Bud Break

Buds are bursting open during these (finally) warm, sunny days of Spring. The 45 turtles that I saw sunning themselves a few days ago is telling too. Soon, we'll be complaining that it is too hot, but not yet. I'm heading back home today and already thinking about planting the sugar snap peas. During the turtle walk the other day, I noticed the alder and willow buds were looking particularly lush in the spring sunshine. Yesterday I hear or saw several new spring bird arrivals on the rail trail walk: a male belted kingfisher chattered at us with his crest raised, a kestrel perched silently atop a slender snag, several yellow-shafted flickers called, and a meadowlark sang from a nearby field.

Alder catkins (male flowers)

Pussy willow flowers starting to open

Rattlesnake Knob and Beyond

A superb day for any outdoor activity, whether work or play. I took part in a bit of both. By the end of the day here at Winterberry Farm, the perennial beds were raked, the leaves and branches picked up, and the rhubarb patch was weeded. In between these projects, Kodi and I hiked up to Rattlesnake Knob, a small outcrop with a nice view over to Long Mountain. This is where I learned to love nature as a kid.

 A view of Long Mountain from Rattlesnake Knob in Amherst, Massachusetts

This trail is just a mile from Winterberry Farm, the family homestead. It winds through a beautiful hardwood forest of oak and hickory and beech.

In early spring, before leaf-out, you can see through to the forest floor from a nice perch on Rattlesnake Knob.

A small, clear brook runs alongside a portion of the trail that leads to Rattlesnake Knob. Skunk cabbage were emerging in the moist soils along the water's edge. This plant, which seems to have few admirers because of its skunky smell, is a favorite spring sighting of mine. It is quite beautiful, despite its odor, which is only noticeable if the plant is crushed.

Most of the trail follows a gentle grade before it turns sharply right and climbs steeply up the side of Rattlesnake Knob. The steeper section requires an occasional pause to catch one's breathe. Or you can make an excuse to stop and look at woodland wildflowers, and there is a beauty peeking out of the leaf litter this time of year: round-lobed hepatica.

Later in the day, my parents, Kodi, and I went for another walk. This one along a rail trail that passes by a large wetland. Beaver are active in this wetland and turtles too. Not only did I see my first painted turtle of the year sunning itself, I counted 45 turtles lying about on logs and hummocks in about a 1/4 mile stretch of wetland!

There are 20 18 painted turtles just in this photo 

(click to enlarge)

I wrote a few days ago that the pace of spring emergence is quickening. Today was one of the those days, where something new appeared no matter where I looked or listened. A chorus of spring peepers fills the evening air as Kodi and I step outside for a final walk about the yard before calling it a night. Tomorrow will surely bring something new, but we might just go back to see the turtles too.

Garlic Shoots

I'm at Winterberry Farm in western Massachusetts for a few days, helping my parents with yard clean-up and raking winter chaff from the perennial beds, and other odds and ends.

With help from Mom last fall, we planted five rows of garlic in the west garden. We sprinkled several bales of straw over the bed for winter cover and to curb weeds during the growing season. I checked on the garlic when I arrived today. The shoots are up 4 to 5 inches or more. It feels good to see the green growth after a long winter.

A Porcupine Visits

I returned from New Roots Farm around 4:30 this afternoon, after my weekly visit to help start seedlings (today it was a dozen trays of rainbow Swiss chard and a couple trays of cilantro), and almost immediately sat down at my computer to catch up on the news of the day. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Kodi coming around the corner of the house. But he was nearby inside the house.

So, instead of Kodi, it was a large porcupine waddling into view! The view from my window keeps on giving. Last week I spent 5 hours watching a woodcock probe for earthworms in the small patch of woods outside my window. I've watched hawks take songbirds and seen pileated woodpeckers dramatically swoop onto the trunk of the big pine. About once a year I see a fox trot by. A barred owl visited last fall. Just this week I've seen spring migrants arrive -- a phoebe a few days ago and a pine warbler today. This porcupine, though, was a treat.

Here he (or she) is, checking out last year's cattails.

Look at those teeth!

And those claws

Mostly I see porcupine or signs of porcupines in winter when they spend their time feeding on hemlock bark and boughs. Their dens are obvious as their latrine is at their den entrance -- usually in a rock crevice or root of a fallen tree. I rarely see them wandering about during the day, as porcupines are primarily nocturnal. Today though was overcast and it was late afternoon, so I suppose it was almost suppertime for the porcupine.

