Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / October 2022

Turkey Vultures - or Liver Birds???

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”

Turkey Vultures 

Thirty or forty years ago, turkey vultures were rare in New England, and I remember being excited the first time I saw one in Massachusetts. My son and I were sitting atop a huge glacial erratic in a scout camp just south of Boston, sometime in the late 1980s. As we enjoyed the views over the forested valleys north of Great Blue Hill, a lone turkey vulture glided not too high overhead. We had seen many turkey vultures in our trips out

west, but this was the first we had seen one so close to home, and we were very pleased to have this unexpected view of such a large bird.

Since then, turkey vultures have steadily expanded northward, no doubt helped by the wide corridors opened up by the Interstate Highway System. Today, they are often seen soaring high over fields or highways with their wings tilted up in what is known to guidebooks and mathematicians as a “dihedral angle.” When you see one circling in the distance or above a thin layer of broken clouds, you watch closely until you see its angled

wings and its typical jerky, side-to-side movements. At that point, you know darn well that it is a turkey vulture, and, if you are like me, you will probably say something like “Damn, not a hawk, just another turkey vulture.” And a little deeper inside you have to admit that you had hoped this large, black bird might even have been an eagle.

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1 Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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If I were restricting this little essay to the North Country, that is about all that I could say and the above photo of a turkey vulture circling pretty low over Toad Hill Road in Sugar Hill would be my best of just a handful of photos of them. However, I haven’t been in Sugar Hill since before Thanksgiving, and out here in Indiana, turkey vultures are much more common and vastly more interesting to watch.

For example, in my experience in the North Country, these birds almost never do anything but soar in wide circles, high overhead, presumably looking for lunch. I may have seen one or two along I93 pecking at road kill – not exactly an everyday experience since I’ve been up and down that road on a regular basis for more than 20 years. And I’ve never seen even one of them roosting in a tree or sitting on a cliff anywhere near New Hampshire.

Coming Home to Roost

Any suspicion I might have had that these birds eat, drink, and sleep as they’re floating with the clouds was dispelled a few years ago when we spent a couple of days at Turkey Run State Park, which is 35 miles north of Terre Haute. During our day trips to this park, we had of course seen numerous turkey vultures, but we were more excited by a sight of a large hawk, an eagle, or a great blue heron flying along the river or over the canyons that make this park such a great place to take a hike. In the summer, even if we stayed at the park for dinner, it was still light before we headed back to Terre Haute. So, when we stayed at the park for a couple of nights in March 2019, that was the first time that we were there as the sun was setting. One evening, as we walked back to the Inn where we would be staying, we looked across a narrow field toward a group of large trees to see a bunch of turkey vultures returning to where they would be staying. A couple dozen were already settled down high in the bare branches, while another dozen or so circled warily around the trees like a bunch of tenth-graders trying to figure out who to sit with and who to avoid in their high school cafeteria.

March 23, 2019, 6:20pm. Dozens of turkey vultures decided to roost right next to where we parked by the Inn in Turkey Run State Park in Indiana.

The vultures were totally unconcerned with us, so I was able to take all the photos I wanted. We were close enough to get good shots of various groups, which included both adults with their typical bare, red heads, and juveniles whose heads were still gray.

March 23, 2019. This a closeup of three of the nearly two dozen turkey vultures roosting by the Inn in Turkey Run State Park. The one in the center is a juvenile, easily identifiable because its head has not yet turned red.

Liver Birds???

Yes, I am now going to explain why this little essay is entitled “Turkey Vultures – or Liver Birds???” Liver Birds (pronounced to rhyme with “diver birds”) were large birds that allegedly inhabited the little bay whose role as a harbor on the Mersey River would provide the economic impetus that made Liverpool one of the major cities of England. If you have ever been to Liverpool, then you have probably heard about these ancient birds and the local belief that Liverpool will survive only as long as the Liver Birds remain. If you walked along the waterfront, you will have seen the Liver Birds sitting atop the towers of one of the majestic buildings facing the river. To be sure, these are statues rather than living birds, but thus far they have been sufficiently real to ensure the longevity of the city.

April 15, 2014. Liver Birds sitting atop the Royal Liver Building on the Liverpool Waterfront

As shown in the photos, Liver Birds perch with their wings spread, causing some to speculate that they are actually overgrown cormorants, which are commonly seen sitting on rocks or buoys with their wings spread. However, after a recent trip to the College of St. Mary-in-the-Woods in Terre Haute, we found a group of turkey vultures sitting atop all of the spires of the college’s chapel, very much like the Liver Birds posing on the towers of the Royal Liver Building.

December 31, 2022. Turkey vultures on the spires of the cathedral at St. Mary’s in the

Woods College in Terred Haute, Indiana. Couldn’t these be modern Liver Birds?

Could these have been the inspiration for the Liver Birds? I’m not the one to make such a momentous judgment; I’ll leave that to you.

Turkey Vulture?

Or Liver Bird?

And just one final thought. That magnificent turkey vulture sitting nobly on a cross at the highest point of the cathedral seems to be much more than a bird of prey. Could it also be a bird of PRAY?

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / November 2022

Northern Red Oaks

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”

Growing Up with Oak Trees 

I have loved oak trees as long as I can remember.  When I was a kid growing up in Rhode Island, we lived in a Cape Cod house on a quarter-acre lot that, like all of the other lots in our little village, had a half dozen or so oak trees.  The large ones in the front yard produced mammoth crops of acorns, and in the fall, we raked their fallen leaves into large piles so we could run through and roll over in them.  These stately specimens, without any branches lower than ten feet off the ground, were too big to climb.  The ones in our back yard were tall enough to provide summer shade, but too small to climb.  Since my friends and I preferred climbing trees to raking leaves or gazing at the noble, inaccessible limbs of an aged oak, we had to venture further afield to have some fun.

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountains. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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Fortunately, we had many choices in our neighborhood.  Several proper climbing oaks were at the end of a vacant lot just down the street.  We could jump up, grab the lowest branch, and hoist ourselves up to a spot where we could reach other branches and work our way up into the canopy, visible only to the resident robins and squirrels.  When we were old enough to explore the other side of the school yard, we found a spot where a half dozen medium-sized oaks ringed a hole about eight feet across.  We could easily climb any one of them, then go from branch to branch all around the little circle.  Naturally, we called this delightful place “Monkey Tree Island.”

One of the few pictures I remember drawing in elementary school showed a robin sitting in its nest in a crook of a branch of an oak tree.  When we vacationed on Martha’s Vineyard or visited Cape Cod, I discovered many different kinds of oaks, some well-suited for the sandy soils close to the water and some better off on the hillsides.  When I joined boy scouts, we camped and hiked through forests dominated by oaks, and I probably figured that was what forests were supposed to be like.  When I went to college in Cambridge, Mass, I walked to class under a row of immense oaks that lined Memorial Drive.  After we were married, we lived next to Arnold Arboretum, where majestic pin oaks lined the road that we followed to the top of Peter’s Hill for its splendid view of the city. 

In short, for most of my life, I have lived, gone to school, or worked in places where I was never more than a few feet from the nearest oak tree. 

Are There Oaks in Foss Woods? 

We bought an old farm house in Sugar Hill in 1997, and I soon made a rough trail into the nearby woods, which were filled with vast amounts of pine, fir, maple, poplar, birch, ash, and beech.  I was too busy exploring this fascinatingly diverse forest to notice or comment upon any shortage of oaks.   

A couple of years later, when an 80-acre parcel within this forest was surveyed for house lots, we joined our neighbors in an effort that eventually conserved this land, now known as Foss Woods, as the first property acquired by the newly-formed Ammonoosuc Conservation Trust (ACT).    

When ACT hired a forester to plan a series of patch cuts in Foss Woods, our neighbor Harry Reid was surprised to find that the forester included northern red oaks in his pre-cut inventory.  Harry and I had, by that time, created rough trails leading from our yards out into and through the woods, and we had each spent a lot of time along these trails.  Harry asked me, “Did you ever see any oaks out there?”  I hadn’t, and we both wondered what the forester was talking about.   

That was enough impetus for me to take a closer look.  I soon learned that finding oaks requires considerable time and effort when there are only a few of them dispersed here and there amidst the other trees.  The youngest seedlings will be covered by the underbrush, which is often so thick that you really don’t want to press too far off the trail.  A lone oak sapling doesn’t stand out much in a forest that is densely filled with other green-leaved trees.  Even the largest trees can be hard to spot, because they rise for ten or twenty or more feet before they have any branches.  Unless you look straight up, you won’t even notice that you’re walking under just what you’re looking for. 

October 7, 2006.  An oak sapling stands out in an opening in a blow-down area in the Lower 40.  Dozens of downed trees covered this opening with what seemed to be a giant’s set of pick-up sticks.  Neither the deer, the moose, nor I had any interest in making a trail through this chaos – which let oaks like this grow with no fear of browsing. 

The late fall is the best time – and the only good time - to find oaks that are just starting to gain a foothold in a forest like Foss Woods.  After the colorful foliage has mostly fallen, the woods open up, and the leaf-laden oaks and beeches can easily be seen from a distance of fifty or more yards.  The oaks can be distinguished from the beech trees, because their leaves are generally larger, darker and redder than the more delicate, lighter, yellowish beech leaves.

October 26, 2009:  Is that an oak?  Can I zoom in for a photo that shows the leaves standing out against the sky?  Yes! So take the photo. And yes - those are indeed the reddish-brown leaves of an oak doing its best to add to the late fall foliage.

For several years, I crisscrossed Foss Woods each fall, wandering up and down the hillsides hoping to find more oaks.  This took quite a bit of time, but time spent in the woods is always time well spent, and I eventually documented the size and location of more than 250 trees.  A majority of these were seedlings less than 30 inches tall, but more than a dozen large, acorn-bearing oaks were found on the north slopes of Bronson Hill.   

So I eventually was able to answer Harry’s question.  “Yes, there are oaks in Foss Woods, but not very many.”

October 7, 2006:  When the light is right, oak leaves can be quite beautiful, especially in the fall.  Since Foss Woods and most other nearby forests have so few oaks, I am always quite excited by a chance to capture the unexpected shades of greens and reds just emerging in the leaves of a young oak.     

Foss Woods, a Typical North Country Forest 

In a classic oak forest, the ground will be covered by acorns, not every year, but in the best years.  There will be so many that all of the squirrels and blue jays and little boys and girls will never pick all of them up to hide for winter food or to make little pipes.  In those areas, little oaks thrive, and you can find dozens of two-foot oaks within a few square yards.

There are some such forests in the North Country.  I can recall walking through one of them near the beginning of the trail up Blueberry Mountain, which is a couple of miles south of Long Pond in Benton.  Friends in Shelburne tell me that oaks dominate the forests and mountainsides on the north side of the Androscoggin, and there likely are many similar bands of oaks found throughout the White Mountains.   

However, we are close to the northern edge of the range for northern red oaks, so what I have found in Foss Woods is probably typical of many forests in the North Country.  While you will find a few oaks wherever you walk, most of them will be small, and nearly all of them too young to have any acorns.   

From Acorn to Sapling 

Oak trees are in no rush to produce any acorns.  Twenty years ago, when I spent a lot of time in the Lower 40 documenting the locations of the largest firs and pines, I also looked for oaks.  While I did come across several dozen, I only found two oaks that were at least six inches in diameter and at least twenty feet tall, and they were too young to produce acorns.  Since the nearest mature oak is probably a quarter mile away, all of the oaks in the Lower 40 have emerged from acorns brought in by blue jays, other birds, or by me.  I haven’t managed to convince any squirrels that they should spend more time spreading acorns, and even if I had, I suspect they’d be too lazy to bring them a quarter mile from the nearest mature oak down to the Lower 40.

October 16, 2022. These are the two largest oaks in the Lower 40. The dark leaves of the closest tree have the characteristic shape of a red oak. The brilliant sunshine highlights the yellows and reds of the leaves of the distant oak, which is doing the best it can to emulate the fall foliage of the maples. This moment of color won’t last, as all the leaves will soon turn brown. 

 Gaining a Foothold

What we see in and around Sugar Hill is the vanguard of oaks pushing north as they adapt to the warming climate.  Since you and I are much more mobile than squirrels and blue jays, we can perhaps speed up their advance.  So, when I do happen upon an oak-dominated forest, I pick up some acorns for distribution along trails through places like Foss Woods and the Lower 40. 

I now recognize that the tiny oaks I come across are much more than an inconsequential few of the thousands of small trees found in the woods.  They are young pioneers pushing northward, and I am happy whenever I across one, no matter how small.  Oaks are not known for their colors or their beauty, but in early spring or late fall, if the sun is right, you may get a chance to take a fine “baby picture” for what will become, long after we’re all gone, a mature grove of northern red oaks.

October 16, 2022. I came across this lovely, tiny oak while walking along one of my trails in the Lower 40. Will this tree mature as part of a majestic grove of northern red oaks?

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / October 2022

Mushroom Crowds

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”

The Foggy, Damp Days of Early Autumn 

Sometimes the early autumn mists are so thick they not only erase the distant peaks and the nearby hills, they impart an impressionistic fuzziness to what remains.  Perhaps a warming sun will burn off the fog to reveal a crisp, cloudless sky by mid-morning, but it’s more likely that we’re in for a day, or two days, or nearly a week of drizzle, constant dripping and unending dampness.  Simply perfect weather!

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountains. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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OK, not perfect weather for you and me, but the best possible weather for mushrooms.   Last year, after four days of just such damp and gloomy weather, we happened across an unbelievable number of mushrooms as we enjoyed a walk through the Littleton Dells.  We hadn’t ever seen so many there before, and we hadn’t seen anything like that by the Pond or in the Back 4.  However, the local mushrooms were just a day behind those in the Dells, for hundreds had popped up by the next morning when I went out for my usual walk around the Pond.    

October 1-4, 2021. Many different kinds of mushrooms found by the Point.  One was a brownish purple with a white fringe (left).  Others, more than five inches in diameter, were a shiny, dark brown. A third variety was smaller, light brown, and growing in a tight clump. Some animal has been nibbling at them. 

Mushroom Hunters

Now, I confess that I know next to nothing about mushrooms.  I’m not like my student Victor, who foraged for mushrooms with his family back in Poland before he came to this country for grad school.  However, those seeking morels in the spring may have no interest in mushrooms beyond their usefulness in the kitchen.  Nor am I to be confused with my friend Tony, who actually wrote the book on “Mushrooms of the Eastern Shore of Virginia.” When Tony comes across a clump of unusual mushroom, he treats it like a crime scene – taking photos from all angles of even the smallest beauties before bagging one up for microscopic analysis back at his lab.

October 19, 2014.  Tony takes a photo of exquisitely colored mushrooms, so small they could be overlooked by a chipmunk.

My interests are less complicated than Victor’s or Tony’s.  I have never trusted myself to forage for mushrooms, nor have I had any interest in (or a lab suitable for) Tony’s forensic analysis. What appeals to me are the photo ops – the surprising variety of sizes, colors, and shapes of mushrooms when they make their sudden appearance in the fall.  

October 7, 2016, 70 degrees, clear, beautiful. Many beautiful mushrooms have sprouted at the Point, including a half dozen clumps of various sizes right in front of my chair.

· Golden brown, 3.5 to 6.5 inches in diameter, five in one clump.

· Yellow, 3.5 inch maximum, six in a clump.

· Pinkish/white, 3 inches diameter, two in a clump.

So, the purpose of this photo essay is to encourage you to keep an eye out for interesting mushrooms when you take a walk through the woods on a sunny day in October.  Many people like to walk through the woods on such a day, claiming they are only out to view the foliage, but I suspect there are a few who – like me – are really hoping to find many, many clumps of mushrooms. 

Mushroom Crowds

Sometimes dozens of small mushrooms are crowded into what must be extremely fertile soil.  Don’t expect me to figure out what they are; even Tony refers to them as “LBJs” – Little Brown Jobs. 

October 5, 2018.  I found a clump of tiny mushrooms and what looks like a mushroom umbrella emerging from one of ACT’s trails in the Cooley-Jericho Forest.

October 5, 2019.  I came upon clump of two dozen tiny mushroom on a moss-covered log in Foss Woods.

One day last October, I even found two dozen tiny mushroom that had crowded together in a rotted cavity in a birch tree that had succumbed to age and wind a decade or more ago. 

When I decided to work on this photo essay on mushrooms, I knew I had plenty of colorful photos to choose from.  I also assumed that I would search through my journals to find a description of the surprise and wonder that I felt when coming across crowds of mushrooms that had pushed up through the forest floor, seemingly overnight.

Unfortunately, I found no such entry.  But I was soon rescued by a well-known steamboat pilot’s description of what he found in the Black Forest in Germany.  After a diatribe against what he felt were mindless attempts by ants to move their heavy loads, he added this little gem concerning mushrooms: 

“The ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing, where we had not suspected the presence of much muscular power before.  A toadstool – that vegetable which springs to full growth in a single night – had torn loose and lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice its only bulk into the air, and supported it there, like a column supporting a shed.  Ten thousand toadstools, with the right purchase, could lift a man, I suppose.  But what good would it do?”

Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, Volume 1, Chapter XXII

October 19, 2014.  A mushroom pushes up a “matted mass of pine needles and dirt”

Renewal of ACT’s National Land Trust Accreditation: Comment Period Now Open

On or before November 30th, ACT will apply for renewal of its accreditation, a process conducted by the national Land Trust Accreditation Commission (LTAC), an independent program of the Land Trust Alliance. The land trust accreditation program recognizes land conservation organizations that meet national standards for protecting important natural places and working lands forever. ACT was initially accredited ten years ago. This is our second renewal of accredited status. A public comment period on ACT’s application is now open.

