Hurricane Season

 

Masquetuck

These past two weekends,  Tropical Storms Lee and Ophelia have ruled.  Lee brought high winds but no rain,  and Ophelia brought both.  Equinox winds have averaged in the high twenties,  with gusts in the forties.  The sustained winds have whipped the leaves off the ocean-facing hydrangea and leveled the cosmos and verbena.  White caps and waves crash out front  with fast moving steel-gray clouds.

Head of the Plains looking to Clark's Cove

But the combination of the goldenrod and the groundsel  beckons me to go walking.  Milestone Bog is now brown with grasses and sedges  and yellow with goldenrod.   The  still green Polpis Road flashes silver as the winds whip the Russian Olive leaves and white with the salt bush (groundsel).   Tupelo leaves are almost down, leaving leaves of brown and gold and red in Squam Swamp.   The rain lights up the Usnea moss on the trees. On the bluffwalk, the autumn clematis blankets are without blooms.

I caught some fall warblers in Madaket:  a palm warbler at Jackson Point with the Sunday birders ,  and a pine warbler at Head of the Plains with Josh.  The shorebirds are active:  a flock of pectoral sandpipers in Madaket with the birders and a  white-rumped sandpiper at Sesachacha, along with semipalmated plovers,  greater and lesser yellowlegs, three kinds of gulls, Gadwalls and wigeon.  At the Head ofthe Plains,  I followed this solitary sandpiper walking down the road!

Pine Warbler at Head of the Plains

Pine Warbler

Palm Warbler at Jackson Point

Solitary Sandpiper

Palm Warbler

Foggy Days

 

Foggy September 10 sunrise

In early September,  the Bluff Walk abounds with  Queen Anne’s Lace, goldenrod, autumn clematis, and rose hips. The showy clematis blankets the shrubs, the grape leaves flutter and the groundsel is budding. At Squam Farm, the cobwebs hang in the fog, while goldenrods, grasses and grapes contrast with the reflowering pasture thistles. Mockernuts have fallen from the hickories. Gerardia and Liatris are a treat, as wells a brown thrasher and a least flycatcher. The Milestone Bog is filled with burnweed and still some sickle-leaved silk grass. Sweet Everlasting is in bloom.

Autumn Clematis on the bluff

Goldenrod at Milestone Bog

Liatris, 
New England Blazing Star 

Gerardia

Whimbrel at Pocomo Meadow

Ruddy Turnstone

Black-bellied Plover 

Norwood Oak on September 8

Summer's End

South Polar Skua,
Stercorarius maccormicki

 It’s hard to believe it’s the end of my Nantucket summer: the northwest wind has not yet begun to blow.  But the goldenrods are opening, and September 1 is the end of meteorological  summer .  As a birthday treat, I indulged myself in a pelagic birding trip with the Brookline Bird Club, to journey out to the Atlantic’s continental shelf.

It’s like an overnight camping trip with 45 bird nerds.   The Helen H leaves Hyannis at 6 am on Monday and returns at 5 on Tuesday.  I met new people and people I know, like Naeem Yusuf, the organizer of the trip who lives across the street from my son Charlie.

It takes hours to journey out to the canyons at the continental shelf…Veatch canyon is our first destination.  The first Shearwater we see is surprisingly a Manx.  Then come the Corey’s and then the Greats and the Audubon’s.  Only a few Sooty Shearwaters were seen.  A school of Common dolphins travelled with us for a while, leaping in synchrony.

Wilson's Storm Petrel

White-faced Storm Petrel

White-faced storm petrel

Approaching the canyons, the Wilson’s storm petrels danced across the water and we got good looks at white-faced, banded and Leach’s storm petrels.

The 2-4 foot seas didn’t bother me. Overnight  I heard yellowlegs calling and saw a prothonotary warbler and ovenbird drawn by the boat lights. Later a black and white warbler landed on the boat.  A small least sandpiper also circled. 

The patches of dense life with mammals and birds are far apart in this vast ocean.   The clouds seem to create a tunnel for us to pass through. My boat is so small and the world so large.

Tuesday brought both more marine mammals and more predators.  A south polar skua wheeled overhead and circled.  They breed close to the South Pole and make the longest migration of any skua, feeding on fish and stolen meals from other birds..  Josh and I saw the Great Skua in the east of Iceland. Too bad this one was seen in Dukes County and not Nantucket!

Our trip home was north between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, whereas we travelled out over Nantucket Shoals. Roseate Terns and a flock of American Golden Plovers were the highlights. We also got a look at the staging area for Vineyard Wind.

Manx Shearwater

Mid-August Diary

 

Pearl Crescent butterfly
 on a Sweet Everlasting

August 11:  At Masquetuck, a lone red eyed vireo continues to sing.  The marsh is changing color now and the sea lavender is blooming.  A belted kingfisher hunts at the edge of Polpis Harbor. 

August 12:  Highlight of my hike at Eel Point  is two immature little blue herons! Multiple night herons, great and snowy egrets and peeps.

