Late August

Gerardia, agalinis tenufolia,
at Milestone Bog

 Summer ‘s tail is showing.  The sweet pepper scent is spent and the Tupelo is turning mahogany, the ferns mix brown dead with green, the grasses and sedges sway.  Some fox grapes look like they will be extra juicy.  The sickle-leaved silk grass fills the sandy roads on the moors and the sweet everlasting  stands alone or in shining white gray stands.   The bush clover is leaning and flowering…both white ( lespedeza capita), and pink ( lespedeza Virginia).

Today, August 22,  I saw the late summer flower, common gerardia( agalinis tenufolia), also known as slender false foxglove, in three places at Milestone Bog.  And the little ladies tresses( spiranthese tuberosa) also popped up in two places.   I get a thrill and feel like the walk is “productive “ when I see a special plant or bird.

Little Ladies Tresses,
spiranthese tuberosa

The kingbirds were out in force , and have seemed very visible in the last weeks -  flitting about in groups and hawking for insects. But a small sharp-shinned Hawk stole the show, leaping out of the bog and flying off.  And a group of juvenile Turkey vultures had me guessing … without those telltale red heads.  And it was unexpected, too, to find three least sandpipers eating in a muddy ditch.

Eastern Kingbird

Least Sandpiper

I am starting to appreciate how the grasses make our landscape so beautiful.  The bluestem in particular is colorful, and the switchgrass in the wet spots is stately.  Something new to learn about!

I have observed more and more posts  of the various conservation landowners, kind of like dogs leaving their marks.  Riding along the Polpis Road it seems like a marker a minute! So much for wild Nantucket.

 The marshes are reddening, too.  The spartina alterniflora cordgrass (now called sporobolus alterniflora) is fruited in Pocomo Meadow.  Island Creek  is alive with black-bellied and semipalmated plovers, whimbrels, willets, oystercatchers, yellowlegs and Great and snowy egrets.  The birds range in size from osprey to least sandpiper,  with 3 kinds of gulls and 2 terns thrown in.

This year,  I am ready for the change and look forward to starting as a Visiting Fellow at 

Norwood Farm Oak

Norwood Farm Dried Up Kettle Pond

Island Creek,  Pocomo Meadow

Harvard Graduate School of Education again.  I am working at the intersection of AI and education.

Hike to Sesachacha

 

August 6

80 degrees, winds SW 15

10:30 am -1:30 pm

I hiked north  toward the Lighthouse along the beach. I fell in line with the 120 sanderlings and dozen semipalmated plovers who led the way.  Each time I got close, they winged ahead… their white bellies glinting in the sun as they banked over the ocean.  A spotted sandpiper kept a bit separate, bobbing incessantly. 

The herring and black backed gulls must have been fishing elsewhere. Normally there are large groups of them “ down front”, but not today.  And the lesser black backed gulls, which are always here in winter, are not around in summer. A small group of cormorants relaxed at the shore.

A semipalmated plover played “king of the hill”  on the rocks , which were exposed as low tide approached (12:44 pm at Great Point).  These rocks are the gathering spot for the harlequin ducks in winter.

Sanderlings

I followed the sanderling plover parade past Sankaty Light  and midway to Quidnet they headed back south….to be replaced by a new group of sanderlings heading north,  as well as terns winging over the sea.

Spotted Sandpiper

More cormorants, Canada geese and terns congregated on the Sand bars at the cut.  I headed along the rim of Sesachacha Pond, past the Greenhills and the osprey nest, toward the Audubon property. Four lesser yellowlegs fed at the foam edge .   The marsh fleabane (pluchea odorata) grew out of the sand. The osprey warned me to get lost. 

 Least sandpipers and snowy egrets bathed in the inlet near the swamp.  Mallards floated and sixty-ish Canada geese honked.    The pond is low...13 steps from the edge to where the path leads up.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Least Sandpiper

I was rewarded with a pearl crescent and an Eastern black swallowtail during my walk home.

Least Sandpiper

. 

Masquetuck, Squam Pond, Reyes Pond

 

Squam Pond

August 4, 75 degrees and muggy at 8:15 am.  Masquetuck

Mosquitoes 🦟 are looking for a meal everywhere, but especially near a marsh! A Red- eyed vireo sings a welcome..."here I am, look at me" Even though ebird calls the red-eyed vireo rare, it is regularly in the swamps in Nantucket in the summer. I also heard one in Squam Swamp last week.

The fog- limned webs are magical. 

The sweet pepper is now truly out and perfuming the air. Cicadas and towhees provide the background sounds. The osprey nest in the pines is now empty, the birds have gone fishing. It is now 47 steps to spartina from end of steps, 39 steps from the edge of the sand. As at Eel Point, the sea lavender  is out.

At Reyes Pond, the great crested flycatcher was the "wheeping" greeter. As I hiked into the moors and the Altar Rock Road parking spot, I saw  1 monarch and 1 wood nymph . Goldenrod and sickle-leaved aster and the expected birds joined me. That bandit common yellowthroat gave me a brief glimpse as wells its call notes, before vanishing again into the shrubs around Reyes Pond.  Some more high bush blueberries were a treat.

Great Crested Flycatcher

Common Wood Nymph

Sickle-leaved Aster, 
now Sickleleaf SilkGrass,
Pityopsis falcata

Eel Point

 

Saltmarsh Sparrow

August 1

It's a gray day with sprinkles, perfect for a hike on Eel Point. I catch a quick glimpse of rose mallow on the Madaket Road. At Eel point, there is the ripening sweet pepper, poison ivy and bayberry. As I trek along the beach, with its roped off sections for nesting birds, the common terns calls are the background music. I love to see the flash of piping plovers scuttling across the sand and shells. 