The LTAC conducts an extensive review of each applicant’s policies and programs. “ACT is proud to be recognized as an accredited land trust. Initially accredited in 2012, our staff and board work tirelessly to operate within the highest standards and practices and maintain the trust of the communities we serve and the many landowners who have partnered with us over the last 20 years to protect over 5,000 acres in our region permanently,” said Marilyn Booth, President of the Board of Trustees.

The Commission invites public input and accepts signed, written comments on pending applications. Comments must relate to how Ammonoosuc Conservation Trust complies with national quality standards. These standards address the ethical and technical operation of a land trust. For the full list of standards, see www.landtrustaccreditation.org/help-and-resources/indicator-practices.

To learn more about the accreditation program and to submit a comment, visit www.landtrustaccreditation.org, or email your comment to [email protected]. Comments may also be faxed or mailed to the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, Attn: Public Comments: (fax) 518-587-3183; (mail) 36 Phila Street, Suite 2, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866.

ACT application comments will be most useful by October 15, 2022.

Founded in 1999, the Ammonoosuc Conservation Trust (ACT) provides conservation resources and expertise to help permanently protect working farms and forests, clean air and water, wildlife habitats, trails, and scenic landscapes in New Hampshire’s North Country. We currently work in a 13-town region of the Ammonoosuc watershed. Alongside community members, local conservation commissions, and volunteer groups, we identify and prioritize land conservation opportunities. We provide conservation options and technical assistance to landowners to protect lands our communities love forever.

For more information, contact: Marilyn Booth
President – Board of Trustees

Ammonoosuc Conservation Trust
297 Main Street – Unit 1
Franconia, NH 03580
[email protected]

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / September 2022

Bees, Blossoms, and Butterflies

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”

Abundance of Asters and Goldenrods

As summer comes to a close, a couple of diverse families of flowers decide that it’s finally time to burst out in bloom.  By late August in the North Country, temperatures are dropping into the 50s, not just at night, but even on some sunny afternoons.  There’s not much time left, so asters and goldenrods have to make the most of it. 

August 25, 2017, 65 degrees, mostly cloudy, seems like early autumn.  White flat-topped asters and goldenrod are at their peak; Joe Pye Weed is past its peak; blue asters are coming along, and apples are reddening. 

Unlike lady slippers, trillium and so many other flowers of early summer, asters and goldenrods cannot depend upon having a few fragrant or colorful blossoms that are carefully constructed to attract a particular insect.  No, it is too late for such a refined strategy.  Now, the fields are full, and sunlight is blocked by leaves of trees and shrubs before it can reach the ground where flowers first bloomed in May and June.  So asters and goldenrods follow a simpler approach:  produce hundreds and thousands of flowers on tall plants that can quickly fill up any open field or neglected roadside.  Rather than creating a carefully designed flower, asters and goldenrods create mounds of color that cannot be missed, even at a distance of a hundred yards or more. 

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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Everyone Loves Asters

While asters and goldenrods are equally diverse, equally widespread, and equally attractive to a variety of insects, only asters are loved by almost everyone.  Goldenrod suffers from a bad rap because of a mistaken notion that it causes hay fever.  Not true!  The real culprit is ragweed, a non-descript plant whose multitudinous, tiny, inconspicuous green (!) flowers carry the yellow pollen that causes misery for so many. Furthermore, while a mass of goldenrod is certainly visible at a distance, the individual flowers are too tiny to notice unless you, for some odd reason, enjoy carrying a magnifying glass and seeking detail where detail is pretty much irrelevant. 

Asters not only produce a wall of color, they produce blossoms that are easily seen and enjoyed, whether they are an inch-and-a half-inch wide or merely a half-inch, whether they are white or variety of shades of blue, whether they cap a shrub-like jumble of intersecting plants or sit on top of a stalk that reaches up to our eye-level. 

Bees, of course, are attracted to asters.  If you watch a clump of asters on a sunny September day, you will very likely see a number of different types of bees flitting from flower to flower, entertaining you with a constant buzzing.  Fans of the “Spelling Bee” are well acquainted with photos such as these.

September 13, 2019, 66 degrees, all sun!

September 26, 2018, 70 degrees, cloudy, some sprinkles, 130-3pm…Only purple asters in peak bloom; flat white-topped asters have gone by.

Magnets for Butterflies

No one needs to plan a long excursion to see asters. If you walk along any of our rural roads, you cannot fail to see asters at this time of the year, because they are just about the last, most abundant and most conspicuous of the many wildflowers that prosper in roadside drainage ditches.  And it’s not just people out for a walk who are attracted to the asters, nor is it just the bees.  Asters are particularly attractive to butterflies, so wherever you come across clumps of asters, you are apt to any of a variety of butterflies, including monarchs, our largest and most famous butterfly. 

September 3, 2019, 1145, 64 degrees, 4pm. I went out again. It was now mostly sunny and absolutely calm, so that the pond was a mirror, great conditions for what were the best butterflies of the year, and perhaps of our 22 years. At least four monarchs were on asters at the far end of the dam, two or three at our end, and four or more on Joe Pye Hill, which adds up to more than a dozen around the pond. 

Fritillaries form another colorful family of large butterflies that are attracted to asters.  The most likely species to be found in our area are, in decreasing order of size, the great spangled fritillary, the Atlantis fritillary, and the Aphrodite fritillary.  Viewed from above, each of these species has the same tawny orange/brown colors broken by black veins and spots, making it easy to identify a butterfly as a fritillary, even if it is difficult to get the close view necessary to figure out the species. Fortunately for us, they may pose long enough on an aster for you to take a photo sufficient to estimate their size.  In the two photos of fritillaries, you can see that the Atlantis is much larger relative to the aster blossoms than the Aphrodite.  

September 7, 2017. This view from below shows the markings that identify this as an Aphrodite fritillary.  

September 1, 2019.  The black border on its wings identifies this as an Atlantic Fritillary.

Fritillaries are seldom seen after the first week of September, but white admirals and clouded sulphurs will still be around for another week or so.  White Admirals are readily recognized because of the broad white stripes on their upper wings, and they land frequently on flowers or on the ground.  If they land on an aster, you have a chance to see the underside of their surprisingly colorful wings.

September 3, 2019.  White admiral on New England asters.

September 12, 2018.  White admiral on flat, white-topped asters. 

Cloudy sulphurs are one of the most commonly seen butterflies in late summer.  Their size and color make them easily identified as they fly from flower to flower across a meadow – but they seem unwilling to stop for more than a second or two. My guidebook describes the upper side of the male’s wings as “clear yellow with solid black outer margins.”  Very nice – but try to see that black margin as these critters cruise about a meadow or pose with their wings closed, thereby usually concealing what really is a beautiful border.  My guidebook also says that the sulphur family “may be responsible for the name ‘butterfly’, but I prefer to suspect some early adept at what became Cockney rhyming slang to have come up with this name after watching so many of them “flutter by” as he enjoyed an afternoon in an English garden with a fine border of asters.

September 13, 2018, 75 degrees, partly cloudy, beautiful. I finally managed to get a photo showing the black margin of a clouded sulphur that rested a few seconds on some asters.

Asters will persist through the end of summer, and they will continue to attract the few butterflies that remain in the area.  I only have photos of a few butterflies that were taken in late September or October, and one of them was a Milbert’s tortoiseshell sitting on a New York aster, the last of the aster family still in bloom. 

October 12, 2015, 65 degrees.  A glorious fall day, sunny with high cirrus clouds, and a nice breeze from time to time…After lunch, I grabbed my camera, because I thought I saw a red admiral on the New York asters by the front porch.  After examining my photos, I realized it was a Milbert’s tortoiseshell – a lifer for me (although my friend Tony later told me he once took a picture of one in our front yard). 

Much as I hate to say what is very difficult for a life-long Red Sox fan, I have to admit that the blossoms of the New York aster are larger, deeper purple, and more attractive than the similar, but definitely second-place New England aster.  At least I can say that the beauty of the New England aster is much closer to that of the New York aster than the success of our New England baseball team is this year to that of that unnamed team in New York.  On the other hand, the Red Sox have from time to time bested the Yankees, whereas the New England asters will always be a few games behind. 

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / August 2022

A Weekend in Mid-August

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”

A Long Weekend in August

It’s mid-August.  That awful week-long stretch of hot, humid weather has finally ended, monarchs and common wood nymphs are fluttering all over the yard and the gardens, and birds are everywhere. You can’t wait to find out what else is going on by the pond and in the meadows.  You’re excited about having the chance to explore further afield without risking heat exhaustion, and you hope to spend the evenings watching the setting sun while sipping cold drinks out by the pond. 

But then you get the dreaded email from the guests who are arriving on the 11th for a long weekend:  “We’re really looking forward to having you take us out to see the moose!”  We once responded to such a suggestion by saying “Great! We’ll take a drive up to the Connecticut Lakes, which is where everyone goes to see moose.”  As a result, the first day of that visit was pretty much ruined by the aches and pains suffered from driving for hours and hours over rough or hilly roads in a fruitless search for moose.  We returned home after dark, tired, hungry, and upset that we had missed both the cocktail hour and the sunset over the pond.

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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I highly recommend that you don’t make the same mistake!  Instead, tell your guests that mid-August in the North Country is the best time to see how summer changes into fall.  Tell them that that all kinds of things are happening, that they can see exotic creatures that they would never see in the city, and that they can observe interesting behavior that they wouldn’t even know to look for if you weren’t there to serve as their expert guide.  If necessary, make something up - tell them that moose are hiding for the next few weeks, waiting for cooler nights and fewer ticks.

To help you become an expert guide, I have gone through my photos and my journals to figure out exactly what you might see if you take your guests out for a walk through a meadow next to a pond or other wetlands.  All of the photos and all of the journal entries included in this essay refer to what I have seen over past several years between August 10th and August 13th, so now you and I both know what to look for in the upcoming weekend.

August 10

As so well documented in “Blueberries for Sal”, vast quantities of blueberries attract bears to the meadows in early August.  As the berry crops wane, some of the wild apples begin to ripen, giving the bears another way to prepare for the winter.  When you go out to pick berries or collect apples, you are now likely to see grasshoppers and hear crickets, whose emergence seems timed to provide food for the many fledging songbirds.

August 10, 2021.  Today we heard the first crickets.  As a bear foraged at the bottom of Rufus’s field, we heard a raven squawking and then saw it fly overhead and down the field.  Maybe it was the one that I photographed yesterday on a dead limb on top of the big maple at the corner of Post and Pearl Lake Roads.

Tadpoles turn into frogs in mid-August.  Young green frogs are content to sit within a few inches either side of the shore line; the smaller leopard and pickerel frogs venture a little further inland, but jump back to the pond if anyone approaches too quickly.

August 10, 2001, 86 degrees, hot, hazy, and humid. A half dozen small frogs jumped into the pond as I approached.  Just at dusk, when it was difficult to see, five mergansers flew into the pond.  A little later, as it darkened, two bats flew in to feast on the suddenly numerous mosquitos and other insects hovering over the water. Green frogs and northern leopard frogs gave a few croaks.    

August 11, 2015. A young pickerel frog sits a few feet from the pond.

August 12, 2017. A green frog still has a bit of its tadpole tail.

August 11

An abundance of small, unwary frogs attracts predators.  It probably is not by chance that great blue herons fledge in mid-August, just when a short flight will bring them to lunch, nor is it mere chance that mid-August is when bitterns are likely to be seen or heard, as they also wait patiently in the reeds for another bite to eat.

August 11, 1999.  A great blue heron was at the end of the pond, on a rock, croaking (like a frog?).  He did this for five minutes, then jumped into the water and picked out something small.  I walked out along the dam to get a closer look, and made it directly across from the heron.  I didn’t notice the bittern, who flew out of the reeds, surprising both me and the heron, who also took flight.

August 10, 2020.  A great blue heron enjoyed its perch upon a rubber raft floating at the far end of the pond (photo).

By early August, the red-wings and the tree swallows and wrens have departed, and it is quieter around the pond.  However, recently fledged birds and early migrators add to the activity in the yard and in the meadows.  Many of the juveniles are still learning how to find a meal: 

August 11, 2009.  Two song sparrows were feeding on the lawn in the back yard.  The adult would catch a bug, while junior begged for food.  When Mom caught one, junior would walk over, tilt its head back, open wide – and Mom would stick the bug in its beak.

A new group of dragonflies will soon take over from the whitefaces, corporals, skimmers and clubtails that were so common in July.  But there’s still time to see the colorful 12-spotted skimmers and the widow skimmers, and you may even be lucky enough, as I was in 2017, to see one of our infrequent visitors.

August 11, 2017, 78 degrees, cloudy, by the pond about 1:45.  I finally managed to take my first photo of the green dragonfly I’d been seeing around the pond the last few days.  It had posed on a leaf, and I estimated its length as about 2”.  This beautiful spring-green dragonfly turned out to be a female eastern pondhawk. 

Now is the time for flying insects to be extremely wary, not only of the influx of young birds, but also of other dangers.  For example, spiders are preparing for the new groups of dragonflies and damselflies by building their webs across the places they know to be most attractive to the newcomers

August 11, 2019, cool, 66 degrees, 3pm.  A monarch caterpillar stretched across a milkweed pod at the bottom of Joe Pye Hill (below left).  Only a few feet away, an unusual spider had captured something in its web.  Just after I took a photo featuring its large red ball spotted with white dots (below right), it suddenly dropped down with its prey and disappeared.

August 12

Out by a pond or a wetland, you will likely see a few of the red meadowhawks and mosaic darners that will be the most numerous and liveliest dragonflies through early October.  The male meadowhawks are less than two inches long, but their bright red colors make up for what they lack in size.  The mosaic darners, which are much larger and appear to be mostly blue in flight, are named for the triangular patterns on their abdomens. There are several species of both families that are common in our region, but you’ll need a good zoom lens for your camera and a guidebook for accurate identification.  Unless you are as eccentric as I am, you’ll do fine by referring to them simply as meadowhawks and mosaic darners.  White-faced meadowhawks and black-tipped darner females are the most willing to pose for a photograph. 

August 12, 2019, 2:59 pm.  The male white-faced meadowhawk has a white face and a red abdomen with black, triangular markings. Females are yellow, so this pair provided a colorful photo when they formed a wheel.  

August 12, 2019, 3:48pm. The first black-tipped darners are flying in and out of the reeds in front of my chair at the Point.  I managed a photo of a female slowly descending a cattail so she can deposit her eggs in the pond. 

This is also a good time to look for warblers and other recently fledged birds that are now old enough to venture forth at least to the edge of the open lawns and meadows.  They need to be careful, because the young hawks are also eager to test their skills.

August 12, 2016. A young common yellowthroat perches on a shrub, looking for insects in the undergrowth.

August 13, 2017.  After dinner, as I walked out along the path to the solar array, a kestrel flew overhead and disappeared – until I looked high up at the top of the tall red pines on the other side of Pearl Lake Road and saw not one, but two juveniles.

The Main Event

While this essay focuses on just a few days in mid-August, I really can’t say that these three days are likely to be much different from those a little earlier or later in the month, as annual changes in the weather can easily shift the phenological calendar a few days either way.  However, certain natural events actually are known to be strictly governed by the calendar, and that I why I have focused on August 11-13.

For me, these three days encompass one of the most highly anticipated events of the phenological year.  Perhaps you already know what I mean.  Perhaps you too wait for these days, hoping and praying for clear skies and warm nights.  Perhaps you put out the lawn chairs a day or two before the big event and make sure you have a couple of blankets in case it turns cold.  Then, if the night sky really is clear, you prepare a mug of hot chocolate, grab a blanket, head out to the lawn, and settle down into your chair facing the northeastern sky.  Waiting and watching – maybe only for a few seconds, maybe for a few minutes, but – there! There’s one!  There’s another one!  Wow, did you see that one blaze a trail! 

No, not fireflies.  Shooting stars.  The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks on or about August 12th, which is when the earth passes through a band of space debris that results in the year’s best display of shooting stars.  In 1972, Nancy and I set up camp on the side of a lake in Lassen Volcanic National Park on what turned out to be a remarkably clear night.  After dinner, as we sat by our campfire, enjoying the view of the stars, we were astounded to see first one, then another, and then many fireballs as meteors flamed through the atmosphere leaving a brilliant sparkling trail halfway across the sky.  This went on hour after hour before we finally went to bed.     

Every year since then, when at least some of the sky was not obscured by clouds, I’ve found a spot to spend an hour or more looking for shooting stars and hoping for fireballs.     

August 12-13, 2015.  I saw two pretty good fireballs as I walked out to the front lawn to view the Perseids meteor shower.  I saw another dozen over the next twenty minutes, but no more fireballs. …  On the 13th, I saw another nine, including a nice fireball that split into two, each leaving a split-second trail sparkling in its wake.  So the show was OK, but nothing like the dazzling display Nancy and I enjoyed forty years earlier in Lassen National Park – and have yet to experience again.

August 12, 2020.  Just an OK couple of nights for the Perseids.  Eight shooting stars in 45 minutes on the 12th (one pretty good); nine in an hour on the 13th (one almost a fireball, another quite good, five OK and one very short).

In short, I’ve enjoyed some pretty good nights, but nothing as breath-taking as what we saw that long ago night in California.  However, as a seasoned 20th century Red Sox fan, I am always willing to “wait until next year.” 

Now I’ll just head out to the Upper Meadow to enjoy the sight of monarchs, fritillaries, silver-spotted skippers, and other butterflies frolicking over the amazing flowers of the Joe Pye Weed that covers the little hill out by the pond.

