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 

The Gull Show, March 5

 

I had been thirsty for Nantucket, so as soon as we got back to Sconset , I grabbed my binoculars and headed to the beach. With winds from the west, walking south  was in the lee, the sea was calm and gulls fed along the shore where the red seaweed washed.  In addition to the usual herring and  greater-black backed gulls,  I was treated to glaucous and  bonaparte gulls.  The little "bonies"  are favorites.

Glaucous Gull

Glaucous Gull

Bonaparte Gulls

Bonaparte Gulls

The glaucous gull had been eating a dead northern gannet on the beach,  along with seven turkey vultures and a few crows.  Winter culls the weak on this Atlantic coast.

Snowy Owls

 

All photos (at least 2 different owls)  from Jan 11, 2021 at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island, MA