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Naturally Kingston
Page 2 of 3 1 2 3 Warmer than normal weather has kept ticks out and about...
[Dec. 16, 2006] The beginning of December has been a series of sightings, all different kinds, in different places. First, there were the ticks, deer ticks, at home and away. I saw them in my skin, in December. In an ordinary year, they would have been tucked away for the winter, but with our warm temperatures so far, they are still out. I check my dog each time we go out, so I guess I picked them up on my own. One of them left its head in my skin. (Did I mention that I hate ticks? They give me the creeps.)
Things That Go Bump….
[Nov. 17, 2006] After the clocks are set back in October, it seems as if we are always in the dark. It gets dreary after a while, but it is a good time to observe the animal night life. Of course, you have to look for it, just as you have to look in the day time.
Mosquitoes and EEE
[Sep. 22, 2006] Mosquitoes are part of the Kingston landscape. They have been for thousands of years, and will continue to be. Unfortunately, eastern equine encephalitis has been a part of that same landscape for some time. Some mosquitoes carry and transmit the virus that causes EEE. The virus can be transmitted from birds to humans, and from birds to horses. It is not transmitted from horses to horses, or from human to human, or from horses to humans. Not all species of mosquitoes carry diseases, and not all of our local species are flying at the same time.
Life on a Leaf
[Aug. 18, 2006] There are children's books that tell about life on a log, and life in the woods, and lot's of other places, but not many that tell about life on a leaf. I was watching a monarch butterfly laying eggs on a milkweed leaf, and it made me think about all the things I've seen on leaves. In my time at Northeastern University, I spent hours looking at moss leaves under a microscope as part of my thesis work.
More Babies
[Jul. 21, 2006] Summer continues to unfold with lots of baby animals this year. A red tailed hawk fledged last week, and it sat in a nearby tree, yelling for food. Its parents would feed it eventually, but they were teaching it to hunt for its own. Blackbirds mobbed it continually, but eventually, it will learn it can easily fly away from them. Nearer to my back door, in fact on the handrail a few feet from it, a fledgling mourning dove sat and waited for its next meal. This little bird was not afraid of me, and it took all of my naturalist’s training not to pick it up. It had all its feathers, and it was three feet above the ground, so it could fly. I left it alone, and took its picture.
Summer Babies
[Jun. 23, 2006] The sewer is being excavated in front of my house this spring, and I wondered how it would affect the wildlife. There is so much noise and confusion, I thought they might all run away. I know I want to. But the wildlife stayed, despite the clamor. At the same time the road crew was out front, I had my roof reshingled. Even that didn't keep animals away. A coyote stopped in the field and watched it all, and later came right up to the house to see what was what!
Out My Back Door
[May 19, 2006] For about four years, I have written this column on what I've seen from my back door. I have had the luck to have one of the best views in Kingston from this door. The land on which I live once belonged to the Holmes family, and it had been their farm for hundreds of years. The last Holmes who lived here was Helen. She loved the farm, and called it Hilholm. She had a beautiful, large, house, just about where my house sits now. She had dairy cows, and raised vegetables. Helen loved growing things, and built two large greenhouses into the hill behind the barns...
Strange Weather
[Apr. 14, 2006] Every one talks about the weather. Sometimes just to start a conversation, and sometimes because the weather is strange. This year, for instance, is different from any in my memory. First we have spring in winter, and then we have winter in spring. Parts of March were as warm as 60 º F, and parts were very cold. To top it off, there wasn’t much rain in March. Some vernal pools went dry, partly as a result of all that early heat.
Evergreen Cemetery
[Mar. 17, 2006] Have you ever taken a walk in the Evergreen Cemetery? I've been walking there since the 1950's, when I used to skate on the little pond in winter. The cemetery has always fascinated me on a number of levels, but for the last few years it has been because of all the mosses there. I have studied mosses in detail, especially their structure and physiology. It is not such a popular area of study as it once was, but these little plants have been around since before dinosaurs, and their remarkable life strategies are quite different from, while at the same time similar to, those of flowering plants.
The January Thaw...
[Feb. 18, 2006] Calling our warm weather last month a January thaw is a bit of an understatement! The warmth fooled a lot of plants and wildlife into thinking it was spring. Red maple buds started to swell, which shouldn't happen in January. It was even too warm to tap my sugar maples. Daytime temperatures should be above freezing, but night temperatures must be below. If not, the sap won't run. If the buds swell, the syrup made from the sap tastes bad. Hopefully, the sap will rise as usual during February, and taste OK.
Eagles in Kingston?
[Dec. 20, 2005] I see the most incredible things from my back door. In fact that's how I started to write this column. I've written about 44 columns now, mostly from nature I've seen from around the house. A few days ago, I saw another incredible sight from my back door. There is a very old, tall, Norway spruce on the side of my driveway, and sitting on the very top was the largest bird I have ever seen. It was a raptor, and it was brown with yellow feet. If it had been smaller, I'd have called it a red tailed hawk, but it was much too large for any of our native hawks, and its tail wasn't red. Could it have been an eagle?
Fishers
[Nov. 22, 2005] Last month, the Boston Globe did a feature article on wild animals that are moving into our local area, taking up residence right where we live. We already have coyotes and turkeys under our windows, now we are becoming host to fishers, animals that have not been seen around here for many years. They are ordinarily secretive, tree dwelling forest animals. Some people know them as fisher cats, but though they climb trees, they are not related to cats. Fishers are members of the stinky animal family of mammals, Mustelidae, which also includes weasels, minks, and ferrets.
Harry Potter
[Oct. 22, 2005] I’m a big fan of the Harry Potter stories, and so are several of the other naturalists where I work. Harry is a very good student, as are most of his friends. They all have goals, and good grades are a path to those goals. They make good role models for kids who might otherwise wonder why they should study in school. It was easy for us to come up with Harry Potter programs, as they fit right in with our mission. We pretend that the Nature Center is Hogwarts, and we run pretend classes. For instance, the animals are part of Care of Magical Creatures, the greenhouse is where you learn Herbology, and the woods are the Forbidden Forest, and so on.
Caterpillars & Silk Worms
[Aug. 19, 2005] Caterpillars may be a child’s favorite insect. Kids that won’t go near a harmless earthworm will eagerly scoop a caterpillar into their hands. They learn about monarch butterflies early in school, and how the caterpillar is just one stage of its life. In fact the monarch butterfly life cycle is a treasure of insect information. The caterpillars only eat milkweed, a poisonous plant. The poison is stored in the caterpillar, and is not toxic to it. The young caterpillar has stiff black and yellow hairs on it, and later stages of the growing caterpillar display black and yellow skin. Kids learn that these bright markings are a warning to would-be predators that they are too toxic to eat. The poison passes on to the adult, and an adult monarch again is brightly marked for warning. Any bird that tries to eat it will actually vomit, and never eat another one.
On Being a Botanist
[Jul. 22, 2005] When I was in my mid-40’s, I decided to go back to school. I wanted to return to biology, my first love. I was working for a chemical company at the time, (US BORAX), and though I used my background once in a while, it was mostly chemistry and marketing. I had been our of school for about 20 years, and now my biology was out of date. I decided to study botany, especially how plants work. It is a lot of fun being a botanist. Now I can impress my friends by picking out obscure plants from a mass of green stuff, especially little plants like liverworts and mosses. I even know their names.
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