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / July 2022

Merganser Family

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”

Mergansers

Mergansers are crested, thin-billed diving ducks, and the males are among our most colorful and beautiful birds, only slightly less entrancing than wood ducks and harlequin ducks.  Red-breasted and common mergansers are about the size of a mallard; the hooded mergansers are a little smaller.

Three species of mergansers can be seen in New England.  Red-breasted mergansers are common along the coasts, while common mergansers are mostly found on large, clear lakes and rivers.  Hooded mergansers prefer small, wooded ponds with nearby dead trees that provide nesting cavities.  You’ll need to travel a hundred miles to York or Portsmouth before you’ll have much chance to see the red-breasted mergansers, but you can see common mergansers in Coffin Pond and the Connecticut River, and you can see hooded mergansers in many of the small ponds found in the North Country.

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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Mergansers in the Pond

Hooded mergansers have successfully raised families in our one-acre pond nine times in the last twenty years.  They arrive at the pond soon after the ice begins to break up.  One year, two pairs flew in, and another year two males accompanied a single female, but usually it’s just a pair.  If they decide to stay, the pair will be seen many times for a week or two, and then the male departs, leaving the female alone with her eggs and her dreams.

Let’s follow the family that made the pond their home during the spring and summer of 2019.  In mid-April of that year, when the pond was still almost completely covered with ice, a pair of mergansers landed in a tiny opening only a few yards wide:

April 19, 2019, 70 degrees, mostly cloudy.  The pond is only 10% ice-free, but 80% of the ice is rotten grey.  A pair of hooded mergansers are having no trouble breaking through.

Over the next three weeks, I would often see the pair swimming, preening or simply floating in the pond.  On May 9th, I saw the pair fly off, and that was the last time I saw the male in 2019.  This was not unexpected, as May 13th is the latest date that I have ever seen a male merganser in our pond in the spring.

April 25, 2019, 3:51pm.  I took a photo of a male hooded merganser preening in the pond. 

May 9, 2019.  A pair of hooded mergansers flew off when I approached the pond this morning.

During May and early June, the female merganser could be seen most afternoons swimming slowly around the pond, diving from time to time, possibly to snag one of the wood frog tadpoles from the swarm that slowly moves along the shallow waters not too far from shore.  I didn’t discover the tree cavity where she might have made her nest, and I wondered whether or not she even had a nest full of eggs.

Ducklings

Then one day, in my routine walk to the Pond, I was happy find mom taking her new brood for a trip around the pond.  For their first swim, the little ducklings stayed bunched together, never more than a yard or two from their mother.

June 11, 2019.  The hooded merganser has taken her seven ducklings for a swim in the Pond.

The ducklings followed close to their mother as she slowly swam from the far end of the pond to the large rock at the tip of the Point that my grandson named “Rock Island”.  She croaked, and they struggled out of the water, up the gentle slope of Rock Island, and cuddled together in a fuzzy ball no more than a foot wide.

Within just one or two days, the ducklings gain the strength and confidence to stray a little further from their mother.  Within a week, mom might be in the center of the pond with three or four of the ducklings, while the others are exploring the cattails maybe ten or twenty yards away.  If she senses danger, i.e. if I approach too closely, she begins her rough call, a cross between a quack and a cough, and she continues until her entire brood has joined her.

Unfortunately for the ducklings, predators much more dangerous than me may be nearby, and predation could come from the ground or the air.  Otters and weasels visit the pond from time to time, and hawks can be seen circling high in the sky.  In 2019, the number of ducklings dropped from seven to three in less than a week.  A neighborhood harrier was never indicted, but its behavior certainly made him a prime suspect:

June 21, 2019, 68 degrees, cloudy, 3pm. At 5:15pm, a harrier flew low over the house as we sat on the porch.  I went out to the pond, worrying about the merganser family, which turned out to be safe in the center of the pond.  However, I heard some cries from the reeds and shrubs at the right of our end, and the harrier flew off holding a small bird in its claws, being chased by several redwing blackbirds.

The drab, splotched colors of the young mergansers and their mother help them disappear from view as soon as they reach the reeds.  When they rest in the warmth of Rock Island, the ducklings are unconcerned, but mom keeps a close watch.

June 15, 2019. Mom keeps watch while her three ducklings hide in the reeds.

June 28, 2019.  Two ducklings take a break on Rock Island while mom keeps watch over the one still swimming in the Pond.

Within a few weeks, the ducklings start flexing their wings, building up strength and perhaps yearning to fly around like the other birds they see around the Pond.  Mom stays with them for a while longer in July, but they are getting big enough to live on their own.

July 5, 2019. The young mergansers have created comfortable depressions where they can sit at the edge of the reeds. Now they are strong enough to try out their wings.

“Make Way for Ducklings”

Once the ducklings are strong enough to walk a quarter mile or so, their mother may lead them off to a different pond.  I say this, not only because we have all read “Make Way for Ducklings”, but also because I once saw a wood duck with a train of ducklings walk across our front lawn and on to our pond, presumably coming up from the small pond that is not too far down Pearl Lake Road.  I think that a couple of our families of hooded mergansers have completed the opposite trip in recent years.  In 2019, however, only the mother departed, and her three young hooded mergansers stayed around the pond until the middle of September.

August 25, 2019. The three young hooded mergansers are now nearly full-size, and they are on their own in the pond.

The mergansers gather together for their fall migration sometime in October. As in the spring, they are most likely to be seen in small flocks at Coffin Pond or Pearl Lake, but once in a while, a few drop in at our small pond. As in the early spring, the males show off their fancy crests and their contrasting patches of color, but now we know that it was the females who stayed around and did what was necessary to help her ducklings learn to live on their own.

October 19, 2018.  Two males and a female showed up today at the pond.

ACT Volunteers Get Chainsaw Safety Certified!

Volunteers learned plenty about properly maintaining saws and safety gear, as well as some gear advice from the pros!

On May 14th, a group of ACT staff and stewardship volunteers took part in a chainsaw use and safety training instructed by a professional forester. This training was put on in partnership with the NH Timberland Owners Association (NHTOA) and UNH Cooperative Extension. While these organizations have partnered for years in putting on safety trainings for professional loggers, this opportunity has just recently become available to non-professionals and organizations such as our own. Chainsaw use is often necessary for keeping our trails in good shape, and we are fortunate to have volunteers who regularly lend a hand with this important work. In spite of heat, ticks, and blackflies, it was a great day!  In addition to new skills, knowledge, and practice, all attendees received certifications after the course.

Ernst Kling demonstrated various techniques before guiding each volunteer through different processes.

We are so grateful NHTOA, UNH Extension, and instructor Ernst Kling for helping us to access this valuable training opportunity that will help keep our volunteers vigilant and safe. Thanks is also owed to the Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund, funding from which helped to cover the cost of this course. In February, ACT was awarded a Tillotson DASH grant amounting to $2,000. In addition to helping to significantly lower the cost of this course for our volunteers, these funds have been put towards the acquisition of hand tools and personal protective equipment which will be a huge asset for ongoing trail maintenance efforts.  

Interested in helping keep trails clear? Head over to our volunteer page or contact Rose, our Trails Program Manger, at [email protected].

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / June 2022

Turtles at the Pond

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

First Turtle

Turtles emerge from their winter lodgings about when the ice disappears from the pond, perhaps after being awakened by the quacking of hundreds of wood frogs that have started their three-day party in the newly open water.  Usually the first turtle I see in the spring (known in my journals as the “first turtle”) is sunning on Rock Island when I walk along the edge of the pond in late April to check on the wood frogs and their egg masses.  This year, the first turtle was in the pond, and it happened to stick its head up about ten feet from the wood frogs that I had been watching near the reeds at the side of the pond.  This was not the first time I had seen such a scene:

April 20, 2004:  Now only two or three dozen wood frogs remain in the pond, all within ten feet of the shore and most within ten yards of the egg masses.  … An 8” painted turtle was swimming by the eggs and a couple of fish jumped. 

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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A couple of years ago, the first turtle not only hadn’t reached the pond, it didn’t seem to be fully awake:

April 21, 2019, 11:30am, 66 degrees:  A painted turtle sat on a mossy root about five feet from the SW corner of the pond.  It was so sluggish that I not only took many pictures, I was able to pick it up and measure it.  It’s shell was an inch shorter than my notebook, i.e. 4.5 inches. 

In the early spring, I once followed a painted turtle as it began a long and perilous journey from our pond to a small pond located several hundred yards away on the other side of Pearl Lake Road.  This trek seems quite a bit less than “long and perilous” to those of us who can walk at great speeds and see far beyond the other side of the road.  However, what to us is a mere five-minute stroll will take a turtle a couple of hours:

April 27, 2009.  On the 27th, a turtle was crossing the back yard, on its way from the pond to the fields on the other side of Pearl Lake Road.  I timed its speed:  it went 120 yards in 26 minutes, which is about 5 yards per minute, 300 yards per hour, 1/6th of a mile per hour, or 0.25 feet per second.   I followed it for the half hour that it took for it to reach the other side of Pear Lake Road. 

April 27, 2009, 1:58. This painted turtle has made it from the pond to the middle of our back yard. It raises its head to get a better view of the way forward.

April 27, 2009, 2:22.  The turtle has now crossed the lawn, traveled ten yards along the drainage ditch, and is about to begin the dangerous crossing of the wide and barren desert that we call Pearl Lake Road.

In May, a half dozen or more turtles are commonly seen sunning on Rock Island, on other rocks, or in openings amid the cattails.  At first, only the mature turtles are seen, probably because the small turtles need to be more cautious.

May 2, 2018.  Five turtles – four large and one medium - on Rock Island.  While I was taking their picture, I noticed a wood duck walking toward them on the Point. 

May 5, 2019.  At 3pm, eight turtles were sunning on Rock Island, which I think is a record.  They varied in size from medium to large and one very large.

Soon, smaller turtles will be seen.  The smallest are the ones that hatched in the fall, but remained safe in their underground burrow until it warmed up enough in mid-May.  They are barely one-inch long when they emerge in May, and many never make it to the pond. Some, like the one in the photo, reach the pond, but soon fall prey to a larger critter.  A few do survive, and they will double in size by the end of the summer.   

May 10, 2020.  Dan has photos of a 1-inch turtle that emerged from the garden area just left of their house

May 17, 2011.  A medium-sized and two small turtles sunned on the rock.  Dan Kennerson said they’ve just hatched from a hole near their driveway; he and the kids are transporting them to the pond.

June 12-14, 2008.  I found a small turtle at our end of the Pond; its shell was about 1 inch in diameter.  It was very slow at first, so I could easily pick it up and trace its shell in my notebook.  It stuck its head in, but eventually ventured out again and started to walk.

May 28, 2018, 75 degrees, 2pm.   A small turtle (2-inch shell) was just below the surface in the detritus at our end of the pond, merely 5 inches from the mud at the shore.  Unfortunately, it is an ex-turtle, it is deceased, etc. – it has no eyes or legs. 

Painted turtles mate in mid-May, which is probably why that is when we are most likely to see turtles venturing across our lawns and crossing roads, perhaps following instinctual urges to find new partners in a different pond.  I don’t know if the ones we see are leaving for good, leaving for a short time, or leaving with the possibility of returning in another year or two.    

May 21-24, 1999.  I saw a turtle (7-inch shell) coming from the backyard to the left of the dock and flopping into the pond. 

Despite being safely ensconced within their shells, they do find a way to mate. 

May 21, 2020, 78 degrees, sunny, light breeze, lovely! I took photos of two turtles in mating position at the edge of the cattails at our end of the Pond.

If the mating has been successful, whether the male has wandered off or stayed around, his work is done.  The female will soon have to lay her eggs, but for a while, she also has no pressing duties.  So what do they do with their time?  Apparently, not much!  Perhaps they have perfected the art of finding the perfect spot for meditating:

May 24, 2020, 75 degrees, sunny, ~1pm.   Walking back to the bench, I managed a photo of a 5-inch turtle sunning a foot from the shore.  Actually, “managed” isn’t the correct term, as it stayed there unmoving for ten minutes.  And after it dove, it merely swam a few feet further out and poked its head up.   I watched it closely for four minutes (12:48 to 12:52) before it made any movement at all, just a twitch, a slight shift of its head, and a flicker of its eyelid (the first I’d noticed) and then it disappeared out of sight. 

By early June, the females are ready to lay their eggs.  First, they need to find a suitable spot, one that is mostly sand and gravel with some twigs, grass or miscellaneous detritus nearby.  A spot by a gravel driveway is perfect, as is spot in a garden.  She may dither for an hour or two or even a day or more before selecting the perfect location, and then she spends several hours digging a hole with her rear feet.  Once the hole is about six inches deep, she will lay her eggs, fill the hole back in, and cover the area with the aforementioned twigs, grass or miscellaneous detritus.  Here are a couple of eyewitness accounts:

May 30, 2018, 4-5pm, now warmed up to 80 degrees, still mostly sunny.  A painted turtle crossed the driveway, headed toward the garden by Nancy’s garage, but it didn’t go in.  Later, it came back right between the patio and driveway and spent a couple of hours methodically digging a hole at the side of the driveway, laying her eggs, and then expertly covering the opening.

June 6, 2014.  About 2:30, I noticed a turtle near the driveway.  I managed to measure it using a stick, even though it was “running” to the wall garden.  Its shell was nearly seven inches long.  I thought it was gone, but a while later, I saw it on other side of the driveway heading back toward the wall garden.  It crossed the driveway and explored along the edge of the turnout.  Eventually it settled down and began to dig.  As the hole deepened, you could see it scoop a gob of clay with its left rear foot, pull it out, drop it and then repeat with the right rear leg.  I took pictures at various stages of the three hours that it took her to find the best spot, dig her hole, lay her eggs, close the hole, and rearrange the surface to look like it had never been touched.

June 6, 2014. This turtle began digging before 4pm, and it continued until after 6:30. By 7:30, she was all done, and the hole was perfectly covered up.

The little turtles eventually hatch within their burrow, but they often will not emerge until the following spring.  As shown in the following photos, the place where the eggs were laid was perfectly covered up when the female was finished, and the little turtles survived and safely emerged in the following spring.

June 6, 2014. After the female has finished her work, there is no evidence that her eggs are safe below

May 11, 2015. Young turtles have emerged from the burrow where the eggs were laid the previous June.

Another year, I followed a turtle on its way down Post Road looking for a place to lay her eggs.  She didn’t start digging until the next day, when I was able to see how she closed up the hole:

June 17-18, 2016. I spotted a turtle entering Post Road from Jeannie’s driveway, which was fortunate for the turtle, as I stopped a car from crushing it and it (the turtle, not the car) went back into the ditch. The next day, the 18th, I saw what was likely the same turtle right by our mail box; it appeared to be closing a hole where presumably it had laid eggs.  I took a picture of it smoothing the hole and then, with its back feet, moving a leaf and several twigs over the spot to cover up evidence of the hole.  I was able to get some of this wonderful activity documented in a movie!

June 18, 2016, 6:49pm. A painted turtle closes up the hole by Post Road where she had just laid her eggs.

June 18, 2016, 6:53pm.  The leaf seen in her rear hind foot in the prior photo is now sitting with some bits of detritus over the center of the filled-in burrow.

Once the mating and the egg-laying are done, the turtles don’t have much to do.  The largest are safe from any kind of predations, so they are happy to sit all day in the sun, except for a dip now and then to cool off and snack on whatever is abundant in the pond.  The smallest will, for a while, imitate their elders, but not for long.  Just like when we go to the beach, the kids playing along the shore are more interesting to watch than the immobile adults: 

July 3, 2017, 75 degrees, windy, gorgeous.  Two small painted turtles sunned on Rock Island, heads stretched out toward the sun just like mom and dad. 

July 4, 2013.  A small turtle was sitting on the moss at the shoreline on the point with its head in water, reminding me of how I must look when I’m standing in shallow water, trying to get up the nerve to jump in. When I touched its shell, it finally launched, paddling madly with its rear feet, yet managing only to swim slowly.  It reminded me of an extremely obese man trying to run, but succeeding only in waddling rapidly.  It came up for air, then swam to the reeds, surfaced and rested its head on a reed.

July 27, 2020.  93 degrees, mostly cloudy, miserably hot & humid, about 5pm.  When I approached the Point, a little (1.5” to 2”) turtle sunning on Rock Island was so flustered by my approach that, in its haste to get to the Pond, it took the most direct route – tumbling over and over two or three times, like a child rolling down a bank waiting for the Sugar Hill fireworks! 

For the rest of the summer, turtles of all sizes congregate on Rock Island and other rocks in or at the edge of the pond.  Once in a while, one of the smallest will end up side-by-side with one of the largest, both with their legs extended and the heads arched up as high as possible:

August 22-23, 2019, 3pm. The very large painted turtle was with a tiny turtle on the reed island just past the drain.

As the painted turtles continue sunning through the end of the summer, they seem to become accustomed to my presence.  Even the little ones no longer scramble for safety as soon as they see me, which one fine Labor Day weekend afforded a chance for a suitable conclusion to this essay:

September 7, 2017, rain finally stopped, and by 1pm it was partly cloudy and 65 degrees.  I noticed a small turtle sitting below the pond weed, perhaps four feet offshore on the underwater portion of Rock Island.  It seemed to be looking at me, trying to decide whether it was safe to come up for a breath of air.  I waited.  He waited. I waited.  And then he came slowly up the rock, close to shore, waited some more, poked up and took a breath – long enough for me to take two quick pictures – and then quickly went back down.  It’s only at this time of day when the sun shines at such an angle that you can see right down four or five feet to the bottom of the pond, which is how I happened to notice this 2.5-inch painted turtle.