 It's near to dead low tide with many terns on sand bars. Mostly common and least terns, but I search to find an outlier …there’s a laughing gull…and an arctic tern! The babies are begging and being fed by their parents. Semipalmated sandpipers and ruddy turnstones forage the edge. A dozen Egrets are in the bathtub; the oystercatchers show off and reel about.  A northern harrier disturbs the peace.

Piping Plover

Laughing Gull and Common Tern

 As I hike back along the marsh edge, the willets are screaming and a Greater Yellowlegs divebombs me in the marsh. A juvenile night heron Kwok kwoks by. The sea lavender is out, along with the mosquitoes. I am a mosquito banquet. A Salt marsh sparrows pop up.

Yesterday there were 4 monarchs flitting at home. And today I saw the first goldenrod at Norwood Farm, and a peregrine on the bluff. The sweet pepper’s sarsaparilla smell is now wafting, although it was dampened by the rain during my afternoon walk at Norwood Farm. Hints of summer's end and the changes to come.  Josh and I collected 4 cups of high bush blueberries at Mirror pond.  

Goldenrod,
Solidago rugosa

Little Ladie's Tresses,
Sprianthes tuberosa

Slender Goldentop,
Euthamia Caroliniana

Breezy

Afternoon of  July 28.  76 degrees winds S15.

At Squam Farm, a Wood Lily greets me. The lilium philadelphicum is my symbol of summer. Nantucket's beaches might be the symbol of summer for some, but for me, this flower which is sought but might not be seen, is the symbol.

This is the third that I have seen this year: one on the Middle Moors and another at Marvin's Woods, and this one at Squam Farm. So it's a sumptuous summer by that count. They are always a delight and seem to bloom in different places each year...or at least I see them in different places.

The stands of almost-blooming sweet pepper raise an aura of expectation for the future...for their aroma and what lies ahead. The dappled light in the Squam swamp is soothing and the first red Tupelo leaves dot the sandy floor. There is even a look backward with the scent of late swamp azalea. It's so quiet...with sounds of the breeze rather than the birds, and only an occasional fly buzzing by or a jet thrumming overhead. 

Bogs in the Fog

Milestone Bog with Steeplebush

The midsummer weather has swung into high gear, with steamy days in the eighties.   It was 80 degrees by 9 am yesterday and stayed in the eighties until 6 pm.  The nights are foggy and the early mornings, too, until the sun burns off the fog. 

I hiked in the early morning at Windswept Bog on Thursday and the Milestone Bogs today. Neither is today a producing cranberry bog, but the are wonderful wet, open spaces.   Milestone is close to 900 acres including the 190 acres that were the producing cranberry bog.  Windswept is smaller; together with Stump Pond,  it is 231 acres. 

At the Milestone bog,  baby geese were scurrying; parents honking.  The young ones are already 2/3 of adult height. Silk grass  (pityopsis falcata) , which used to be called sickle-leaves aster, is blooming at road edge.  The field grasses are blowing;  here is a wet area that was a field of colicroot (aletris farinosa)  in early July.  Now  the yellowy bases blend in with the grasses. There is a field of dried pasture  thistles.

In the fog,  there are fewer road and plane sounds.  Planes began to land at 7:58 at the Milestone Bog,  and at 9:02 at the Windswept.  I could hear the sound of cars on the milestone road; the bog is surrounded by human activity.  But here the sounds are the honking of the geese, the titters of the swallows,  and the occasional "kir" of the red-tailed hawks.

The Steeplebush (spirea tomentosa) and swamp loosestrife (Decodon verticillatus) are blooming at both the Milestone Bog and Windswept.  Windswept also has Virginia Meadowbeauties (rhexia virginica)  in several wet spots,  mixed with cross-leave milkwort (polygala cruciata), club moss,  and twisted yellow-eyed grass (xyris torta).  I caught a look at an Eastern Phoebe,  considered rare at this time of year,  at Windswept.

Rhexia Virginica

Xyris Torta

Polygala Cruciata

Club moss

A killdeer keening at Milestone draws me to observe ;  A swarm of red winged blackbirds rises up from the reeds.  I then chase  savannah sparrows before heading back to the car, home and the grandkids. 

Eastern Phoebe at Windswept Bog

Windswept Bog , July 21

Savannah sparrow

Killdeer

In the Company of Towhees

Wood lily,
lilium philadelphicum

This morning I went on my Pout Ponds walk at 7 am in a brisk 24 mph wind from the southwest. The temperature was already 75 degrees; the weather changed to mugginess. Southeasterly winds that had kept the weather crisp and in the low seventies for the past several weeks.

I parked near Altar Rock, and the white topped asters filled the open fields nearby. I plucked some low bush blueberries, already fruited and reddening. The sickle-leaved asters congregated in the center of the road. The Bayberries were green and ripening. A few left over ox-eyed daisies inhabit the shady spots, and there is also some remaining St. Johnswort.

Low-bush blueberry

Toothed White-topped Aster,
Sericocarpus asteroides

I was in the company of towhees, because they are the most prevalent bird on the moors, preeting regularly. I heard about thirty of them all along the walk. There were only a few "drink-your-tea"s. A blue jay honked and the common yellowthroat and red winged blackbirds were at the pond.

The first Pout Pond looks to be 10-12 feet lower than usual. A benefit was Virginia Meadow beauties in the wet spots.

As I turned the bend to head back, the heath and lichen field was very dry. Little lichen remained and very subdued. But the groves of golden false indigo were many along the road.

And there is a wood lily!

A young male northern harrier swooped above me, calling and swooping away on the winds.

A new gate has been erected...#wildnantucket continues to be civilized, even in the moors. Planes  coming in to land also remind me of the  hustle bustle of the mainland. I walked back to my car and headed home. There, hundreds of people walk the road up to the Sankaty Light every day.