Porcupines are near-sighted, but have a good sense of smell and hearing. I went outside to get better photos of this one and got within four feet before it turned away from me. There was no danger from the quills as porcupine move slowly and quills only come out if you come in contact with the porcupine. Porcupines do not "throw" quills. That is good because they have upwards of 30,000 quills. And a good thing that I left Kodi inside; he has yet to meet a porcupine.

I got a nice look at the porcupine's foot pad as he headed over to our neighbor's yard. I hope they enjoy the porcupine visit as much as I did.

At the Water's Edge

The first warm rain fell last night; fog and light rain continued into the day. Spring seems late. I still have yet to hear wood frogs calling from woodland pools -- maybe they moved in the rain last night. Today I heard a few spring peepers as Kodi and I walked the wetland edge behind our house at mid-day. Yesterday I watched an osprey circle over the wetland.

As I sit at my office window writing this post, another spring sighting greets me.  A pine warbler -- a new spring arrival -- just appeared at the feeder. I just heard him sing his soft trill. Nice.

On my wanderings along the wetland, I watched a pair of hooded mergansers cruise among the buttonbush. A pair of Canada geese has taken up residence on the beaver lodge; the female is already sitting on a nest on the side of the lodge. The male lingered nearby, keeping a watchful eye and emitting honks if he sensed danger. We slipped away so as not to disturb the female.

 Click on the photo and look closely for the the female Canada goose

sitting on the beaver lodge; the male is nearby in the water (to the right)

Fresh beaver chews littered the water's edge and fish scales left between hummocks of sedges is a sign of an otter meal.

 Fish scales -- the remains of an otter's meal

In the adjacent woods, beneath hemlocks and pines and red maples, I lifted a small rotting log. There rested a red-backed salamander. This is our most common salamander. It breathes through its skin and spends its entire life in moist uplands. The female lays a small grape-like cluster of eggs in a crevice under a rotting log or tree stump.

A red-backed salamander beneath a rotting log

Spring may be a little late, but the tempo is picking up. I sense the rush of spring bird migration, frog and salamander movements and mating, and the emergence of early woodland wildflowers is at hand. This makes me chuckle (and sigh) thinking that some people rush off to the store to check out the newest spring clothing fashions. Just think what they are missing. I'd rather be at the water's edge.

Leopold's Legacy

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot." (Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1948; photo from The Aldo Leopold Foundation)

So began the readings from A Sand County Almanac on Saturday at the first New Hampshire Aldo Leopold Weekend in Northwood. More than forty people gathered to hear University of New Hampshire ecology professor Dr. Tom Lee talk about Aldo Leopold and his legacy. Following Tom's presentation, a half dozen people read essays from A Sand County Almanac - each had picked their favorite passage.

Steve began with the Foreword to the book, which begins with the passage above and ends with, "Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms of things natural, wild, and free." Another Steve and his 8-year old daughter Brenna read together a section about pines from the chapter December; the pine being Brenna's favorite tree. Harmony read January Thaw, then Richard read, On a Monument to the Pigeon - a story about the extinct passenger pigeon, a species once numbering in the millions.

Rebecca read Thinking Like a Mountain, the recounting of Leopold's transformational experience watching a fierce green fire dying in the eyes of a mother wolf that he had shot. I read Sky Dance, in celebration of the mating ritual of the male woodcock that can be seen and heard outside each evening in spring.

A potluck supper followed the readings. People shared food and conversation, renewing a community tradition that has lost its way in recent times, but which is being revived in Northwood. More readings from A Sand County Almanac followed; people are inspired to read passages from Leopold's writings, so timeless is his thinking.

The evening culminated in the screening of the documentary film, Green Fire - Aldo Leopold and A Land Ethic For Our Time, a New England premiere. Nearly 100 people gathered to see the movie and dozens stayed on to talk about Leopold's legacy and the need for a renewed land ethic in our time.

Leopold wrote, "A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity." Leopold was not much interested in politics, he cared about people and the land and worked to improve the relationships of people to the land. He must have had a positive outlook, given the events of his time (1887-1948).

The issues are no less daunting today. With Leopold as a guiding light, we should look not to ethically-challenged politicians for a land ethic, but to each other. Together we can build a community with an ecological conscience. In Leopold's words, "All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts."

Spring Returns

Yesterday - April Fool's Day Storm

Today -- Spring Returns