September 7, 2017.  A small turtle stares at me after getting sufficient courage to come up for a breath of air just off Rock Island.

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / May 2022

Who Gets the House?

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

Most birds still cling to the old ways of building their nests.  Robins build theirs in a crotch of an oak or an apple tree.  Song sparrows and thrushes build theirs in low brush or tall grass, while common yellowthroats will build theirs right on the ground.  Catbirds will settle into an opening in a dense thicket or amidst a maze of blackberry canes.  Chickadees and sapsuckers like nothing better than a hole carved out some years ago by a pileated woodpecker in what is now a dead tree, the former preferring an address perhaps ten or twelve feet off the ground, while the latter like the view from the top stories.

Only a few have adapted to the modern possibility of raising their family in one of the birdhouses found in North Country yards and fields.  Perhaps most birds have realized that the modest benefits provided by wooden walls and a roof are not worth the extra effort required to become a homeowner.

I know what some of you may be thinking:  “Extra effort? What extra effort?  The house is already there for the taking?”

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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But then, the rest of you know what I’m referring to, namely “Space Wars!”  Who wants the house, and who will get the house?  In our region, bluebirds, tree swallows, and house wrens are the only ones willing to compete regularly in these housing struggles.  Bluebirds prefer a house in an open area, perhaps a lawn with plenty of nearby perches on lilacs, maple trees and telephone wires.  Tree swallows prefer waterfront property, but like many young families taking a vacation somewhere on the coast, they are willing to take a cheaper spot a block or two in from the water.  Wrens are less particular, but they arrive later in the spring, so they must be willing to take whatever is available then.  Space wars continue year after year, because they all like the location of what we call the “Front House,” because it is only a few feet from dense cover in the lilacs, on the edge of outstanding hunting grounds (i.e. our lawn), less than fifty yards from perches on tall maples and telephone wires, and just two hundred yards from the pond.

April and May:  Open House

The house-hunting starts innocently enough in mid-April.  The male tree swallows and bluebirds often arrive at the same time.  They each fly around to see what’s available in the neighborhood, perhaps trying something that will please their mates:

April 14, 2009 60 degrees, beautiful.  The first bluebird of the year landed on the Front House, then flew off.  Five seconds later, the first tree swallow dropped onto the same rooftop. 

April 16-18, 2008.  Despite cool weather (38 degrees) and some snow, the 16th was the first day with any insects.  It was also the day that the first tree swallows arrived.  Probably no coincidence! 

Saturday, April 18, 1998.  A pair of tree swallows took a look at the bird house we’d put up on the telephone pole in the backyard.  Then a pair of bluebirds came by and actually went in the house.

For a couple of weeks, the birds continue their search for the perfect house:

May 4, 2018.  Tree swallows were flying by and checking out the bird houses in the front and back yards. 

 May 5-6, 2018.  Three tree swallows flew circles about the pond and the front yard on the 5th.  Male and female tree swallows checked out the Front House on the 6th, while wrens checked out the Fancy House in the Upper Meadow. 

Since there are likely to be several bird houses in the neighborhood, the birds may take a while to make their choice.

May 15, 2015.  A pair of bluebirds spent several minutes examining this birdhouse in the Upper Meadow, but they eventually decided not to stay

Bluebirds and tree swallows fight it out in the air, the bluebirds flying straight at the swallows, while the swallows circle in diminishing arcs eventually threatening to strike their foe.  The battle for the house may continue for several days:

May 29, 2004 52 degrees at 10am.  Mr. Bluebird is staking a claim on the Front House, but Mrs. is nowhere to be seen.  So far, the tree swallows are also absent.  Mr. perched on the post about 1pm, looked about for several minutes, dropped down to the top of the house, looked some more, then dropped to the perch on the front of the house.  Very warily, he then leaned forward and, for barely a microsecond, poked his head into and out of the opening.  He looked around again, then went in for another microsecond view.  He repeated this a third time, then flew to the apple tree and then the wire. 

The next morning (May 30), Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird were both here – and so was a tree swallow.  By the 31st, the battle for the bird house was in full sway.  At 10am, the tree swallow stuck his head out.  At 1010, the bluebird approached and the swallow flew out at him.  After five or ten seconds of very close order chasing, they fell to the ground for a few seconds of pecking and wing flapping, and then the bluebird flew away.  On June 1st, the tree swallows seemed to have control over the bird house.

Sometimes the bluebirds win, sometimes the tree swallows win, and sometimes the house wrens win.

May & June 2011:  Bluebirds Victorious

In 2011, the bluebirds won the house, but they continued to worry about intruders for another month:

May 7, 2011.  Bluebirds were fighting off tree swallows at the Front House.

June 16, 2011.  A chipmunk was trying to cross the lawn from the grunkle behind the bird house, but the manly bluebird didn’t want him to.  Each time the chipmunk ventured forth, blueie swooped from his perch atop the Front House and buzzed the rodent, hovered, and buzzed him again until he scampered back to the weeds.  This happened again and again, with the same result, until, on the tenth try, the chippie tore ass right out of the gate, ignored the dive-bomber, and continued at high speed to the safety of the driveway.  The bluebird was so defensive, because its hatchlings were about ready to become fledglings – which happened on the next day. 

May 2020:  Tree Swallows Victorious

In early May 2020, a pair of tree swallows and an extra male were interested in the Front House:

May 7, 2020, 55 degrees, sunny.  A pair of tree swallows are in the Front House.  The female seems to like the house; she flies around for a while, then returns to perch on the post, once going in, but usually staying a few minutes before flying off.  At first, a male was at the house with her; then he perched by the patio.  A little later, a second male came in, and the three of them circled up, around, and over the houses – theirs, ours, and Sally’s on the other side of Post Road.  I think the males were establishing dominance or demonstrating their maneuverability, while she circled somewhat apart, enjoying the spectacle as much as I did.  However, three minutes was enough for this.  She returned alone to her house, the males disappeared, and I returned to my coffee and my spelling bee.

A week later, the apartment was still available for rent, the tree swallows were still interested, but so was a bluebird:

May 13, 2020.  Two pairs of tree swallows and a male bluebird checked out the Front Yard House today.

It was another week before the tree swallows decided to take possession: 

May 16-17, 2020.  Blackflies abound.  Tree swallows are building a nest in the Front House.

Although they were no longer bothered by the bluebirds, the swallows remained wary of any potential competitors:

May 20, 2020, 74 degrees, breeze, no clouds, 3pm.  A brown thrasher acted like a robin looking for worms and insects on the front lawn.  After a couple of minutes, it was chased away by a swallow from the Front House. 

I noted no further problems, and in another couple of weeks, the eggs were about to hatch:

June 2, 2020, partly cloudy, 65 degrees, no wind, 930-1000am.  The tree swallows in the Dam House and the Front House seem to have eggs that have already hatched or are about to hatch.

2019 & 2012:  House Wrens Victorious

If the bluebirds and tree swallows aren’t careful, a pair of house wrens may slip into one or more of the birdhouses.  If they find an unoccupied house, they quickly stake their claim – by filling the house up with twigs!  Since no self-respecting bluebird or tree swallow wants a living room filled with twigs, the wrens will retain custody:

May 5, 2019.  The first wren was at the front-yard house.  Two minutes later, a tree swallow flew high overhead before descending in a half-dozen ever lower and ever diminishing arcs, eventually landing on the wren’s house.  The swallow just peaked in and then departed.  Two minutes later, the wren returned, inserting one stick and then another, then disappearing for a half hour before coming back to resume building its nest.

In 2018, wrens settled for housing in the less respectable neighborhoods in the Upper or Lower Meadow, leaving the Front House to the tree swallows:

May 28, 2018, 75 degrees, 2pm.    Tree swallows in the front house and the house at the end of the dam (“Far Dam House”); wrens in the “Fancy House” in the Upper Meadow and the house by the solar array (“Solar House”). 

If you take off for a vacation or a visit with your family in early June, don’t be surprised if you find out that changes have taken place while you were gone.  In 2012, after returning from some time in Indiana, we found that wrens had actually ended up in the Front House:

June 20, 2012, 90+ degrees.  Disregard anything I said previously about the bluebirds defeating the tree swallows in their annual battle for the Front House.  We returned from Indiana to find house wrens feeding their young in the oft-disputed house! 

2005:  Epic Battles for the Front House

We have had years when bluebirds, tree swallows, and wrens all tried to claim the Front House.  Some of the battles were quite fierce, and the poor females have to worry about more than housekeeping.  In 2005, they were all involved in battles for this prime location:

May 30, 2005, OK in morning; thunderstorm at 6pm.  A couple of days ago, I saw the wren put a 4-inch stick in the front bird house, and I suspected that this act would be resented by the tree swallows who thought they owned this property.  I was right.  This morning, about 9am, the tree swallow had her head out of the house; the wren was on the nearby elm. Then the wren flew to the house, and it sang from a perch at the top of the pole, while the tree swallow remained inside.  The wren then dropped to the roof, skipped forward to the edge, paused, then popped its head over for a millisecond glance at the front side of the bird house.  It repeated this for the other three sides, then again at the front.  After a third quick glance at the front suggested that there was indeed nothing to fear, it hopped to the entrance – whereupon the tree swallow chased it to the lilac and went after it three or four times before returning to the house.  The wren at first just flew up to the elm, but soon thereafter it flew away. 

            The next day, the wren and the tree swallow continued their battle, with the same result.  But that day involved more than turf battles.  Just as it started to rain, about 2pm, the female tree swallow flew to the nice, red hummingbird-feeder by our porch.  Mr. flew up and attempted to mount her; she turned to him, chastised him, and he flew away.  But not for long.  He soon tried again, only to be rebuffed once more, as she flew off with Mr. in hot pursuit. 

My next note about the Front House came a month later.  Apparently, the tree swallows eventually did what had to be done, allowing them to raise their family and enjoy their parental pleasure when the fledglings could fly off on their own.  Would this result in another “Space War?”

June 22-24, 2005.  A bluebird was checking out the front house on the 22nd, the same house where tree swallows had already raised a couple of kids and where the same or another pair had inspected the premises.  On the 23rd, I cleaned out the old nest, figuring that might close the deal for someone.  Almost immediately, a house wren showed up and took a look inside, but I think he resided in the Lower Meadow house. 

This was the last mention of the Front House in my notes for that summer, so the house probably stayed empty until the following spring.  That year, as in most years, the housing battles are over by the beginning of summer, and now the parents have to worry about feeding and protecting their fledglings, while at the same time teaching them the proper songs.

May 29, 2019.  A tree swallow looks for insects flying over the pond from its perch just above the Far Dam House.

Phenological Phacts and Photos w/ Carl Martland / April 2022

Wood Frogs in the Pond

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

Snow lingers in the woods, though a few bare spots have emerged under the firs, where the snow never amounted to much. The ice is mostly gone from the pond, and now, in mid-April, we listen carefully for the wood frogs - lovely tan creatures with black masks who find the merest signs of spring reason enough to wake up and go for a swim. One day you might hear a couple of frogs, and then a day or two later you will hear hundreds of them, their low-key quacking easily mistaken for ducks.  

April 19, 2019. 70 degrees, mostly cloudy. The Pond is only 10% ice free, but 80% of the ice is rotting and grey. I heard a dozen or so wood frogs making sporadic calls, but they hopped into the pond as I approached. The first one I saw was floating by on a tiny iceberg only 1.5 inches across.

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[1] Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of “Sugar Hill Days: What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain”. Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

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The males are the first to reach the pond.  Some command a foot or so of shoreline, hoping a female will hop down the hillside; others spread out across one of the coves, spacing themselves about a yard apart, hoping to intercept the females who must swim across from the opposite shore. 

April 30, 2015:  dozens of wood frogs in the reeds and along the southeast bay about 10am.  At 5pm, all was quiet, and there were several dozen clumps of eggs. 

When a female arrives, males will try to climb on her back and then grasp her very tightly around her neck, gaining a position that will allow them to fertilize the eggs when they are eventually deposited, a process known as “amplexus”. Since two or more males will, if they can, glom onto a single female, it is essential that the females be much larger than the males so that they can pop up for a breath of air whenever they want to.

April 14, 2020. Two males fight for position on a female wood frog.

One Sunday in mid-April, I found a spot near the shore where I could see five dozen males without even moving my head. While sitting there, I would hear rustling behind me and then watch crazed males take wild leaps into the pond.  One was so anxious that he landed on his back, rolled over and only then hit the water.  While any quick movement would cause all the males to submerge, an extremely loud sneeze had no effect!   

Finally, a female appeared.  Redder and larger than the males, she swam up under some grass clippings and stuck her nose up, the grass hanging over her forehead making her seem like a teenager who’d died her hair to upset her parents.  She sat there for a while with her belly bulging as she added a croak or two to the general chorus.  Eventually, she set out for the nearest male, who was just hanging in the water four feet away.  But she quickly veered off and swam within a couple of inches of the next male, then sped past.  This guy quickly caught up, jumped on, and grabbed her around the neck.  They swam off about seven yards to the right and I lost sight of them. 

Another female made passes at three males.  Each time she approached and stopped, allowing the male to swim by for her inspection.  The first two times, she apparently didn’t like what she saw and swam away. The third time, she swam past the male, paused, and allowed the male to mount.  A would-be suitor contested the pairing, but the first male held on tightly enough and the pair swam off.

The wood frogs continued most of that Sunday, taking a break for a couple of hours during the middle of the afternoon, then continuing until at least 9pm.  On Monday morning, there were only a few dozen frogs left in the pond, but there were more than 325 clumps of eggs in the reeds, each with two hundred or so eggs.  In all, there were well over 50 thousand eggs!

A female wood frog will lay a hundred or more eggs in a single, rounded mass. Over just two or three days, hundreds of females will deposit their eggs all jumbled together in the same small opening in the reeds. [Photo: April 25, 2019]

It was the first real day of spring when I next went out to check on the wood frog eggs.  Numerous migrating birds had arrived overnight, including a small flock of evening grosbeaks, a phoebe, a flicker, a pair of wood ducks and three mergansers. Two ruby-crowned kinglets, faster even than warblers, flitted about in the willows and the brush, while a song sparrow serenaded a pair of tree swallows that were checking out a bird house by the pond.  A lovely 65-degree day. 

The wood frogs were gone, but their egg masses attracted a lot of notice.  Nine newts squirmed in, around and through the jumble of egg clumps, sometimes twisting around each other and at other times plunging solo through the gooey masses.  Several huge leeches attached to the clumps of eggs, and a painted turtle swam by, checking out the whole operation. 

April 23, 2017. A day or two after the eggs were deposited, the tadpoles appeared to be tiny balls. A caddis fly larva has dropped by to see what’s going on.

May 4, 2017: yesterday, most tadpoles were still encased in their eggs. Today, they nearly all have emerged, but they haven’t traveled more than a foot or two, and they seem unaware of the large bull frog tadpole that is messing around in the decaying egg masses.

Within five or six days, about half of the tadpoles were out or active within their sacs; within a week, all had emerged; within another day or two, the egg cases themselves were mostly gone.  I couldn’t tell who was eating these cases – it could have been ducks, newts, other frogs, the muskrat I noted hiding in the reeds, or perhaps they just dissolve.  

May 13, 2015.   On the 11th, the tadpoles started to emerge from the egg masses, but they stayed right nearby.  A day later, the 12th, the tadpoles were all out, still staying close to the egg masses, and the egg masses were collapsing.  Today, on the 13th, six days after I first saw the ball begin to unfurl and two weeks after the first eggs were laid, the tadpoles had all swum away and the egg masses had disappeared.

It may or may not be coincidence that ducks and a magnificent pair of great blue heron began to visit our little pond just after the wood frogs arrived. They were certainly enjoying their feeding, though I never could see what they were capturing. Over the next several weeks, I would from time to time see a vast swarm of tadpoles a yard wide, a foot deep, and more than 50 feet long, moving slowly along the edge of the pond, feeding on minute bits of vegetation and detritus and generally cleaning up the grasses and sedges at the edge of the pond.  What a marvelous example of the incredible explosion of life in the pond!

June 3, 2015, 1230pm, 65 degrees. A dense stream of tadpoles moved slowly along the reeds toward our end of the pond.  The stream was more than twenty feet long, two feet wide and a foot deep, and it was moving at a rate of about five feet per minute.  By 6pm, the swarm had stretched out along the dam, and it was now a hundred feet long and three to four feet wide.

By late June or early July, the tadpoles lose their tails, and the multitude of inch-long frogs begins to leave the pond.  For a couple of days, hundreds may be seen jumbled all together along the edge of the pond, some still in the water while others have made it a foot or so inland.  Within a couple of days, they are nearly all gone, although you may see a tiny straggler or two climbing through the grass, wondering where everybody went.

July 5, 2006. A few wood frogs were still struggling to get through the grassy areas near the pond.

Few wood frogs will stay anywhere near the pond, and fewer still will ever be seen, for their colors provide perfect camouflage. Once in a while, I have seen one out in the woods, but I suspect many have escaped my notice simply by sitting still, like the one in the final photo.

August 25, 2017, 65 degrees, mostly cloudy, seems like early autumn. After venturing a ways into Foss Woods, I took a picture of a small wood frog that was nearly invisible in the duff by the trail.

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / March 2022

Red-winged Blackbirds:  Phenological Phenom!