Immature Little Blue Heron

August 14-15: Hard to distinguish the "special" terns like the Roseate, Arctic and Forster's from the common terns.  Trips to Sesachacha Cut and to Low Beach to check them out.  The killdeer and least terns are regulars at Sesachacha near Caleb's Pond-  where  the shores are covered with marsh fleabane (pluchea odorata),  which is much prettier than its name.  Rose mallow highlight are Squam Pond.  I am eyeing the beach plums at the entrance to Low Beach.

Squam Pond

Lesser Yellowlegs

August 16: There are luscious but unripe grapes at Entry to Ram Pasture from Marvin’s woods.  They are on my list for picking later! The scent of the sweet pepper is waning.  The coastal JoePye weed and the pearly everlasting are blooming at Marvin's Woods and on the Head of the Plains.  Yellows are appearing but it is not full-on goldenrod season yet. The ospreys have flown south.  The kingbirds are still hawking for insects and there are more of them!

Coastal JoePye Weed

White Coastal JoePye Weed

August 17: Mushrooms emerge after the rain at Squam Swamp:  Milky Bonnets (Hemimycena lactea), Fragile Dapperlings (Leucocoprinus fragilissimus),  Fishbiscuit Russulas (Russula compacta).  One great crested flycatcher and a number of towhees, catbirds, bluejays and a chucking common yellowthroat. So green in the fog...still the scent of sweet pepper and even a late swamp azalea.  I missed the little club spurred bog orchids,  which Kelly Omand says is between posts 20 and 21 in late July..

Fragile Dapperlings

Milky Bonnets

Russula

Biking to Jewel Pond on the moors, I see a lesser yellowlegs and a  least sandpiper , which must have popped over from Sesachacha. The pond is really low, and fringed by gratiola aurea, Pipeworts (eriocaulon aquaticum), and Virginia morning beauties (rhexia virginiana).

Morning Beauties

Sweet Pepper and Supermoons

 

Sweet Pepper,
clethra alnifolia

I set off to hike Norwood Farm in search of smelling the sweet pepper, clethra alnifolua, in bloom. It is hard to describe how it’s scent  demands focus.  The sarsaparilla odor takes over my senses.  If you want to be removed from the cares and craziness of the rest of the world, walking scented paths reigns supreme. Between the scent, listening for birdsong, watching for favorite wildflowers  and following flitting butterflies, how could I possibly think of anything else? Smells subdue Trump’s indictment, US debt downgrade,  continuing war in Ukraine, controversies over college admissions....

The little ladies tresses orchids (spirantheses tuberosa) were in bloom!  The St John’s cross, hypericum stragulum, was also out.  The sickleleaf silk-grass, pityopsis falcata, were in full bloom along the Pout Pond road. They used to be known as sickleleaf asters.  I hadn’t seen barn swallows before at Norwood Farm, but they darted past  in the insect heaven.

Little Ladies' Tresses,
Spiranthese tuberosa

St. John's Cross,
hypericum stragulum

Intimations of summer’s decline were evident: The first of the goldenrods, the slender goldentop (euthamia caroliniana),  have opened, and the leaves of the Tupelo are turning their red and mahogany.  But there was still the clatter and clamor of young eastern towhees and catbirds near the ponds. 

Slender Goldentop

Sickleleaf Silkgrass

Tupelos

Tupelo leaf

Last night was the first of August 2023's two supermoons, the Sturgeon Moon.  According to the Farmer's Almanac,  this is the time of year that indigenous populations found large numbers of sturgeon easy to catch in the Great Lakes.  I don't know if I've ever eaten sturgeon.

After the "Storm"

Wood Lily
Lilium Philidelphium

Our Brooklyn kids and our four grandchildren left Nantucket yesterday and the house seems oddly quiet. I really enjoyed taking Arthur to the "Bug Bonanza" program at the Maria Mitchell Hinchman House Natural Sciences Museum, and all the grandkids to "Ravenous Reptiles" there. Lots of time was spent digging holes at the beach, burying kids, and jumping waves.

During the whirlwind of activity by Arthur (7), Noa (4), Frankie (4) and Simon (1), I almost missed the changes of the summer season. A more consistent southwest wind came in over the past week, changing what had been a foggy July. The sweet pepper (Clethra alnifolnia) is opening and spreading its spicy scent. I saw a Wood Lily at Squam Farm on a short walk with Frankie, and the Meadow Beauties are now out at Windswept Bog. I discovered them, and two Northern BobWhites, during a "last-day" walk with Sam, Mari , Arthur , Frankie, Josh and Mari's mother Michiyo. Arthur caught and released a copper butterfly and bluet damselfly during our outing. We all ate dewberries.

Virginia Meadow Beauty
Rhexia Virginica

The average temperature for the month was 70.6 degrees, with .8 inches of rain and the dominant wind from the southwest. Other parts of the country are sweltering. We installed a new Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station when the anemometer died on our previous one. So I can't compare July to June in terms of temperature, but in terms of rain, there was 3.22 inches in June.

I am looking forward to the Sturgeon Moon, which will rise from the ocean on August 2.  This is the moonrise on July 29.

Moonrise, July 29

 

Before the kids arrived,  I believe I saw the first Whimbrel to stop in Nantucket on this year's southward migration.  I had hiked from Wauwinet to Coskata Pond via the Head of the Harbor and was rewarded on July 10 with this sighting.

Whimbrel at Coskata, July 10

July 18