Watching for blooms....

One of the earliest, sweetest wildflowers to bloom on Cape Cod is our state flower, the trailing arbutus or mayflower. If you look at the picture below there are two green plants (not counting the moss) The smaller, shinier leaves are of teaberry, also known as common wintergreen. The larger, lighter green leaves are of the mayflower. They feel quite tough and leathery, not smooth like the teaberry.You can find mayflowers in many of our woodland areas and often along side a path as they seem to like sunny locations on a bank. Even my dog wanted to check them out to see if they were blooming yet....
Not quite! But maybe they will be ready when the sun comes back out later this week. If you are headed out for a woodland walk this weekend keep your eyes open. The blooms often hide just under the leaves. If you can get down on the ground to smell them they have a most wonderful, heavenly scent....

More Swans....

I was at South Cape Beach in Mashpee yesterday when I saw these swans. There must have been 60-70 of them just hanging out on the edge of the marsh during a high tide.Many swans are already on nests but obviously these ones aren't. The weather has been so awful that some swans lost their nests and may try again but many of these may simply not have found nesting areas yet or are too young or otherwise unable to be paired off and reproduce this year.
I was photographing these at quite a distance so ended up with more back ends than front ends as the swans faced into the very brisk winds....
I will see if I can find out more information about these large gatherings of swans since it seems late in the year for them to me....

What are the Swans Up To?

If you have been in an area where swans are common you may have noticed that one of the swans seems to be missing. Where once there were two....there is now just one.Don't be alarmed. The second swan is probably not too far away. She is just otherwise engaged.
She is probably sitting on her nest. Swans build huge nests and lay anywhere from half a dozen to a dozen eggs and they will need room for all those little babies.
Baby swans, called cygnets, will hatch somewhere around mid to late April. If you know where there is a swan nest do not approach it. Swans are very protective, especially the males and can cause quite a bit of harm if they think you are intruding. Be especially careful with children. Watch and enjoy from afar!

The Red Wings are Here!

One of our earliest signs of spring here on the Cape is the all out return of the blackbirds, both the red-winged blackbirds and the grackles. Some stay all winter and some straggle in the last week in February and the first few weeks of March but today was the first day I saw hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them....everywhere we went.
They were stirring up quite a racket in the trees, in the bushes, even on the wires all along the marshes and wetlands.
In the fog and gray their colors were not as distinctive or bright as they will be on a bright sunny day but you can still see this fellow's red epaulet as he lets everyone know he's in the area.
I love how they put their whole body into their exclamation. There's no doubt who is king of this here branch....
Listen for their "rusty gate" calls that sound sort of like "conk-a-reeeee." These birds were photographed today in Harwich.

Have you seen a wild turkey?

When I was a kid one of my favorite things to do on a long afternoon was play with my father's moose, duck and turkey calls. Hunters used these to trick moose, ducks and turkeys into coming closer, at least some hunters did. I personally think my father just like making funny noises.

Every fall he would go to Maine and New Hampshire with some old Army buddies to go hunting. To my knowledge my dad never shot anything on these trips but he always came home with lots of great stories of what he had seen. My mom said he just liked an excuse to go tromping around in the woods. Anyway....
my dad would sure have been surprised to see wild turkeys running around everywhere on Cape Cod. Turkeys are now in every town on the Cape and have become a pretty common sight, even along the highways and in the down town areas. These birds used to be very rare. Even in places they were known to be they were hard to find and see. Turkeys were reintroduced in Massachusetts only about 20 or 25 years ago, I think and have certainly made a good come back.
Turkeys travel in flocks and usually there is only one male with a whole harem of females. You may also see a bunch of young males hanging around together that don't have their own harems quite yet.
These turkeys were all raising their tails in the air while running down the driveway. I had stopped my car to take their picture out the window in the rain but they wanted nothing to do with me.....I found these turkeys in Eastham yesterday but you can see turkeys just about anywhere on the Cape.

Have you seen a wild turkey?

Stormy Days

The Nor'easter of the last few days has been very intense with strong winds and deluges of rain. Branches and trees are down everywhere but nowhere is the damage felt as strongly as along our beaches. Although the outer Cape beaches have probably felt the impact the strongest, many bay side and even south facing beaches have taken big hits as well.