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

Phenological Phenom

It was probably twenty years ago that our neighbor Rebecca Brown asked the question “what is the best all-around bird?”   This question, like all good questions, launched heated discussion at neighborhood gatherings for the next year or two.  What were the criteria?  Best song?  Most beautiful?  Most easily seen?  Seasonal sensation?  We often could narrow the field down to a couple of contenders based upon each of these.  Purple finch, winter wren, and catbird vied for the best song.  Grosbeaks, Baltimore Orioles and wood ducks were contenders for the most beautiful.  Gold finches, chickadees, and other bird feeder regulars were among the most commonly seen, while woodcock were easily the greatest seasonal sensation.  However, we quickly realized that the best all-around bird couldn’t be a one-hit wonder or a reluctant visitor to our yards.  This realization certainly narrowed the field considerably, and the chickadee, if not the unanimous choices, was certainly near the top of everyone’s list.  Chickadees are lively, they travel in small flocks, they bounce to and from your feeder pretty much every day in the winter, they have a variety of easily recognized calls, they gather round you every time you take a walk in the woods, and they are here all year.  So, I guess I’ll stay with my choice of the chickadee for the gold medal as the Best All-Around Bird.

I bring this matter up not to focus on chickadees, but to raise another question more attuned to the themes of my essays, namely phenology.  What animal can we recognize as a Phenological Phenom?  Which animal is most closely aligned with the changes in the seasons?  Conceivably there are insects or tiny mammals known to biologists whose life cycle and behavior are so closely attuned to changes in light and temperature that one could know the time of the year just by observing one of these creatures.  Perhaps, but we cannot trust even avid bird-watchers or writers of essays on phenology, let alone the general public, to become more aware of the changing seasons based upon reports concerning a seldom seen creature!   No, as in the debate over the best all-around bird, we need to find a well-known animal whose actions coincide with the seasonal changes.  For reasons that I will lay out below, I view Red-winged Blackbirds as our region’s Phenological Phenom.  These birds, known to the North Country populace more simply as “redwings”, are here from early May to early August, they are never shy about what they are up to, and their antics are perfectly aligned with our own view of the seasons.    

Late Winter – Here they Come!

Let’s start with what we’re now anticipating a little more every day – signs of spring and the end of winter.   Nominations for the best indication for the start of spring must include robins and woodcock along with redwings.  In much of the northeast, the first robins are considered to be the harbinger of spring.  For our area, I have argued that the woodcock’s mating ritual is an earlier and more spectacular sign of spring, an event that draws people out to the edge of nearby fields at dusk at the end of March hoping to hear the “peents” of the male and see him start off and fly wide circles high overhead in his attempt to attract the secretive female:

In Sugar Hill, … the woodcock mating ritual is definitely the first sign of spring.  The woodcock is not the first bird to return, an honor that usually belongs to the redwing blackbird.  But being first to arrive is far from being first in the hearts and minds of our (north) countrymen.  A redwing’s arrival may be noted, but what is there for a redwing blackbird to do other than stop by now and then for a bite at the feeder while waiting for the ice to melt?  [Sugar Hill Days, p. 33]

Did I really ask “what is there for a redwing to do?”  While the male woodcocks spend their time and energy hoping to entice a female down the primrose path, the male redwings are here scouting out the best locations for their nests, checking out the competition for those sites, and providing a welcome addition to the birdfeeder crowd.  Their brilliant red wing-spots of the red-winged blackbird certainly earn added style points related to the arrival of spring.

March 10, 2020.  The first redwing arrived on the 7th; yesterday, we both heard them calling by the still-frozen pond.  Today, about two dozen were by the spruce, enjoying the birdseed spread out for them.

March 7, 2018.  An early-arriving redwing joins the bluejays that have been searching all winter for seeds by the feeder.

The males arrive first, joined a couple of weeks later by females and young males just beginning to show their colors.  We see them near the feeder, poking in the grass for sunflower seeds, often with other blackbirds.

Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, founding member of ACT, long-time resident of Sugar Hill, and author of Sugar Hill Days:  What’s Happening in the Fields, Wetlands, and Forests of a Small New Hampshire Town on the Western Edge of the White Mountain.  Quotations from his book and his journals indicate the dates of and the situations depicted in the photos.

April 5, 2021.  A young male is just starting to show some of what will become its colorful wing patch.

April 26, 2018.  A female finally shows up.

Early Spring - Territorial Disputes

By the beginning of May, when everyone has come north, the males sing from their perches high above the pond, hoping to attract a mate and, at the same time, defining the borders of their territory.   The angrier and more insistent they become, the more their wing patches are exposed.  If the singing and the brilliant wing patches don’t suffice, perhaps a hard stare will, and if that doesn’t work, well then look out!

April 29, 2020, 42 degrees, sunny, beautiful!  Two redwing blackbirds faced off high in the tops of two naked larch trees on the Point.  They seemed to be working on boundary lines, as they fluttered about each other.  One, from a high perch, looked down on the other and flashed its red stripes – photo!  The other meekly sat still in the other, nearby larch, showing only yellow and, after a silent minute or two, flew off.  While watching this little drama, I heard doves, woodpeckers, one very musical call from an unseen singer, and a variety of calls from the many redwings seeking nesting sites around the pond.

May 12, 2017, 65 degrees, partly cloudy, 6:10pm.   Sitting at the screen house, I could see a couple of male redwings jostling on the dam.  I couldn’t tell if they were fighting over territory, a lady, or something one of them had caught. 

May 18, 2016.  A very aggressive male redwing flew at Nancy when she walked along the dam yesterday; today, it tried to drive off two Canada Geese, so I took some pictures and a movie.

May 12, 2017.  Territorial dispute? Or is a woman to blame?  Either way, these two aren’t just playing.

April 29, 2016:  why the “hard stare”?  Is someone impinging upon his territory?

May 18, 2016. This male didn’t want any intruders near the nest he built in the reeds. “Two Canada Geese? Aren’t they too big for you?” Nope. He dove at them again and again, drove them to the shore, and continued until the geese gave up and flew away.

Late Spring - Settling Down to Raise a Family

By late May or early June, the redwings have resolved their territorial disputes, and both males and females can be seen foraging along the shore and flying across the pond.  They still resent intruders.  

May 28, 2000 – 60 degrees.  A bittern flew from the alders by the dock to the reeds at the far end of the pond.  Four redwings rushed at and around it, to no avail.  They then settled down for a siege, sort of surrounding the large bird.

June 5, 2010.  7pm.     The redwings didn’t like my getting too close to their nests.  First they called – “tsi – tsi- tsi – tsi” – from the tops of trees by the pond.  Then they hovered over my head, still calling.  Finally, they buzzed me.

June 3, 2015.  A redwing flies off across the pond, proudly displaying his wing patches.

May 21, 2120.  A camouflaged female redwing searches for lunch at the edge of the pond.

Redwings build their nests a couple of feet above the surface of the pond within a tangle of cattails.  There may be a nest every five or so yards, typically located only a couple feet within the cattails.  A half dozen or more pairs are summer residents around our pond which is barely 100 yards long and 30 yards wide.

By the end of the first week in June, while local kids dream of leaving school for a long summer vacation, the youngest redwings dream of leaving their nest. Eventually, whether by design or by accident, their dreams are answered.  The fledglings of course don’t know enough to be scared of anything.  They just want to fly, so it is their parents who must be wary:

June 6, 2006, (6/6/6), 75 degrees, partly cloudy, lovely.   A tree swallow buzzed me in the front yard.  It flew in short circles around me and then landed eight feet away; it only flew off when I waved at a passing car.  Out by the pond, an even friendlier redwing landed just two feet away from me!  Presumably these birds were juveniles that had failed or missed the lesson on “Flying Away from Large Mammals.”

June 10, 2020, 76 degrees, breezy, very thin clouds, sometimes sunny,1315-1415.  A pair of redwings chased a hawk away from the pond.

June 11, 2014, 11:15am.When Nancy and I saw something move in the weeds right at the edge of the pond, we both thought it was a big frog jumping into the water, but it turned out to be a recently fledged redwing blackbird. Despite our fears that it might drown, it quickly climbed out, fell back in, climbed out again, and lumbered off into the brush, with Daddy all the time shrieking at us!

June 14, 2018, 230pm, 62 degrees, cloudy.  Redwings have fledged, but they haven’t strayed far from their nest.  I took this photo of one sitting just inches from my feet in some low lupine next to the trail along the dam.

September 2, 2018.  I found this nest as I paddled along the edge of a patch of cattails three weeks after the redwings had departed.

Summer Days – Learning to Fly

Redwings are reliable throughout June and July.  No matter how quiet everyone else is, the redwings are busy finding food, fending off intruders, and keeping an eye on the youngsters:

June 21, 2014, summer solstice, 65 degrees.   No frogs, no ducks, no dragonflies, just redwings clucking and fluttering and one busy bumblebee working the lupine.

June 23, 2008, 75 degrees at 6pm, partly cloudy, thunder in distance.  Tree frogs very loud, bull frogs rumbling, several green frogs grunting, and lots of peepers peeping.  Very active redwings; I think their young have just fledged. 

June 26, 2019, 75 degrees, mostly sunny, calm, 1015-1130.  The redwings don’t like me anywhere on the dam or near the frog bench.  They buzzed me several times by flying barely a foot over my head.  The spectacular flowers make the risk of aerial bombardment worth taking.  Lupine is still at its peak, and there are more daisies every day. 

June 26, 2020, 82 degrees, but feels cool because of the clouds.  The first redwing fledglings are out and about, which explains why their parents have been dive-bombing close to my hat the previous two days. 

July 28, 2004. Yesterday, female and juvenile redwings were fluttering about the pond.  Today, I went to the pond at noon, and it was pretty quiet.  A few green frogs and a leopard frog called, but there were no dragonflies.  A song sparrow called a couple of times; a lone redwing called a warning from the reeds at the other end of the pond, flew up to the birches, and then flew off to the Lower Meadow. 

Redwings are omnivores. They love to perch on the lupin in June, nipping at the freshest flower petals. They will also collect a variety of insects and worms that they find somewhere near the pond.

July 2, 2019. Lunch time for this redwing and her family.

Unfortunately for these extroverts, everybody has to eat.  Large birds with much larger appetites are well aware of the redwings, their habitats, and their habits:

June 21, 2019, 68 degrees, cloudy.  At 515pm, a harrier flew low over the house as we sat on the porch.  I went out to the pond, worrying about the merganser family, which turned out to be safe in the center of the pond.  However, I heard some cries from the reeds and shrubs at the right of our end, and the harrier flew off holding a small bird in its claws, being chased by several red-winged blackbirds.

Beginning of Fall - Time to Leave

In early August, once the juveniles have had a couple of weeks to test their wings, the red-winged blackbirds get ready for heading south.  Now I am no longer buzzed when I walk along the dam.  Instead, as I approach the large patch of cattails at the end of the pond, dozens of redwings will burst into the air, flying out and around in formation, and usually dropping back to where they started.  This goes on for only a week or two – and then they are gone. And when they are gone, the pond is noticeably silent. It is a new season.  

 Redwings are so active and so noisy, that the day that times when I don’t hear them are worthy of a note in my journals:

July 29, 2016, 80 degrees, mostly cloudy.  There are no redwings to be seen or heard around the pond.

August 3-5, 2014.  Migrating birds in the front yard on August 3rd: a half dozen starlings plus two or three bluebirds, and a gold finch (both the first since spring).  The redwings have been silent, presumably because they have departed.

Foliage Season - Heading Home

When the local redwings depart our pond, I believe they go to Pearl Lake or another nearby wetland that is large enough to accommodate large flocks of hungry birds preparing for their fall migration.  Usually, the only redwings that show up nearby after mid-August are lonely individuals that somehow have yet to find the staging area: 

August 28, 2013.  The first redwing I’ve seen in a couple of weeks arrived at the pond yesterday.  Perched at the top of a pondside alder, he was calling plaintively like a cardinal.  Perhaps he was nervous or just lonely.  Perhaps with good reason:  today, while swimming at our end of the pond, I suddenly heard him calling much faster and sharper than usual.  I looked up to see a northern harrier swooping low barely ten feet above the pond.

However, a couple of times, I have been surprised to see dozens of redwings rise from the reeds at the far end of the pond when I walked out to admire the golden larches and the fading fall foliage.

 October 18, 2011. A flock of redwings, which had been out of sight within the cattails at the far end of the pond, flew up as I walked out along the dam.  They quickly coalesced into a group, circled over the Lower Meadow, then began a larger circle of the pond before eventually returning to where they started.

Phenological Phenom

Based upon what I have witnessed, red-winged blackbirds certainly have earned a nomination for the Phenological Phenom Award.  Their arrival coincides with the end of winter.  Their territorial disputes enliven the glorious days of early spring.  Their concerns for their families are evident throughout the summer. And finally, their departure coincides with the first chilly nights signaling the approach of fall in the North Country.  

Are there any other nominations?  What about bears? Will reports of bears emerging from hibernation will soon attract our attention as a sign that winter is ending?  No, that is not enough, because we don’t see bears or any other large mammals on a regular basis at any time of the year.  How about the toads and frogs whose calls in April and May will announce the coming of warmer weather, or the fireflies whose displays are brightest at the summer solstice?  Yes, these certainly are seasonal highlights, but where are these creatures at the end of winter or the beginning of the fall?  In the middle of summer, dragonflies and damselflies suddenly appear in abundance, but how many people can actually identify even a couple of them?  Yes, many of them are beautiful and they’re easy to see, but a Phenological Phenom needs to be a more recognizable creature that is not merely a summer show-off. 

Could any other of the other resident birds compete for the award?  Warblers, swallows, wrens and others certainly attract our attention from time to time, but none of them are nearly as active for so long as the redwings.  In short, I cannot think of any other contender for the award.  Many others provide one or two sign posts along the phenological journey, but only redwings are with us from the end of winter through the beginning of fall. 

So keep an eye out for the redwings, for they will soon be announcing their presence through songs whose shear exuberance will make up for what they lack in musical tone.  Anticipating no objections, I therefore proclaim the red-winged blackbird to be the Phenological Phenom of the North Country.  In order to avoid confused responses from any of the vast majority of people who have never heard the word “phenological”, I suggest that the press release be more colloquial and less scientific by using a nickname that rhymes with another, much more famous award (for best movie, play, TV show?  I forget, but it is big-time!):

Red-winged Blackbirds Win Phemmy Award!

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / February 2022

Grosbeaks

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

Evening Grosbeaks

Last March, at one of our weekly, socially distanced, masked gatherings outside around a cold fire, a neighbor remarked that “It’s too bad we don’t see as many evening grosbeaks as we used to.” Evening grosbeaks are one of the most colorful birds to visit the feeder in the winter, especially when they arrive in a flock of a dozen or more birds.  Any viewing is a sight to be remembered that reminds us why we spend hours at the kitchen window looking out at the feeder.   But I realized that I couldn’t really respond to my neighbor’s comment.  Although I certainly have vivid memories of these remarkable birds, I couldn’t say how often I’d seen them, whether they were more or less common than they used to be, or what time of the year they were most likely to be seen.  I only knew that they were not one of the usual suspects at our feeder, and that they were uncommon enough to make me happy to see them.

According to The Sibley Field Guide to Birds, evening grosbeaks are “common but irregular in mixed forests” and are almost always seen perched in treetops or at bird feeders.”   Central New Hampshire is close to the northern edge of their winter range and the southern edge of their summer range.  Hence, although we perhaps should find records of nesting pairs in the summer and resident flocks in the winter, we are probably more likely to see evening grosbeaks during their spring or fall migrations. 

January 16, 2021. Nancy and I followed the Snake Trail out through the town forest, coming back on the Loop Trail. Back home, a small group of evening grosbeaks flew up when I approached the kitchen window. One returned, sat atop the pole holding the feeder and stayed just long enough for me to get a photo before flying off to join his pals.

My edition of Sibley’s guide is now more than twenty years old.  Are its descriptions of habitat, range, and sightings still valid for our region?  That is something that I have been able to test using my own records of bird sightings.  When we were second home owners, we would record the birds we had seen on each weekend or vacation week in the North Country.  After we moved here full-time in 2007, I kept more complete records that eventually were organized into three periods for each month:  days 1-10, 11-20, and 21-the end of the month.  For colorful infrequent visitors like evening grosbeaks, I often noted the size of the flock in my journals.  Moreover, I am one of those who - for unknown reasons - are compelled not only to take copious notes, but also to digitize them.  As a result, with some hours of effort, I was able to assemble my notes concerning evening grosbeaks into a spreadsheet that organized sightings by year and by month.   

It quickly became apparent that, as expected, evening grosbeaks are primarily migratory visitors to our area, as I only recorded seeing them three times between Memorial Day and Thanksgiving:  first on July 15, 2003, then some juveniles during the first week of August 2005, and finally my last summer sighting on June 24, 2009.  Thus, while evening grosbeaks have in fact nested nearby a few times, I don’t count on seeing them next summer. 

The next question might be whether they are winter residents.  Again, the answer seems to be “not really,” as I only recorded six sightings in 24 years between late November through the end of February.   The best time to see evening grosbeaks in Sugar Hill is during their spring migration.  From 1998 to 2011, I recorded seeing one or more of these birds between early March and early May every year except 2007, and that was a year when we were only in Sugar Hill for a short while in March.  During nine of these years, small flocks of as many as 20 birds visited our feeder, often for a couple of days.  The two best years for sightings were 2002 and 2005.

While having a couple of short visits a year may not sound very exciting, it was far more than we enjoyed for the nine years between late 2011 and early 2020.  During this nine-year period, I only recorded seeing evening grosbeaks once - in early April 2018 - and I didn’t see any small flocks. 

