Peeper time at last!

Heard the peepers first on the night of April 10, coming from the Charles River, only a week later than last year, even though spring feels so late this year. Then today went for a good listen. It was silent at a pond that still had snow on it, but frog party-town at the adjacent one that gets more sun… It’s peepers and wood frogs — wood frogs are the ones that make a clacking sound. So good to hear some spring!

Underneath the snow

On my calendar is a note that in 2012, this was the evening of the first peepers of the year. This year we still have a couple of feet of snow and spring is still frozen out; peepers seem a long way off. I hope they’re sleeping well. Here is a short video by Alert Flowerophile Brian with pictures of the loads of snow we got this year along with the flowers we hope to see again someday (and hidden after the credits, nice snowdog action!):

Beavers at Rocky Woods

These photos are from May 10 of this year… but I just saw some impressive beaver work in Connecticut and it made me want to take another look.  First we saw this dam built along the boardwalk…

Beaver dam

And then saw what big trees they were taking down. Imagine gnawing those down with your teeth!

Beaver work with Lucy for scaleBeaver lumberjackingBeaver denThis is their lodge, sited on the shore so dogs could walk on it. (Typically the lodge is  supposed to be out in the pond, for protection from terrestrial predators, so these beavers weren’t thinking things through.) I checked for info on beavers in this woods, and only found this, about flooding in residential areas of the town:

(Notes from the Selectmen’s meeting, May 2014) Trapper Barry Mandell reported trapping a 60 pound beaver and breaching dams in the Stop River area of town. To date the town has spent $4,700 on trapping services. … Recently passed state referendums have made trapping difficult and resulted in an over abundance of beaver in Medfield and throughout the state. This in turn has resulted in major flooding issues caused by the beaver dams.

Beavers are Massachusetts’ largest native rodents (thank goodness!). The adults can weigh up to 80 pounds! They can live to be around 20 years old. Beavers mate for life and breed  January through March. There will be an average of four kits born inside the lodge between April and June. The kits learn to swim in their first week. They stay with the parents for two winters and leave the next spring. A beaver colony is typically made up of two adults, that year’s kits, and the youngsters from the previous year. Their main ecological benefit appears to be that they create wetlands, and that provides habitat for many other kinds of creatures and flora.

I wonder, once they move in, how long do they stay in a pond they have created, and when they’ve eaten all the bark from convenient trees, how far afield will they go to take down more? One of their favorite foods is water lilies, but the inner bark of trees is an important winter food for them. Since they’re quite long lived, it seems like they might stay put for a long time.

Beavers were completely missing from the Massachusetts due to hunting, trapping, and habitat loss, until 1928, when some were seen in Stockbridge, the first recorded sighting since 1750. From roughly 1550 to 1850, felted beaver hats (like top hats) were really popular in Europe, creating a huge demand for beaver pelts and fueling exploration in North America. Luckily for beavers, silk hats became the new fashion around 1850.

Beaver (Castor canadensis)

Eastern Wahoo in Autumn

Eastern Wahoo in AutumnAll the wildflowers have gone to fruit and seeds. This shot is from November 19. Wahoo is a Dakota term for this plant, which means “arrow wood.” Native to North America, related to bittersweet and also to the non-native invasive kind of euonymous.

Eastern Wahoo (Euonymous atropurpureus)

Groundnut

DSC_0015Lucy and I were walking at Charles River Peninsula and I was surprised to see a vining wildflower running rampant that hasn’t been there for the last two years, the years I’ve been paying attention. It’s a vine with showy pink clusters of flowers, growing in the moist edges of the meadow. Why did it appear this year?

It has edible tubers (similar to potatoes but apparently way more nutritious) and beans! The shoots and flowers are edible too. It was a staple food for Native Americans, who called it Hopniss, among other things… They prepared it boiled, peeled and dried, made into sweet preserves with maple syrup, or as seasoning… many ways! Apparently Europeans learned all about using groundnut as a food source from Native Americans and it was a major help for those early (1600s) colonists like the Pilgrims. It’s commercially farmed in Japan.

