunday after the Paschal full moon. There is something so comforting in knowing  that the spring festivals and celebrations have been scheduled by human beings for thousands of years by the position of the sun and the moon.

Moonrise

Sunrise

Norward Farm Oak

British Soldier Lichen blooming,
Cladonia Cristatella

Head of the Plains

 

Clark's Cove

Josh and I hiked the Head of the Plains to Clark’s Cove  on March 27.   I saw my first 2021 Eastern Phoebe on Nantucket, and a brilliant savannah sparrow.  The Heath is mowed, and we could see mayflowers in abundance emerging. 

The weather was so nice that we decided to go take the kayaks for our “first of year” spin of 2021. 

This year our  ill-fated drive was today,  trying to go on Massasoit Bridge Road from Madaket Road behind the dump.  Couldn’t pass, even with the rear view windows folded.  Last year our ill-fated drive was trying to take the Prius through the puddles on Eel Point Road. The year before it was driving to a birders meeting almost getting stuck in water on the road near Barbara Jackson's house.  Nothing ventured,  nothing gained.  Well, scratches on the 4Runner were gained.

Spring  is taking its steps forward.

Head of the Plains

Blue Birds!

March 11, 2021  46 degrees

Today is the anniversary of The World Health Organization declaring the pandemic.  The US had about 1300 cases of Covid declared at that point.   It is also the anniversary of Josh and my eight month stay in Nantucket for the pandemic.  We had planned to go to the Indian Wells tennis tournament as a vacation,  but it was cancelled, so we came to Nantucket for a break.  

I saw a peregrine falcon hunting at Low Beach that first pandemic walk I took on March 11, 2020.  No falcons today at Low Beach,  but I was delighted by blue birds at Squam Farm.   Blue birds are often seen as a sign of spring's arrival in New England,  but I believe these birds over-wintered on Nantucket,  since blue birds were seen in the late fall at Squam Farm.  They were enjoying the warmer temperatures at the field at the intersection of the main path and the path to the mockernut hickories.   Bluebirds (Sialia sialis) are a symbol of fertility in many cultures,  and  are often equated with hope,  possibility and choosing happiness.  

Here is Ralph Waldo Emerson on bluebirds:

The world rolls round, - mistrust it not,-

Befalls again what once befell;

All things return, both sphere and mote,

And I shall hear my bluebird's note,

And dream the dream of Auburn dell

Interested in how the color blue (rare in birds)  is made? Richard Prum (Yale prof and author of my favorite The Evolution of Beauty)  discovered how feathers  can be blue.  According to Smithsonian Magazine,  "Inside each cell, stringy keratin molecules separate from water, like oil from vinegar.  When the cell dies, the water dries away and is replaced by air, leaving a structure of keratin protein interspersed with air pockets, like a sponge...When white light strikes the blue feather, the keratin pattern causes red and yellow wavelengths to cancel each other out,  while blue wavelengths of light reinforce and amplify one another and reflect back to the beholder's eye."  (March 2012) So it's the physics of the feather rather than a pigment that makes us behold them as blue!

Norwood Farm and an anniversary

 

It’s the anniversary  of Gov Baker’s state of emergency.  We feel the passage of this past year intensely, with the disruption of routines and livelihoods from the pandemic.  But the landscape seems to be in its ordinary annual cycle.

Josh and I took an early morning walk at Norwood Farm. It’s one of our favorites. The  dew is frozen on the grass, giving  it a precious jewel-like presence.  The jays are making a mad chorus of all their sounds: the caws, the  clucks, the “shouts and murmurs”.  Perhaps they are warning the other birds of the presence of a red tail hawk hunting.  Mixed flocks of chickadees and yellow rump warblers flit about. 

My favorite oak  is bare-leaved, as it was a year ago.

The  clumps of St. Andrew’s Cross are burgundy and the ladies tresses I have admired are not visible.  The tree branches are bare, showing off the Tupelos twists.  We flush some American Black Ducks and see a single bufflehead on a hidden pond.

The open fields are dotted with glacial erratics and trees grow between them...for this was a farm, and the farmers pushed the rocks together and didn’t plow there, enabling some saplings to take root.

It’s a glacial moraine, with the ups and downs and kettle hole ponds that make this landscape so special.  I see the spots where sheep laurel will flower in May. And where now there is only one towhee “preening ,” there will be dozens. Fire moss, sphagnum mosses and lichens show the season awakening.

It has been an unusual pandemic year for us, but not much different for the land. There is comfort in that.

Yellow-rump

Yellow-rumped warbler

Chickadee

Red-tailed Hawk

Kettle hole pond from a height

Bufflehead in a kettle hole pond

Wintering St. Andrew's Cross 

Sunrise March 10, 6:00 am 

Pandemic Spring

 

I started the day with frost underfoot, grasses golden and more blue-sky.  Back in Nantucket,  a polar snap has frozen ponds and limited the signs of spring to mosses blooming and voluble carolina wrens singing and chattering.  My early hike in Windswept Bog and around Stump Pond is wintry:   grey forest with dollops of cedar  and drops of  lichen on trees. A single  cardinal standing proud atop a maple provided contrast.   It has been under 32 degrees for more than 3 days. 

The hope for spring seems more pressing in this pandemic year.  With vaccinations proceeding,  it seems that with spring will  bring with it a  renewal of  in-person social life,  and a relief to suffering.  

Meanwhile,  daily life moves forward.  Four white-tail deer on the lawn at 5:45 am;  four long-tail ducks on the ocean at 9:00 am,   four robins poking for worms at ten.  All  enjoying the ocean view while feeding.  Cawing crows,  soaring turkey  vultures ready to feed on the weak ones.

Maybe I should focus on the mosses,  inspired by Robin Kimmerer's Gathering Moss.

Broom Moss, Dicranum Scoparium

A sphagnum moss

Fire Moss, Ceratdon purpureus

Icy Sunset looking East, March 7

 

Bleached Out , March 6

 

Sunny blustery day...the sky seems bleached out...from the rich blue on high descending to whitish blue at the horizon.  Josh and I hiked to Eel Point, where the beach grass is bleached the color of the sand and the eelgrass was bleached white.  The birdscape was “ bleached out” as well, with only herring and ring-billed gulls taking advantage of the day.   Sanderlings scampered, two black ducks jumped into flight  and one  red-tailed hawk spied the scene on the osprey pole. Not a leaf remains on the bushes, even the oak leaves are gone.  The temperature has been less than 32 degrees for two days running.

Sunset in the cloudless bleached sky is like a fireball descending. It is a couple of weeks before the vernal equinox, and we can see the march of the sun to the north.  In the city it’s not so clear how the point of sunrise and sunset moves from equinox to equinox. Here it is a part of daily life.

Bleached eel grass and beach grass

Icy Milestone Bog, March 6

Sankaty Light in the distance

Sphagnum moss 

 Milestone Bog is covered in skim ice,  limiting the waterfowl's range of resting spots.  The northern harrier and red-tail hawk  hunted.  A flock of American pipits surprised me bobbing up and down in the short grasses before the bog, and whirled away in unison.  

Inspired by my reading of Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North,  I  composed some Milestone Bog haiku:

Barking geese aloft

Winter’s frozen bog below

Ravens on the dike

             Skim ice  on the bog

Open water  diamond shine

Breath of Northwest winds

Rustle in the bush

Savannah sparrow jumping

Yellow eyebrow winks