Now we can return to the comment that sparked this little essay: “It’s too bad we don’t see as many evening grosbeaks as we used to.” I guess my records tell me that I have to agree with this sad observation.  After seeing evening grosbeaks almost every year for 14 years, I hardly saw any for the next nine years.  Clearly, evening grosbeaks were certainly more common before 2012 than in the more recent years.

However, perhaps all is not lost.  My records show that a flock of grossbeaks was active by our feeder for at least three days in mid-December 2020 as well as one day in mid-January of 2021.  And now we’re entering the prime viewing months of March, April and May.  Keep your eyes open - perhaps the drought really is over. 

December 16, 2020. A flock of at least seven evening grosbeaks at our feeder. This group dropped by several times between December 12 and December 21. These were the best sightings of these welcome visitors since 2005.



Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks

A month ago, when I started working on this essay, I would have said that Evening Grosbeaks and Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks were as closely related as a song sparrow and a fox sparrow.  However, when I went to Sibley’s to check on their ranges, I found that the pages for the Evening and Pine Grosbeaks were not accompanied by a page for the Rose-Breasted.  I checked twice; yes, the next several pages showed a half-dozen finches.  What happened to the Rose-Breasted?   As I do know how to use an index, I quickly found the missing grosbeak along with a half dozen other grosbeaks in the section devoted to Tanagers and Cardinals. 

Despite the similarity of their names and their over-sized beaks, Rose-Breasted and Evening Grosbeaks are not closely related. They don’t even have the shape and size.  Although both are 8 inches long, the Rose-Breasted has a longer tail and a smaller, slimmer body than the Evening Grosbeak.  

Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks are summer residents in hardwood forests throughout New England and southern Canada.  They show up before Memorial Day and soon join the other birds looking for a nice nesting spot.  The male obviously wants to be seen, as he flies from tree to tree, singing loudly each time he lands:

June 2-3, 2008.  Yesterday, bluebirds were, for the first time, inspecting the birdhouse by the lilacs.  The first goldfinches and some robins were also busy in the front yard, while red-winged blackbirds were active around the pond.  Today, a rose-breasted grosbeak was singing from high atop the big birch by the herb garden.  

June 25, 2000 (hot, hazy, humid; 86 degrees, rain in late afternoon).   I spent an hour and a half birdwatching.  The best sighting was a very vocal rose-breasted grosbeak.  He warbled from the top of a larch, then was flying around tree tops in the inner meadow.  Extremely melodious singer.

Although happy to have his presence known, the male has no interest in posing for a photo.  Your only chance is to catch him when he lands for a few seconds on a nearby branch that is not completely obscured in a tangle of vines.

June 9, 2020, 66 degrees, 5 pm.   A rose-breasted grosbeak flitted about the tops of the willows in the lower meadow, going branch-to-branch, then tree-to-tree. I managed a couple of photos. 

Once the kids are able to fly, we might see a juvenile trying out its wings, but they will soon be gone: 

August 26-28, 2007.  A female rose-breasted grosbeak, probably a juvenile, was in the front yard on the 26th, by the patio, and then in the lilacs.  We haven’t seen it since, and she’s probably on her way south.

Other Grosbeaks

Two other grosbeaks may rarely be seen in our area.  Sibley says pine grosbeaks are uncommonly seen, usually in openings in the woods or by fruit trees.  They inhabit coniferous forests as far north as Hudson Bay, and they generally remain in Canada for the winter.   I have only seen them in our area a few times. The best sighting was just before Christmas in 20012, when we watched eight of them eating apples that had fallen by the stone wall on the other side of Post Road.  That small flock may have stayed around for the rest of the winter, for we saw as many as a half dozen at our feeder when we came up for weekends in February and March.  I guess they were not impressed with Sugar Hill, because the next one to visit our feeder was in mid-January in 2021. 

Blue Grosbeaks, which are uncommon even in their usual southern range, are even more rarely seen as far north as New Hampshire.  My first and only sighting of this distinctive bird was in early July 2004.  The only other mention of one in my journals was eight years later in mid-May.  Our neighbor Rebecca Brown, who can identify untold numbers of birds by their song, reported hearing one in Foss Woods on May 14, 2012.  

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / January 2022

Birch Trees

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

No Guide Book Needed

Birch trees are unique.  Everyone knows what they look like, and everyone is happy to see them.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of winter and you’re walking through two feet of snow, closely watching each step to avoid tripping over a fallen branch or a tangle of briars.  You still see the birches rising out of the snow drifts, and you naturally bend your route to pass by the inviting clump you notice just a few yards off to the left.  If you stop for a moment to look around, you can identify birches even if they are a hundred yards away.  What other leafless trees can you identify so quickly?  Even if you can tell a beech from a poplar, are you really that excited by seeing either of these smooth-skinned trees?  Do you expect your child or grandchild to recognize either of them?  No, but you do teach them that trees with white bark are called “birch trees.” 

Different Colors and Shapes

Several species of birch are found in the North Country.  While birches, like the species of any other family of deciduous trees, can be distinguished by the shape of their leaves, such clues are lacking in the winter.  Instead, we can look at colors and shapes. Aptly named yellow birches have the distinctive pealing bark of all birches, but the bark has a yellowish tinge.  I find these birches to be particularly handsome in mid-winter, especially when their bark peels off in wispy strands.  Other species have distinctive shapes.  If it is tall and thin, with black branches wildly emerging from a single trunk, they you are looking at a grey birch.  If it has large white-barked branches creating a wide crown, then you are looking at a white birch or a paper birch. 

Yellow Birch, Foss Woods, March 19, 2021

Grey Birch by our pond, February 1, 2021

White Birch next to Pearl Lake Road, April 23, 2020

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Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, a founding member of ACT and a long-time resident of Sugar Hill. Quotations from his journals indicate the date of and the situation depicted in each photograph.

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Bending Birches

Robert Frost has a poem about a boy climbing up one of the single-stemmed birch trees.  As the boy gets higher, his weight pulls the then tree down further and further until it bends right to the ground, allowing him an easy dismount.  Winter storms sometimes have the same effect as wet, clinging snow will curve whole rows of birches down to the ground.

Birches in our yard bent over by heavy snow, December 13, 2008

Birch Seeds

Birches produce an immense number of seeds, which form over the summer from dangling clusters of tiny flowers.  The seeds still cling to the branches through the end of the winter, and they are finally released in March, a time of the year when the ground is likely to be covered with a crusty snow. When conditions are right, a brisk wind will blow the seeds along like iceboats flying across a frozen lake.  The seeds will blow all across a field if there is nothing to stop them.  Thoreau describes how birch seeds blowing across snow-covered farm fields only stopped when they came up against a distant rail bank, resulting in the rows of birch trees he observed growing along the rail lines near Walden Pond. 

Thousands of birch seeds sitting on the surface of the icy snow in the Back 4, March 9, 2020. With so many seeds, birches are able to establish themselves quickly in any overgrown field.

Birds and Birches

Winter and early spring offer the best chances to see birds in the birches.  I first saw Bohemian waxwings when a flock sat puffed up from the cold in a stand of birches on Post Road back in 2009, and I sometimes catch sight of a downy or hairy woodpecker foraging among the branches in the middle of the winter.

A downy woodpecker in a tangle of birch branches in our yard, February 16, 2008

Bohemian Waxwings in birches on Post Road, January 24, 2009

However, I have found yellow-bellied sapsuckers to be the bird that is most attracted to birch trees, especially a couple of what must be particularly sweet-sapped birches at the edge of the Upper Meadow. Once the sap starts running in the spring, the sapsuckers begin to drill their carefully spaced holes in the trunks of their favorite trees. By pecking holes that line up vertically, the sapsucker allows some of the sap to flow through the gaps to reach the crown of the tree, while still creating little flows of sap into and out of each hole. Perhaps sapsuckers like the taste of the sap, but they also feast on the insets that are attracted to the bounty. I watched several generations of sapsuckers do their work on a couple of trees next to the Upper Meadow.  The adults begin in the spring; the juveniles join in by August. They don’t mind my taking their picture, so long as I stay ten feet away as I work on my woodpile. 

A sapsucker begins pecking a pattern of holes in a birch tree, April 24, 2017

A young sapsucker continues work begun by its elders. August 23, 2011

This activity went on year after year at one particular tree that attracted a great many butterflies, bees, wasps, ants and other insects throughout each summer.  That tree finally died about seven years ago, but we have dozens of birches growing in that area, and I miss the activity much more than I miss that tree.  And that birch sent up sprouts that I hope will have the same sweet sap that will soon attract new generations of sapsuckers and butterflies.

An eastern comma butterfly sipping sap from the sapsucker’s favorite tree. June 16, 2012

A mourning cloak butterfly sips sap from the same birch tree. August 13, 2011

Do they really have leaves? 

When visitors from away first come to New Hampshire, they are happy to see so many birch trees, especially when a white birch’s limbs are outlined against a perfect blue sky.  One visitor, who shall remain anonymous (but he knows who he is), thought he knew all about birches, as he had traveled widely throughout New England his entire life.  However, on his first summer visit to Sugar Hill, when we were driving along route 3 toward Crawford Notch, he noticed a large, leafy, white-barked tree at the edge of the forest.  “What’s that tree?” he asked. I answered, not understanding why he would ask, “A birch, of course.”  His response astonished us: “But birches don’t have leaves!” This is a true story.  A highly educated New Englander, someone who had spent many a vacation in or near the woods, had only noticed birch trees in the winter and assumed that they were some weird, woody cousin of a cactus!

So, we had to disabuse him of his mistaken opinion of birches, and we can now use this example to explain why this essay has focused so much on birches in the winter.  That is when everyone (even this individual) does know a birch, whereas in the summer, some may dismiss the leafy birch as just another tree.

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / October 2021

Bits of Color – Lots of Seed

Late Fall or (more accurately) Early Winter

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

Fallen Foliage

By mid-October, the maples and birches are barren, but we’re happy to find their fallen foliage brightening the trails.  Oak and beech leaves hang on for another few weeks, along with a few lonely birch leaves.  Berries last longer, and we enjoy these tiny bits of color even as the snow is falling in December.

Fallen Foliage, October 19, 2015

Last Foliage, November 9, 2020

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Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, a founding member of ACT and a long-time resident of Sugar Hill. Quotations from his journals indicate the date of and the situation depicted in each photograph.

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Gone to Seed

New England and New York asters could still be seen the roadside in early October, but even these late-blooming wildflowers have gone to seed by the end of the month. Out by the ponds and the wetlands, the seemingly solid heads of the cattails have puffed out into a mass of fluff that slowly dries out and eventually drifts across the pond or blows out over the fields. However, if the light is right, and if you can overlook the lack of color, you can appreciate nature’s beauty and abundance as you walk along the roads and through the fields.

Goldenrod, November 9, 2020

Cattails, November 9, 2020

If you do go for a walk, remember to wear an old shirt or a windbreaker – those lovely seeds don’t care whether the wool in your sweater is still on the sheep. Also, bring a camera, for chickadees, blue jays and woodpeckers can be more easily seen now that the leaves are gone. In November, start looking for the small flocks of redpolls and other winter birds that often show up before Thanksgiving.

November 11, 2018. A flock of redpolls showed up today. They first landed in one of the maples along Pearl Lake Road, then dispersed to snack on the elongated clumps of alder seeds.

Last Sightings

By mid-October, the monarchs have migrated, and a few other butterflies have secured a sheltered spot to spend the winter. Likewise, a few dragonflies will manage to survive the cold by migrating or hibernating. However, most of these colorful, entertaining insects have ended their short lives, leaving numerous eggs or nymphs to carry on in the spring. My latest sighting of a dragonfly was on Halloween in 2019:

October 30-31, 2019, 64 degrees, partly cloudy, the first really nice day with temperature above the fifties in a week or more. A dozen or more cherry-faced meadowhawks along the dam, at our end and near the screen house. Many in tandem, including one pair laying eggs in the SE corner. Only one mosaic darner. The 31st was even warmer (67 degrees), but cloudy, so I only saw one darner and no meadowhawks. A pileated woodpecker called near the Upper Meadow.

Amphibians are also pretty much resting in their underground dens by the end of October.  Pretty much, but not entirely, as I did once see a snake in early November:

November 7, 2018, 54 degrees, partly cloudy, breezy. At 1pm, as I was about to sit down on a large stump in the middle of the woods, I was startled to see a garter snake less than eight feet away. It moved a little, darted its tongue in and out a bit, then basically sat still for ten minutes. I took a photo, which includes a large oak leaf that I later measured and found to be nine inches long. Using this leaf as a ruler, I determined that the snake was 30-33 inches long. Maybe it was excited by the warmth of the first sunny day in a week or so. Just like me!

Fall’s ending is no more predictable than its beginning.   The presence or absence of snow isn’t a reliable indicator of the end of Fall.  At the start of our first winter in Sugar Hill, it snowed on November 8th and we didn’t see the ground again until the end of April. That was a very long winter!   In some years, it gets cold before we get much snow, and once there was almost no snow until late in December.  The day that the pond ices over therefore provides a more reliable indication that fall is over, because this only happens after a sustained period of freezing temperatures.  And once it gets cold in northern New Hampshire, it really stays cold!

December 10, 2017. After three nights with temperatures dropping into the mid-twenties, the pond is almost completely covered by snow and ice.

Yes, it is Winter

Yes, it is winter. The pond is iced over, snow covers the ground, and the days are cold. We see coyote tracks crossing the deer tracks and the networks of hare tracks. We see woodpeckers joining the winter songbirds at the feeder. We no longer expect to see much color in the woods, so we are satisfied to see a few green ferns peeking out of the snow or an unusual clump of fungi on a dying birch tree.

December 12, 2020 — A downy woodpecker at the feeder.

December 12, 2017 — A snow-capped hat rack?

The days are short and the nights are long.  Soon it will be the holidays, time for the annual bird count, and time to enjoy all twelve days of Christmas.  Do the birds and the other animals also celebrate at this time of year?  Do they have some kind of internal mechanism that alerts them to the lengthening daylight at the end of December?  Do they frolic to the music of an avian hymn?  Who knows, but when I took this picture of a grouse sitting amid some tangled vines on the day after Christmas, it sure seemed it was playing the role of a “partridge in a pear tree.”

December 26, 2018 — A partridge in a pear tree on the first day of Christmas?  Almost!

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / September 2021

Early Fall

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

When does fall begin in the North Country? Is it when the first leaves turn red on the big maple across the street? No, that can happen at the end of July. Is it when the nights turn cold enough for two blankets and flannel pajamas? No, that happened weeks ago, and the 90-degree temperatures we later endured proved that mid-August is definitely still summer. Is it when the first apples ripen? Perhaps where you live, but definitely not here. I’ve already made two jars of apple sauce with apples from the earliest ripening wild apple tree in the Upper Meadow – and the temperature that day was still close to unbearable. How about fall foliage – is it fall when the leaves turning colors turn the hillsides into fantasies of color? Well, that certainly is fall, but by then it is late September, and we’re already talking about how great the weather has been, how exciting it’s been to see flocks of bluebirds assembling for their journey south, and how quiet it seems now that the tourists have gone. So, I think foliage is a highlight of early fall rather than a sign that fall has begun. So, despite my best intentions, and despite the title of this series of essays, I will go out on a limb and say that phenologists have yet to define a believable harbinger of fall. Let the robin and the woodcock vie for the honor of harbinger of spring, but I will declare that in the North Country, fall begins the day after Labor Day.

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Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, a founding member of ACT and a long-time resident of Sugar Hill. Quotations from his journals indicate the date of and the situation depicted in each photograph.

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Fruits, Flowers, and Foliage

Of course, brilliant colors do highlight the first weeks of the fall. Apples, crabapples, hawthorns, chokecherries, viburnum, and numerous other trees and shrubs produce vast quantities of colorful berries. Walking along a country road, you may see a whole range of colored berries, and a single striking leaf can merit a photo.

September 20, 2020.  We took our usual late afternoon walk down Pear Lake Road, amazed by the variety and quantity of apples, crabapples and berries.

Spectacular displays of asters and goldenrods begin in August and continue through the first half of October, and they attract monarchs and other beautiful butterflies and insects.

September 3, 2019. Several species of fritillaries flitted around the clumps of aster that cover much of the dam. The largest is the great spangled fritillary, which covers several flowerheads with its wingspan of nearly three inches.

October 12, 2018. The asters are still magnificent in the field in Foss Woods, right as you walk in from Pearl Lake Road.

Lucky Sightings

Normally in these phenological essays, I try to show photos of what anyone might see in the North Country if they walk slowly through any forest or meadow or if they sit for a while by a pond or a wetland.  However, if you always take a camera with you, if you walk slowly with your eyes wide open, and if you are lucky, then you sometimes will see something unusual.  For example, I seldom see the otters that frequently come to our pond late at night or early in the morning pond seeking a bit of fresh trout more properly supplied for the neighborhood’s fly fishers.  I often come across an otter’s scat on a path a few feet from the pond, full of fish scales establishing their guilt.  But once in a great while, I have come across a pair enjoying themselves splashing around on a fine September day.

September 27, 2016, 60 degrees, partly cloudy, early morning fog burned off by 11am. A pair of otters were in the pond, diving, tumbling, and swimming underwater. At one point, they each barked, but they didn’t leave the pond. … When I went back to the pond at 3pm, the otters were still there.