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DSC_0013Thoreau: “In case of a famine, I should soon resort to these roots.” Maybe we’ll need to try them. The best time to harvest them (for sweetest flavor) is after a frost, but before the ground freezes. Native.

Groundnut, Wild Bean, Potato Bean, Indian Potato, Hodoimo, Hopniss (apios americana)

Dead Man’s Fingers

Dead Man's FingersLook at this bizarre little fungus, like black sausages standing on end. In spring, they’re covered with a white powder (the spores). Part of the latin name, polymorpha, means it can take many forms, but it’s often in this club shape. Belongs to the same class of fungus as morels and truffles, but these are inedible. Common to eastern North America.

Dead Man’s Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha)

Coyote

We were driving around looking for a different access route to the marsh with the heron nest. We were on a residential street in Wellesley when we spotted this coyote. It immediately turned to leave, but when Lucy started barking at it from inside the car, it came back to investigate us.

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It looked quite fine and healthy as far as I could tell. Rather thrilling to get such a good look. Coyotes weigh 20 to 50 lbs. and can live up to 14 years in the wild. Their litters are three to twelve pups, born in the spring. Both parents protect their pups and their territory. By fall, the young can hunt on their own. There is an area of Ridge Hill I call Coyoteville. I wonder if this one has a den in that area.

Great Blue Heron Nest

This 4th of July morning was gray with the clouds of an impending storm. We went to  check out a heron nest I saw a couple of weeks ago. And it was so great to look over there and see all these great tall birds perched in their aerie! At first they were bunched together so it was hard to see how many there were. DSC_0005

But then they wandered around a bit, revealing four.DSC_0007

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I hope they come through this storm okay (remnants of Hurricane Arthur). Glad there is enough habitat here to support them. Imagine building that nest (with your mouth) — how do you get the first sticks to stay? Clever birds!

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Great Blue Herons will eat just about anything they can catch, including fish, insects, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and even birds. They can hunt during the day and night, because of good night vision. We’ve noticed new beaver dams in our favorite hiking areas, and this is a boon for herons because hunting is good in the swamps created by the dams.

From allaboutbirds.org:

Male Great Blue Herons collect much of the nest material, gathering sticks from the ground and nearby shrubs and trees, and from unguarded and abandoned nests, and presenting them to the female. She weaves a platform and a saucer-shaped nest cup, lining it with pine needles, moss, reeds, dry grass, mangrove leaves, or small twigs. Nest building can take from 3 days up to 2 weeks; the finished nest can range from a simple platform measuring 20 inches across to more elaborate structures used over multiple years, reaching 4 feet across and nearly 3.5 feet deep. Ground-nesting herons use vegetation such as salt grass to form the nest.

Great Blue Herons nest mainly in trees, but will also nest on the ground, on bushes, in mangroves, and on structures such as duck blinds, channel markers, or artificial nest platforms. Males arrive at the colony and settle on nest sites; from there, they court passing females. Colonies can consist of 500 or more individual nests, with multiple nests per tree built 100 or more feet off the ground.

— A clutch will have 2-6 eggs, which are about 2.5 to 3 inches long. They incubate for about a month, and the young stay in the nest 4 to 7 weeks. These ones must be about ready to strike out on their own. Pairs choose new breeding partners each year.

Cypress Spurge

Spurge in hand Spurge with treesSpurge A hardy groundcover — tolerates poor soil, dry conditions, deer, rabbits, pollution… Has a milky, poisonous sap that repels herbivores. Forms a dense fluffy blanket about a foot tall. Tiny flowers that start lime-green and yellow, and age to red. Has narrow-leaved foliage reminiscent of cypress trees, hence the name cypress spurge. (The common name “spurge”  comes from the Middle English/Old French word “epurge”, meaning “to purge”, because these plants were used as purgatives. (Poinsettias are spurges!) Native to Europe, introduced to North America in the 1860s as an ornamental, and is now a harmful invasive that has really colonized Charles River Peninsula.

Cypress Spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias)