Chowing Down

 The common yellowthroats are The UMASS Field Station were having a feast when we visited on July 5.  There was also a bonus of  3 greater yellowlegs and a spotted sandpiper.

Mama and babies

 

  

 Piping plover mama banded 9VE does the broken win trick at Smith's Point on July 6 to divert me from seeing her chicks.

Berries

 

The promise of spring is that the blossoms will mature into fruit.  The low-bush blueberries are now here,  and the high-bush blueberries are on their way.  The bearberries, bayberries and beach plums are growing.  Summer is looking like a promise fulfilled.

High bush blueberries

Low bush blueberries

Low bush blueberries

Bayberries

Bearberries

Beach Plums

Fox grapes

Beach plums

 

Scents of Summer

 

June 2:  As I walked this morning at Norwood Farm,  the scent of swamp azalea filled me up.    It was the pleasure of a deep inhalation that you don’t want to exhale.  The scents of summer on Nantucket that are unforgettable are swamp azalea, privet and sweet pepper. 

Some might say the salt spray sea smell is the hallmark aroma of the island, but for me it is those shrubs.  Of course the  roses and lilies are fine, and even the honeysuckle, but they are not the most emblematic in my book.

The swamp azalea,  rhododendron viscosum,  is now open at all the ponds and wet places.  It lights up the pond shrubbery and sends its enticing scent abroad.  I can see the sweet pepper getting ready to bloom,  but will have to wait until later in the month, or August.  The privet is blooming on the hedges waiting to be clipped.

Bernd Heinrich:  "We humans have experimented with various social systems; some have endured and others not.  I believe, however, that our well-being is tied not so much to the structure of our society and the politics that determine it,  as to our ability to maintain contact with nature,  to feel that we are part of the natural order and that we are capable of making a living within it." The Snoring Bird

Before the Fourth

The traffic on the roads and the bike paths has announced the formal arrival of summer.  The hydrangea haven’t  opened yet, but the New Dawn roses are in their glory days.  The garden daisies are ready to burst open.  The smell of uncut privet fills the air.  

The humidity is now regularly in the high eighties and nineties,  another mark of summer,  brought by the southwest winds. Changes are everywhere:  whether it is the lack of masks on people in the Stop N Shop (and the lines), or the filling up of the social calendar to greet new arrivals. Josh and I took a first swim at Bunny Mellon Beach  (AKA  Beach 29A.) 

I sought the two spotted sandpipers that were seen in the Milestone Bogs on June 27,  and came up empty.  But I was treated to fields of Aletris (colicroot) and Pasture Thistle (Cirsium Pumilum).  The yarrow (achillea) is opening,  as is the St. Johnswort. A few laggard blue flag irises were tucked in the bogs. There are still Quaker Ladies blooming amidst the grasses!  They are the longest  blooming  wildflower in Nantucket, I think.  I first saw them very early in the spring at Squam Farm, and on every walk over the past two months.

Pasture Thistle (Cirsium Pumilum)

American Lady, Vanessa Virginiensis

Pasture Thistle

Wild rose,  Rosa virginiana

Aletris,  Colicroot

Quaker Lady,  Houstonia Caerulea

Missed the spotted sandpipers,  but did see this Killdeer

St. Johnswort

 

Summer Wind

 

It is the time of the southwest wind, with warm gusts causing everything on this island to move and dance: the grasses, now feet-high, the arrowwood viburnum frothy blooms and leaves, the undersides of the fox grape vines.

The birds array themselves into the wind, the great black backed gulls serene and the others catching a thermal to soar along the bluff.  The bank swallows tumble and dart through the gusts to snatch their insect prey. 

These winds bring humidity and fog banks which hug the shore and obscure the rising of June’s Strawberry Moon. The stands of milkweed pinkish globes sway, glinting at hopes of monarch butterflies to come.

Big open vistas frame the clouds rushing by, with cumulus mountains and stratus strands. How can the summer already be ripening, with rose hips on the Rosa rugosa? 

Arrowwood,  Viburnum Dentatum

Osprey over Road to Coskata

Least Tern over Coskata

Oystercatcher at Coskata

Looking to the ocean from Head of the Harbor

Eel Point June 21

 

Oystercatcher at Eel Point

One of at least 8 piping plover

A view of the marsh

Sedum growing in the sand at Eel Point

Josh and I hiked Eel Point on Monday, June 21,  without benefit of my Canon.  Would that I could have captured the more than 300 least terns that are nesting there in photos!   We tried not to disturb them.

It is a bird haven,  with oystercatchers and piping plovers nesting there as well.  The ospreys were at the nest and harriers were hunting.  Willets called.