On any nice day in September, a couple of painted turtles will either be sunning at the Point or floating in the mat of weeds that accumulate in the openings in the cattails.  Once in a while, sometimes just once or twice a year, I will also see a snapping turtle in the pond, possibly only a few inches from a group of painted turtles.  But these are not the only turtles to be found in the North Country or even in our pond.  I know this because I once -and only once – took a picture of a wood turtle in the pond.  Perhaps I’ve only seen one because they are usually found not in ponds, but on land near streams.  A wood turtle’s shell is not smooth like a painted turtles, and it’s neck and forelimbs boast bright orange stripes.

September 17, 2017. I noticed this small turtle just a few feet away from the rocky outcropping at the end of the Point. He came up very slowly, took a couple of gulps, and scampered back down. I had time to take several photos before he disappeared back into the depths. Only after examining the photos did I realize that this was a wood turtle, not a painted turtle.

Another unusual sighting wildlife encounter occurred a few years ago when we walked along the Pondicherry rail trail, hoping to see a great blue heron, a hawk or two, some ducks, and flocks of migrating birds.  Imagine our surprise when we happened upon a small, tan snake posing right there at the edge of the trail. Unlike the garter snakes commonly seen in our yard, this snake didn’t move at all for a few minutes. Close examination of my photos showed this to be a redbelly snake, a seldom-seen snake with a maximum length of 16 inches that is probably found throughout the state (see caption for source). I actually only identified this snake when preparing this essay, and it remains the only one of this species that I have ever seen.

October 5, 2016. This 12-inch-long snake was right at the edge of the rail trail as we walked out toward the ponds in Pondicherry National Wildlife Refuge.

“This species is probably found throughout the state, occurring in marshy areas as well as uplands.” James Taylor, The Amphibians and Reptiles of New Hampshire, NH Fish and Game Department, 1993, p. 58

Common Sightings

As noted above, garter snakes are commonly seen in yards and along trails. As the weather cools down, they seem to spend more time sunning, and they are not quite so quick to escape into the underbrush. I have even seen a large garter snake sunning in an open spot in the woods in the middle of November.

September 11, 2019. This garter snake apparently spends most of its time on our patio, often peaking out from under one of the old barrels now used as large flowerpots.

Small mammals spend a lot of time in the early fall looking for seeds and fruits to store for the winter. Red squirrels and chipmunks will pick up small apples and place them in the crook of a tree where they will be well above the snow. Mice return to their warm winter locations located somewhere below the stove in the kitchen or behind the bookcases in the hall. Bears will sit under an apple tree and eat and eat and eat, putting on weight and developing a healthy glow to their fur.

September 12, 2018. A chipmunk sits in an alder clump next to the pond. They are running to and fro every day in the early fall, but are seldom seen in the winter.

October 5, 2016. A red squirrel appears deep in thought on our patio. Probably trying to figure out how to get inside for the winter.

Meadowhawks and mosaic darners will still be seen in wheels or laying eggs at the edge of the pond throughout September and early October. As the season progresses, you may see some of the less common species, such as the spotted variety of the variable darner.

September 11, 2019, 74 degrees, 330 pm, cloudy. A pair of variable darners formed a wheel while the male held onto a dead cattail. The male of this species has blue markings, while the female has bright yellow markings. Instead of thoracic stripes, the spotted variety has two pairs of spots, which were clearly visible in the photograph that I took.

Canada darners are one of the most common mosaic darners, but they almost never land.  They are best identified by their behavior.  The males fly into an opening in the cattails, hover for several seconds, fly in and out around the edge of the opening, hover again, then fly a few circular inland paths, hover again, then out across the pond to check out another opening.  They come back every year, so I guess they do eventually find a mate.

I admit to a special affection for dragonflies, because several different species can be found by the pond on any sunny day from the end of May until the middle of October.  However, other insects can be equally interesting.  In particular, damselflies are no less diverse and attractive than dragonflies; they’re just smaller.  However, as in boxing, the heavyweights attract the most public attention, even though they lack the agility and skills of the lightweights.  Nevertheless, if you are patient and have a camera with a good zoom, you can get appreciate the beauty and diversity of these commonly seen, but frequently ignored insects.

Bluets are the most easily identified family of damselflies, as dozens of these 1- to 1.5-inch blue insects can frequently be seen swarming low over a pond, often landing on floating leaves, cattails, or any other vegetation or detritus found near the shore or floating on the surface.Other families include spreadwings, so-called because they usually rest with their wings outspread like a dragonfly’s rather than folded together like a bluet’s.It wasn’t until I acquired Ed Lam’s “Damselflies of the Northeast” that I could identify the amber-winged spreadwings captured in the following photographs taken back in 2017.

October 4, 2017, 74 degrees, sunny, 3pm.  Only mosaic darners, meadowhawks, and large damselflies are active, but they are very active.  Whether I looked over the pond, along the shore, or in the Upper Meadow, a half dozen or so darners could be seen, sometimes in wheels.  … Large damsel flies are also very romantic and very common.  Several times I could get pictures of two or even three pairs within a few inches of each other, hanging onto a bit of a cattail or some other aquatic plant.

While the leaves are turning red, the white pines overlooking the pond shed their old needles, which the winds blow into a golden mass floating along the shore. I always worry that the pines are dying, but I’m always wrong.

October 1, 2020. Pine needles fill up the space along the shore recently favored by young frogs and turtles.

Early fall is perhaps the the best time to take a hike in the North Country. The foliage is near its peak, the local trails are never over-crowded, the wildflowers are still blooming, and the migrating birds brighten the day with their chattering. Even though we know that all this is about to end, we still look forward to one more day in the woods. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll see a deer or a couple of pileated woodpeckers or a flock of migrating bluebirds. Winter? Who cares, Today is beautiful, the wood shed is full, and the wood stove is ready to go.

October 12, 2019.  Heading into Foss Woods along the Carl Shaller Trail.

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / August 2021

Late Summer’s Comings and Goings

Late August

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

It’s late August, which, in the North Country, is late summer.  Even though we recently endured a short spell of 90-degree days that were too hot to do anything, we know that the summer is coming to an end.  The usual branches of the big maples have already turned red; the redwings have headed south; the goldenrod and asters are in full bloom, and we have already had some nights when we needed all of our blankets.

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Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, a founding member of ACT and a long-time resident of Sugar Hill. Quotations from his journals indicate the date of and the situation depicted in each photograph.

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On the Hillside

The bears know what is coming, and they spend their days feeding in the meadows, not caring who’s watching, at least not for a few minutes:

August 11, 2021.   As we walked through the fields on Bronson Hill, we noticed a bear foraging amid the wildflowers near the bottom of the field.  We watched for several minutes, taking some photos and a video.  Only when we walked about fifty yards further along the trail did he decide to scamper off into the woods.  Yes, as shown in the photo, a big, black bear can indeed scamper.

Wood frogs and American toads have long since left the pond.  Now we only see them by chance as we walk along the trails through the woods.  I say “by chance”, because these guys are well camouflaged for their woodland habitat.  (I do hope you didn’t think I included a photo of dead leaves.)

August 27, 2015 — This toad’s colors were no help when it landed on a bunch of green leaves.

August 25, 2017 — I ventured a ways into the Back 80, but only noted that I took a picture of a small wood frog that was nearly invisible in the duff by the trail. If the frog hadn’t moved, I never would have seen it.

By the Pond

So long as the sun is shining, there will be a lot of activity at the pond.  Turtles climb out onto any available rock for - for what?  A nice lazy afternoon sunbath?  I don’t know, but they do seem happy to sit motionless at Rock Island for hours, alone or with up to a half dozen of their relatives.  Each turtle has a unique pattern of lines on its shell, which last year helped me to identify more than 20 painted turtles living in our 1-acre pond.

August 22, 2020 — Painted Turtle at the Point

I always approach the edge of the pond very slowly, for who knows who else might be there.   Could the big snapping turtle, a bullfrog, or a group of small green frogs be loitering just off shore?  Or might there be something much more exciting?  You yourself may have been surprised by a great blue heron or a bittern suddenly flying up when you unwarily approached the edge of a pond at this time of year.  One day last year, after reaching our end of the pond, I caught sight of a great blue heron hunting along the opposite shore.   Not content with just another photo of one of these stately creatures standing at attention in shallow water, I inched closer and closer, camera at the ready – and I did capture the big bird’s explosive take-off:

August 27, 2020 — A great blue heron was hunting for frogs on the other side of the pond.

While anyone is happy to see another great blue heron, I am just as happy to find the first of the late summer dragonflies.  Although one or two green darners, widow skimmers, slaty skimmers, and blue dashers may still be seen, I am more interested in documenting the first of the meadowhawks and mosaic darners that are just now due to arrive.

The most common species of meadowhawks all look pretty much the same: barely an inch long, the males are mostly red and the females yellow/brown. The first to appear, in early August, are the white-faced meadowhawks, followed in a couple of weeks by the yellow-legged, cherry-faced, and saffron-winged meadowhawks. Since these names identify the key characteristics of each species, you might think it would be easy to tell them apart.“All” you need are clear photographs showing the dragonfly’s face, thorax, legs, and the subtle colors of its wings, and that may require many photos and a lot of patience.

August 23, 2020, 74 degrees, light breeze, nice — White-faced meadowhawks very common today along the dam.  I took a photo of a pair hanging on a cattail in a wheel.  I also saw the first yellow-legged meadowhawk of the season, along with a couple of cherry-faced meadowhawks.  One of the many mosaic darners tried to chase away the only green darner still here looking for a mate.

The mosaic darners are much larger than meadowhawks, but no easier to tell apart. The family name reflects their blue and black abdominal pattern, which is basically the same for the most common species. The only mosaic darner that is easily identified is the largest - the black-tipped darner. The female of this species can often be seen at the base of a cattail, dipping its abdomen into the pond to lay its eggs. After five or ten seconds, it may move to a nearby cattail or fly off, but it will likely return to the same area again and again. Eventually it will land in a spot where you have a clear view from the side, and you can easily see that it has two broad, straight thoracic stripes. The other species of mosaic darners have crooked or kinked thoracic stripes that are difficult to see even on the rare occasion when they land.

August 20, 2016 —  A female black-tipped darner lays eggs from her characteristic perch on a cattail.

Canada darners are also commonly seen flying in and out among the cattails at the edge of the pond, but they almost never land.  They are best identified by their behavior.  The males fly into an opening in the cattails, hover for several seconds, fly in and out around the edge of the opening, hover again, then fly a few circular inland paths, hover again, then out across the pond to check out another opening.

I admit to a special affection for dragonflies, because as several different species can be found by the pond on any sunny day from the end of May until the middle of October.  However, other insects can be equally attractive.  Damselflies are no less diverse and attractive than dragonflies, but they are much thinner and shorter than their cousins.  As in boxing, the heavyweights attract the most public attention, even though they lack the agility and skills of the lightweights.  So, if you are patient and have a camera with a good zoom, you can get appreciate the beauty and diversity of these commonly seen, but frequently ignored insects. Bluets are the most easily identified family of damselflies, as dozens of these 1- to 1.5-inch blue insects can frequently be seen swarming low over a pond, often landing on floating leaves, cattails, or any other vegetation or detritus found near the shore or floating on the surface.  Other families include spreadwings, so-called because they usually rest with their wings outspread like a dragonfly’s rather than folded together like a bluet’s.  The most common species in late August are pale brown, almost translucent, and easily missed even though some species are close to two inches long.

Azure Bluet, August 25, 2017 — Male bluets have a blue thorax and at least a couple of blue segments at the tip of the abdomen. Some species, including the azure bluet show in this photo, have an abdomen that is largely black, but others have one that is mostly blue. The females are less colorful and stouter.

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In the Meadows

In late August, the last of the resident birds are preparing to leave, while the first of the migrants are arriving.  Song sparrows, who make their nest low in brushy meadows, often near apple trees, may still be around by the time that the first chipping sparrows start foraging in the driveway.  It’s the same with the warblers.  The young common yellowthroats may still be out with their mothers, seeking bugs in and among the goldenrod, asters and young willows at the same time that an early arriving migrating pine or yellow-rumped warbler is flitting above in the alders. 

August 22, 2018 — Song Sparrow, Juvenile

August 15, 2015 — Chipping Sparrow

The meadows are now dominated by goldenrods and asters. Everyone recognizes goldenrod by the multitude of tiny, yellow flowers sitting atop hundreds of tall stems creating a sea of color across nearly every wild, open area. Almost anyone, by taking a closer look, will quickly see that there are many different shapes and sizes of goldenrod. Almost no-one, even those like me who photograph the different species, knows or even cares to know their names. Asters are almost as numerous and almost as diverse, and many of us can name some of the ones that we see. The white flat-topped aster stands four or five feet tall in an uncut meadow, and its flowers spread out over an area a foot or two across. New England and New York asters are more colorful, not quite as tall, but equally attractive to bees, butterflies, wasps, and other insects. Some milkweed will usually be found among the goldenrods and asters in any of our meadows. If you look carefully, you may find one of the black & yellow monarch caterpillars hanging on a milkweed pod or crawling along one of its leaves.

September 3, 2019 — Painted Lady on New England Aster.

August 11, 2021 (Long Pond Picnic Area) — Monarch Butterfly on a milkweed pod.

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / July 2021

Around the Pond in 80 Minutes

Late June and Early July

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

A midsummer afternoon.  Warm, not hot, scattered clouds in a clear blue sky, a light breeze – a fine time for a slow walk around the pond.  As always, I approach the pond slowly, camera in hand, looking for butterflies and dragonflies in the little field below the dam.  Wait - a fritillary is fluttering over the clover! 

Will it pose?  Yes!

It’s another ten yards to the pond. I take the final steps cautiously, hoping not to spook any frogs, turtles, dragonflies, or birds who might be nearby. Off to the right, a frog jumps in; a few yards offshore, a turtle takes a quick look at me, then ducks under. As usual, several dragonflies ignore me as they fly in, around, and through the small opening in the cattails. It’s nice to see a few of the corporals, whitefaces, and clubtails that dominated the shoreline back in June, but today I’m hoping to see the larger, more spectacular dragonflies of midsummer. There’s one now! A 12-spotted skimmer, easily identified by its spectacular wing patterns. I’ll just stand still, knowing it may soon land nearby, ready to defend its territory from a perch near the shore. A few minutes go by, and I’m about to give up, but then it lands on a twig right in from of me, proud of its black and white patterned wings. Beautiful! Maybe a couple of the equally lovely widow skimmers are also around today.

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Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, a founding member of ACT and a long-time resident of Sugar Hill. Quotations from his journals indicate the date of and the situation depicted in each photograph.

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Widow Skimmer, July 13, 2019

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Spotted Skimmer, July 29, 2015

July 9, 2019, 100pm, partly cloudy, warm, dry. I spent a happy hour and a half taking photos of insects.  A red-waisted whiteface sat on the larch log at our end, unbothered by the larger chalk-fronted corporal sitting a couple of inches away.  A 12-spotted skimmer flew in and out at our end. A widow skimmer posed on lupine after flying around the drain.

I continue out along the dam, noticing damselflies and whirligig beetles near the shore and various butterflies, wasps and bees in the flowers along the top of the dam.  The lupine has gone to seed, but new flowers are opening along the dam.  I’m happy to see some milkweed scattered here that may attract Monarch butterflies later in the summer.  Clover and vetch are in full bloom, and I can see some yellow on the goldenrod, but it is the Black-Eyed Susans that really catch my eye.

Milkweed just coming into bloom.

July 15, 2019

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Black-Eyed Susans line my trail along the dam.

July 16, 2019

A tiny bee, like me, is attracted to the Black-Eyed Susans.

July 14, 2020

Out near the end of the dam, a pair of green darners has landed on some of the dead cattail leaves that float a few feet offshore.  The male grasps the female by the back of her neck while she slowly lays eggs, dipping her abdomen first into the water on one side and then into the other side.  Green darners almost always line up this way when the female lays her eggs, and this is the only time that it is possible to take a good photo of a male.

July 7, 2020, 75 degrees. In the afternoon, I went out to the pond. A green darner tandem flew in from the NE corner, taking a look at two possible landing sites before settling down on some pond detritus floating on the surface just past the drain. Soon she was laying eggs.

Now I head back along the dam, listening to the chattering redwings, one of which flies in small circles right over my head, trying unsuccessfully to keep me from walking too close to its nest.  His mate is perched nearby in an alder, waiting until I move along before bringing some tasty grubs to her youngsters, who are still in the nest, whimpering and hoping for more to eat.   After the redwings have headed south, I’ll row alongside the shore, looking for their nests that are usually located just a foot or two inside a dense patch of cattails.

Male redwing blackbird.

July 3, 2019

Female redwing blackbird.

July 2, 2019

Back near our end of the pond, I have a good view of four painted turtles sunning on a large rock near the opposite shore, but two of them quickly scamper into the water. Sometimes as many as a half dozen turtles occupy this rock, setting up a nice photo of a multi-generational family.  The youngest ones have shells less than two inches long, while the oldest have shells four times as long. The pattern of seams between the plates of a turtle’s shell are unique to each turtle.  So, by close examination of my photos, I know that at least 20 painted turtles live by the pond.

Painted Turtles will sit in the sun for hours on this rock, but they will slide into the water if you approach too close.    

August 14, 2020

On my way out to the Point, I hear the familiar chirping of a common yellowthroat as it rummages through the small bushes at the edge of the Upper Meadow.  Where is it?  Oh, over there, half hidden by a leaf.  The female is quite drab, but the male sports a fine black mask that contrasts with his brilliant yellow chest.  These warblers are not shy, but they are more interested in finding some insects in the brush than they are in sitting in the open for any photographer who happens by.  That probably is just as well, for I have often seen a kestrel sitting high in a nearby pine just waiting for an unwary bird to sit for too long out in the open.