On the outer Cape the erosion has been so severe that most of the stairs leading down to the beaches have been washed away and the dunes so undercut that no one is allowed down on the actual beaches. At high tide, there is no beach. Only what's left of the cliffs and the raging water...this first picture is from Marconi Beach in Wellfleet.
This second shot is from Nauset Light Beach, where the only stairs remaining are the top few that are still hanging on to the platform...
This view from Fort Hill doesn't look very threatening....until you realize there is no marsh and no barrier beach to be seen....all under water!!! Very shocking....
Here's foggy view of what is left of the barrier beach in the distance. You can see the water washing over it and over the marsh (or what used to be the marsh) behind it.
This white water was already past the dunes that used to be there at Coast Guard Beach and slamming against the bushes that are supposed to be upland, not wetland plants....
Storms have always caused upheavals and rearrangements of beach area on the Cape but in my lifetime this seems like one of the most severe ones. We will have to wait until the tides recede and the waves calm down to truly assess the damage....

Happiness is....

Listening to a bluebird sing in a field on a sunny day....

Photos taken at the Game Farm in East Sandwich where you can almost always find a bluebird at this time of year. You can also easily find them in Mashpee along 151 and at Ashumet but even in the little green at Mashpee Commons, Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, Peterson's Farm in Falmouth and lots of other open places.

What's that funky smell???

If you've been out and about on the Cape this week and near a freshwater wetland you have probably noticed some odd looking bulbous things poking out of the mud. They are dark and almost alien looking....A closer look will reveal that they are a plant. Most appear somewhat purple but some are a bit more green, probably depending on where they are found.
Look even closer and you'll see they are unfurling...
And some even have odd little round flowers....
It's skunk cabbage season! Just don't step on one or pick it because you'll find out how it earned its stinky name....

Spring is Sneaking In....

Sorry I haven't posted this week but I've been sick and was unable to post. I have tons of new pictures to share, though, so be sure to visit over the weekend.

One of my favorite early spring signs is seeing the snowdrops bloom. This year they at least didn't have to bloom in the snow!
Skunk cabbage is growing in wetland areas....
All the budding bushes and shrubs are giving the landscape a pink tinge....
And there's something different in the ponds....
Green plants are already growing, reaching for the sun!
And winter ducks, such as this male red-breasted merganser are courting and displaying even as they prepare for their long journey north to breed and nest.

A Shout Out for the Legacy of Thornton Burgess

Growing up in Hyannis I spent a lot of time in the Hyannis Public Library as a kid and it was there that I discovered the wonderful world of Thornton Burgess. Peter and Mrs. Rabbit, Jimmy Skunk, Bobby Raccoon, Joe Otter, Grandfather Frog and Reddy Fox soon became wonderful friends in my imagination and helped fuel my ongoing love of nature.

"Old Mother West Wind," the first published collection of Burgess stories, is 100 years old this year and the Thornton W. Burgess Society in Sandwich has a full calendar of events and exhibits ready to celebrate all year long. You can see the calendar here.

As many of you know I write several weekly nature columns. I also write a monthly column and occasional articles and essays for the Barnstable Patriot. Today they published my essay on Thornton Burgess and you can read it here. (scroll down until you see the illustration)

(the photo was taken by me at the Thornton Burgess Society's Green Briar Nature Center but is not current)

Witch Hazel

If you are prone to tromping around the woods at this time of year on the Cape you might come across this lovely little tree. It has smooth bark and the stems grow up and out as if forked which is one of the ways it got its common name. The word witch comes from"wych"(not witch) and is actually an old English word describing a stick that has a pair of flexible forked branches. The "Hazel" part of the common name comes from the resemblance the leaves have to those of the hazelnut.Witch hazel is a funny bloomer and not always predictable. Often they will bloom in February if there is a warm spell but some bloom late in the fall and others bloom quite a bit later in the spring.
You can see here that the blossoms have lovely little tendrils.
This tree is quite well known to have medicinal qualities due to the volatile oil content in the bark and wood that also makes it resistant to pests and diseases. Over the years witch hazel has been used to cure or assuage all sorts of ills and can still be found on many drug store shelves as an astringent. It has a sharp, not unpleasant scent.