Golden Heather

 Golden Heather blankets the hills on the middle moors,  and brightens the roads when clumps grow alongside.  Hudsonia ericoides is as much an emblem of spring on the island as the flowering low-bush blueberries and huckleberries.  It' s more beautiful than the catkins from the scrub oak.  And it seems to withstand years of less rain like this one.  The ponds are the lowest we've seen in years.  At Pout Pond,  the viola lanceolata are where they pond might usually be.

The bird's foot violets are out at the intersection of Altar Rock Road and Pout Pond Road.  And we are seeing lots of Beach Plum blooms along the Pout Pond Road.  Hope we will get some for jam!

The first blue-eyed grass is opening on the moors,  and also at Norwood Farm.

Toby Sackton helped me find the black-necked stilt at the Nantucket Harbor Flats,  but I still haven't seen the glossy ibises that have been hanging out there.  They may have flown. 

My biggest find has been the ovenbird in Squam Swamp.  I didn't see it,  but got great recordings of it singing (along with great crested flycatchers and black&white warblers).

Discovering something new in the wild every day just makes me happy.  Is it that I like to search for the new?  Like being in nature?  Like the total absorption in the environment that I need to do to listen for birds,  look for their movement and see the flowers? It is a loss of self and immersion in the world around me,  which never ceases to offer something new and delightful.

Viola Pedata, Bird's Foot Violet

Viola Lanceolata,  Bog Violet

Pout Pond

Black Huckleberry

Low Bush Blueberry

Golden Heather, Hudsonia Erocoides

Bird's Foot Violet

Pout Pond

Black Necked Stilt at The Creeks

Black-necked stilt

Return

 

We took the boat back to Nantucket  on the first day of the new summer-y schedule.  The air is lively with that earlier spring of light greens reaching into a blue sky, red catkins and new growth, crabapple petals carpeting the ground, lilacs blooming.

We’ve missed the amelanchier shad and the cherries flowering, but  now the winds seem less harsh than earlier in the spring.  We even have some late narcissus blooming in the garden, although the island-wide show is done.

The beach plums are in full bloom all over the island;  this year I vow to make a map so that when they ripen, we have lots of places to look.  My Polpis bike loop is with towhees, Carolina wrens, chipping sparrows, pine warblers,  yellow warblers, common yellowthroats- I had forgotten how many of them are singing at this time of year.

Birds are the sounds of the spring, as they declare their territories, find mates,  and declare the dawn.

Spring Forward

April 22, 2021 

Why do I write this blog?

I write because of the surprises I find nearly every day by observing nature closely.  I don't listen to an audible book or a podcast when I walk,  I find myself consumed by the sights and sounds of what is around me.  Today the creaks of the trees in Squam Swamp were as vocal as the birds.  The change of seasons is as fascinating as any change process, and one we can inspect every year of our lives!  A step forward and a step back....

Today started out at 37 degrees with  winds from the west at 25 miles per hour, with gusts up in the  forties. But it is spring and the daffodils are at full bloom.  I found the earliest wildflowers,  wood anemones,  in Squam Swamp this morning. Yesterday I listened to and saw a pine warbler in the piney woods at the bottom on the Sconset bluff. 

I suppose it is my version of meditation.

Northern Gannet off the Bluff

Swamp Maple and Lichen

Early Wood Anemones

Squam Swamp's Vernal Pools

Daffodils on the Bluff

First fern fiddleheads

Pine Warbler

Laughing Gull

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!