A Kestrel sitting high in this pine tree has a fine view of the pond.

August 13, 2017

A Common Yellowthroat is half-hidden by the foliage of an apple tree near the pond.

July 18, 2016

A little further on, where my trail goes past some ferns, I notice a brilliant butterfly that is probably an Eastern Comma. It could also be a Question Mark, another butterfly with irregular wing shapes and similar orange and black coloration. What, you think I’m kidding? You don’t know there are butterflies named after punctuation marks? Well, if you look at the underside of their hind wings, the comma has a mark that indeed looks like a comma, whereas the question mark has a mark that looks like – you can guess what it looks like! You think I made up these names? No way. These really are the official names, even in Latin: Polygonia comma and Polygonia interrogationis. If you recall any geometry, you surely remember that a “polygon” has many sides, an appropriate family name for butterflies with weirdly-shaped wings. And the species names could hardly be any easier to translate. With a good photo of the underside of its wings, I’ll be able to tell whether it is a comma or a question mark.

Eastern Comma. July 15, 2019

Eastern Comma. July 15, 2019

Unfortunately, both the comma and the question mark prefer resting with their wings outspread, making it very difficult to critique their punctuation.  Eventually, it flies off, so I continue another 50 yards out to the Point.  I sit down in my Adirondack chair, which provides a view across an opening in the cattails where dragonflies and damselflies cavort just above a spot where frogs love to sit still, waiting for a meal.  Once in a while I have seen a frog leap suddenly and quickly enough to catch a damselfly, but usually the insects keep dancing around just out of reach.  Today, a large green frog is sitting right in front of my chair, and a couple of bullfrogs rumble every couple of minutes from where they have squatted a little further away.  Exploring the shoreline, I discover a half dozen small green frogs and three pickerel frogs.    I have seen more than two dozen small frogs on other days, some in the water and others along my trail.  One day I even came across a scene that reminded me of the song that Boy Scouts act out at campfires: “Five green speckled frogs, sitting on a speckled log, eating some nice, delicious bugs.  Yum! Yum!”  Five scouts sing the song perched on a log, pealing off one by one as the song continues “One jumped in the pool, where it is nice and cool, now there are four (then three, then two, then no) green speckled frogs.”

It’s close to five o’clock, too late in afternoon to expect more activity around the pond, so I head back via the Upper Meadow.  The apple trees now have some small apples, some of the viburnum berries are turning red, the pasture roses are in full bloom, and my trails need mowing.  Maybe tomorrow.  Or maybe not.  Maybe just another 80 minutes around the pond. 

Five green speckled frogs sitting at the edge of the cattails. 

August 1, 2017

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A bullfrog sits on some moss at the tip of the Point.

July 16, 2018

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / June 2021

Spring!

Late May and Early June

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

“Spring - Finally!” Enough of the harbingers of spring. Woodcock came and called in late March, but snow continued to fall. Wood frogs came in April, partied for a couple of days in the pond, then returned to their warmer lodgings somewhere out of sight in the woods. A couple of bluebirds and a cardinal showed up, checked out the feeder and the bird houses, but they too decided not to stay. But spring does come, eventually, sometimes preceded by mud season, and sometimes welcomed in by snow flurries. But the early flowers do bloom, the apple blossoms open up, the summer birds arrive, and finally, the trees leaf out.

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Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, a founding member of ACT and a long-time resident of Sugar Hill. Quotations from his journals indicate the date of and the situation depicted in each photograph.

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May 25, 2016. A chestnut-sided warbler shows why he deserves his name. Many species of warblers pass through our region in late May. Chestnut-sided warblers and common yellowthroats nest in the Upper Meadow, and black-throated green warblers, black and white warblers, and ovenbirds can be heard in the forests.

For a few days, we bask in the sun, work in our gardens, clean up our yards, and enjoy putting away our Long Johns and turning off the heat.  And then we remember who else enjoys spring:  ticks and black flies, meddlesome little creatures that may help prevent humans from overrunning the North Country.  A few black fly bites?  No problem, we’ve got plenty of repellent leftover from last year.  A single tick crawling up my leg?  No big deal; I once found dozens on my blue jeans after a couple of hours in the woods. 

May 29, 2007, 80 degrees, clear to partly cloudy, beautiful.  I went to inspect the Lower 40. The usual spring flowers were on display in abundance:  starflower, foam flower, wild strawberry, violets (especially abundant at the main junction), bunchberry dogwood.   There were only a few lady slippers, but it’s still early. There were 12 trillium by Two-Stump and four more along the trail to the next fir grove.  When I got back, I discovered 28 ticks on me:  2 on my body, and 26 on my clothes, including 7 on the outside crotch of my jeans.

And, of course, other animals are up and about.  We learned long ago why we have to bring in our bird feeder before the end of May:

June 8, 2001:  I heard something in the backyard about 9 pm; I went out and heard the bear moving through the brush toward the road.  The bear had pulled down the bird feeder.

First Flowers

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Trout lilies are among the early flowers known as “spring ephemerals,” because they thrive on the forest floor for a few weeks before the leaves block the sunlight.  Dozens are found, only a few inches tall, along moist areas near the little stream that feeds our pond.  If you take a walk in the woods in late May, you’re likely to find plenty of these flowers, along with starflower, wild lily of the valley, trillium, and lady slippers.

May 18, 2016 - A Spring Azure butterfly lands on one of the early blooming trout lilies.

Other ephemerals are less noticeable but no less interesting.  The brown flower streaked with green helps Jack-in-the-pulpit to meld into any ragged area where grasses, vines, and young shrubs are struggling to emerge.  Though easy to miss and seldom found in abundance, they can often be found year after year in the same spot.  Other early flowers can be found in the meadows and along the roadsides, including some that may easily be overlooked, such as the delightful blue-eyed grass, whose single flower stands atop what looks like a foot-tall blade of grass.  Although the flower is less than an inch across, its colorful petals and yellow eye reward a close inspection.

June 2, 2020 (left) - A Jack-in-the Pulpit blooming right next to our back door, a spot where one has bloomed many prior years.

June 10, 2020 (right) -  Blue-eyed grass grows along grassy trails on the dam and in the meadows.

“June is Busting Out All Over!”

In early May, we are happy to see a few colorful flowers as we walk through the awakening woods, but we eagerly await the brilliant floral displays about to unfold. Late May is “Apple Blossom Time”, a time when the apple trees that have volunteered in the old fields provide a treat not found in an orchard because the blossoms on nearby trees can have markedly different shades of red, pink, and white.

May 27, 2020 (above left) - one of our volunteer apple trees features deep red buds and blossoms, a feature that more than makes up for its pitifully small fruits.

May 23, 2016 (above right) - Apple blossoms are starting to be quite good, although only one tree is in full bloom, showing off its pure white blossoms in front of the screen house.  The red apple tree has fewer than two dozen blossoms – but they are beautiful.

May 30, 2020, 75 degrees, partly cloudy (right) - A flock of a half dozen waxwings was in the apple trees before the solar array. More than one of them was eating the blossoms, one petal at a time.

By the time that the apple trees have lost their blossoms, lilacs provide new bursts of color by every oldfarm house in the North Country, and fields of lupine add a purple tinge to fields in Sugar Hill. Swallowtails can’t resist the lilacs, just as the many species of bees can’t get enough of the lupine.

June 11, 2018 - a half dozen swallowtails flitted from flower to flower in the lilac bushes in front of our house.

June 16, 2020 - lupin in full bloom attracts multicolored bees.
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Amphibian Spring

Painted turtles love nothing better than basking in the sun, but always with an eye out for danger.  As soon as they see me approaching, they slide back into the pond. In early June, the females leave the pond looking for a suitable spot to lay eggs.

May 17, 2020. Seven painted turtles basking at the point. The largest have shells nearly eight inches long.

June12, 2017 - She was just finishing up closing the hollow where she had laid her eggs.

By late May, the vernal pool is often home to hundreds of tiny tadpoles. Now we realize why the wood frogs and salamanders show up so soon after the ice melts – it is a race against time. The vernal pool will certainly dry up by August, but will there be enough rain to keep at least a few puddles well into June? As the pool shrinks from twenty to ten and then to five feet across, the tadpoles are forced into ever-smaller spaces, squirming against each other as they search for invisible bits of food.

May 30, 2018, 4-5pm, now warmed up to 80 degrees, still mostly sunny - The vernal pool has shrunk to about six feet in diameter.  There are a hundred tadpoles, about a half inch long, but not grown enough to crawl out to dry land.

Many, but not all, years are as dry and dismal as 2018.  Despite threats from various predators, swarms of young frogs or salamanders do emerge in years when timely rains keep refilling the vernal pool:

July 4, 2006, 80 degrees, hot-hazy-humid, but with a breeze - The vernal pool, as usual, was roiling as I approached, but this time I was more careful, got closer, and saw the 3-foot-long garter snake swimming away!  

July 5, 2006, 80 degrees, partly cloudy, drier but still hazy -The vernal pool is still full, and I’m finally able to see the tadpoles clearly. They are about two inches long, half of which is tail.  They have yellow stripes on their sides, which are visible when they climb out of the water onto leaves or twigs.

As the weather warms up, more frogs and toads show up around the pond. Toads come to the pond for a mating extravaganza that lasts only a couple of days. Males find a fine perch at the edge of the pond, blow up their cheeks, and somehow emit an extraordinary trill that may last for ten seconds. Green frogs are less ostentatious, as they are permanent summer residents. The largest ones find a suitable spot to sit, once in a while emitting a soft “plunk” and seldom getting aroused enough to move more than a few inches.

June 3, 2018, 130. The toad party continues, but not as actively as yesterday. I didn’t see any pairs or any eggs. While writing this note in my journal, one of our mergansers suddenly popped up right in front of me and right where I had just noted the swarm of wood frog tadpoles. It swam off, slowly, not at all spooked by me.

June 12, 2020, 1130. As I walked out to the Point, a green frog jumped about four feet from a hidden location near my chair to a lower spot two feet from the pond. A larger green frog ignored me, sitting motionless less than two feet away. After puffing up for a few uninspired “plunks,” it finally took an interest in the smaller frog. Would they fight? No, the big one simply ooched to within eight feet, stopped and starred, then moved in to four feet – and the smaller one immediately disappeared out of danger. A few minutes later, the big one jumped and caught an insect.

Baby Birds

Spring – time for birds to build a nest, lay eggs, feed the fledglings, and finally teach the juveniles how to fend for themselves.

May 23, 2016 - At 730am, I took a photo of a robin sitting in its nest, which was built this year on top of an old nest.  When she flew off, I checked the nest and found one egg.  By afternoon, there were two eggs. [Photo taken on May 28, 2016 shows the robin sitting on her eggs in her two-story nest.]

June 14, 2018, 230pm, 62 degrees, cloudy -  Redwings have fledged, but they haven’t strayed far from their nest.  I took a photo of one sitting in low lupin barely three feet away from where I was sitting.  Right now, as I’m sitting here writing this note, daddy redwing is fidgeting all over me, and baby is chirping.

The hooded mergansers that helped break the ice in our pond back in April now proudly parade their ducklings around the pond.  My notes suggest that two families may have merged in order to share their child care responsibilities: 

May 16-17, 2020.  Blackflies abound.  The mergansers have 7 ducklings (could it be that two females have a total of seven?)  One of them leads them all around the pond. 

May 20, 2020, 74 degrees, breeze, no clouds, 3 pm.  Two hooded merganser females and seven ducklings in the pond today.  At first, I thought that one of the females was an interloper, as the other one clucked at her almost continuously while leaving the seven ducklings unguarded 25 feet away in the center of the deep end.  But maybe not, as the two females both swam to our side of the Point, dove a couple of times, then flew back to the far end.  One continued the clucking, then checked on the little ones.

May 29, 2020, 78 degrees, sunny, light breeze, lovely! A hooded merganser with seven ducklings is still in the pond.

Phenological Phacts and Photos with Carl Martland / May 2021

Ice Out!

Late April and Early May

Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).

“Ice out!”  The pond is finally free of ice, which is a big deal in the North Country.  For me, it’s a sign that the long winter is coming to a close, that it’s time to put the old Adirondack chair back out by the pond, and a reminder to take in the bird feeders.  For migrating geese and mergansers, the newly open ponds offer a place to attract a mate, seek a nesting spot, or simply find enough food to power flights to Canada.  For wood frogs, it’s time to get the earliest possible start in the vernal pools and small ponds.  For turtles, it’s time to wake up, limp to the pond, and wash off the mud that encrusts their shells after their long, dormant winter hidden away in a hole not far from their favorite pond.

Each year, the timing is a little different. This year, after temperature averaged close to 60 degrees in late March, our pond was nearly ice-free by April 2nd (above photo). More often, ice doesn’t break up until much later in April.

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Photos and text by Carl D. Martland, a founding member of ACT and a long-time resident of Sugar Hill. Quotations from his journals indicate the date of and the situation depicted in each photograph.

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At first, there are only a few open spots along the shore:

April 22, 2018. The pond remains iced over, except for small strips of open water at the edge of the cattails.

A cold snap may fill up these open edges and freeze any puddles melted atop the ice, but warmer weather eventually wins out.  The ice keeps thinning, begins to rot, and then just disappears.  In 2019, our pond went from iced over to “Ice Out!” in just a couple of warm days starting on April 19th.  As soon as any open water was available, some of the usual suspects showed up:

April 19, 2019, 70 degrees, mostly cloudy, 10:45am.  The pond is only 10% ice-free, but 80% of the grey ice is quickly rotting away.  A pair of hooded mergansers have just flown in, and they are having no trouble breaking through and creating a wider opening. The first wood frogs have arrived, but they are very shy, making only a few of their quacking calls.  Several hopped into the pond as I approached, but the first one I saw was floating on a tiny iceberg that was only an inch-and-a-half across!  At 8pm, it was still 66 degrees, and I could hear peepers and wood frogs from Jane’s Pond, which, like ours, is still half iced over.  The mergansers decided to stay for the night, and snipe are calling, seemingly far overhead, but never – as usual – making themselves visible.

Time to Take a Bath

Painted turtles spend the long winter hidden away in a small hole somewhere not too far from a pond.  In spring, when the ground has thawed enough to let them emerge, they make their way to the pond.  In April 2019, a couple of days after the hooded mergansers and wood frogs showed up, I came upon a medium-sized painted turtle slowly – very slowly! – making its way to the water.  Its shell was still covered with mud, and it had spent all its energy in getting out into the open:

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April 21, 2019, 1130am, 66 degrees: A painted turtle sat on a mossy root about five feet from the SW corner of the pond. It was so sluggish that I not only took many pictures, I was able to pick it up and measure its shell, which was 4.5 inches long.

Spring Weekend

Each year, frogs and toads come to the pond to breed, led by the wood frogs who begin to assemble as soon as vernal pools and small ponds start to open up. These frogs spend the winter buried somewhere in the woods, where they also spend most of the rest of the year. However, like college students sick of studying, they love to gather for one big “Spring Weekend” at the beach. At the first sign of open water, a few males make their way toward the pond, quacking only now and then. For a day or two, we hear more frogs approaching, coming from different directions to converge upon a spot where small inlets are found among the cattails or under overhanging tree branches. And then the party begins, the quacking grows louder, and finally, the females show up.

A female frog releases hundreds of eggs, which are fertilized by a male that has grabbed onto her back in a position called “amplexus”.  Since two or more males may try to grab on at the same time, it is good that the females are much larger and stronger than the males.  When she wants to take a breath, she can rise to the surface, taking the males along with her.

Photo: April 14, 2020. First day of wood frogs “Spring Weekend” at our pond.

Each female releases a cluster of a hundred or more eggs, and more than a hundred of these clusters might be found massed together within an area of just a few square yards. The party lasts only two or three days, and then the frogs head back to the woods.

The egg masses are slimy, and I have often seen newts slipping and sliding over and under them, presumably enjoying the sensation.  In this photo, taken on April 23, 2017, you can see the recently-laid eggs along with the strange shell of a caddis fly larva. Tadpoles had emerged from these eggs by May 4th but mostly swarmed within a few feet of the empty egg masses.

Brilliant Birds, Unusual Birds

“Ice Out” is also the signal to watch for migrating birds.  Some of the most interesting birds pass through late April and early May, including flickers, mergansers, and purple finches.  And once in a while, if you keep your eyes open, you may see a rare visitor, such as one of the yellowlegs.

This purple finch sat in the spruce tree in our back yard, chewing on a seed it had just taken from our feeder (Photo. April 25, 2015). These finches will show up at a feeder along with the similarly colored house finches.  If you are lucky enough to hear one of them singing, you will never forget it:

April 7-8, 2001.  I went snowshoeing in the Lower 40, A few birds were around, including a purple finch whose song was so splendid and so varied that I mistook it for a flock of songbirds.

May 4, 2018, cloudy, 74 degrees, 230. I first noticed this flicker’s red neck mark bobbing in the grass about 15 yards ahead as I walked along our dam. I stayed at least 20 feet away, and it didn’t care my watching as it poked first in the grass, then near the alder clump, and finally down on the shore where it pecked on rotted stumps of an older alder clump

We often see Canada Geese and Common Mergansers at Coffin Pond in the spring. However, the mergansers are generally quite skittish, flying to the opposite side of the pond rather than posing for a photo. Photo: April 24, 2016.

May 11, 2019. A lesser yellowlegs popped up as I approached the far end of the pond; it called, then flew across the end of the pond, landing on the shore by the dock. It stayed there, calling, while two Canada geese swam by.