Happy Earth Day!

I'm old enough to remember celebrating the first Earth Day and am very glad it has had such a huge focus this year. I spent my day working with kids at a nature center all day so it was a pretty earthy day for me. How about you?

Animal Homes

So many people walk through the woods without realizing that all around them live hundreds, thousands of animals. Many of those animals are tiny such as worms, insects, arachnids and crustaceans that most people don't think of because they don't see them. Others, like salamanders, toads and shrews live much of their lives under logs, under leaves or in quiet dark holes. Even the animals we are used to, such as squirrels, rabbits, deer and foxes tend to hide from the noise we make tromping through the woods. Birds move around above our heads in the trees but even they tend to be quieter as we humans pass through.

When I go out with children on walks here on Cape Cod I often ask them to help me look for animal homes. Once they catch on to all the different kinds of animal homes that are in sight in just a small area they love to keep watch and point out possible homes for the rest of the walk.

Pictured here are a chipmunk home, a mouse house, a squirrel home, a bird home and insect homes. Can you tell which is which?

Mayflowers are in bloom!

For the last week or so I've been on the lookout for mayflowers, also known as trailing arbutus (the Massachusetts state flower, too, by the way) but they are harder and harder to find. Their tough, sort of hairy leaves are easy to recognize but the plants hug the ground and the flowers are quite tiny. If you can get down to their level they have the most wonderful smell!

Yesterday we went walking in the Skunknett conservation area in Osterville and although there weren't too many blooming, we did find some of these lovely little signs of early spring. Personally I've always thought it was sort of amusing that mayflowers bloom in April, not May...

Cape Cod Turtles on the Move

Over the last few days I've been seeing lots of turtles. Most of these turtles have been sunning themselves and have been the common eastern painted turtles. I've also seen several large snapping turtles and these, as well as one of the painted turtles have been traveling across land from one pond to another. At least that is what it seemed to be what they were doing since they appeared to have left one body of water and were heading in the direction of another one very close by.This is the time of year that many animals and birds are thinking about mating and reproducing and turtles are no different. Female turtles generally won't lay eggs in our area until June but many will be starting to think of mating very soon.

Cape Cod Art and Nature Website Up and Running!

There's still a lot of fine tuning to do but I'm pretty excited that it's actually up and running! Please do stop by.

You can find it here.

Watching Whales from Provincetown Beaches

It was a beautiful day on the Cape today and I decided to grab my camera and sketchbook and drive to Provincetown to see if I could see any whales from the shore. Reports of whale sightings from the beaches of Provincetown are fairly common at this time of year and I figured if nothing else it would be a great day to watch the gannets diving while I ate my lunch.

The view above is from Race Point where I didn't see any whales. There were many people playing ball on the beach and vehicles parked along the waterfront so I drove over to Herring Cove.

It's hard to see in this picture because my camera's zoom isn't working but that dark spot is a whale watching boat. Around the boat you could see all the spouts of the whales it was watching and sometimes there were three or four spouts going at the same time. As I scanned the horizon with my binoculars there were more whales and at one point one of them breached. It was pretty amazing and people were lined up along the beach hooting and hollering to each other to check it out.

The weather may not be as nice tomorrow but if you're on the Cape and you have a chance over the next few days to get to Provincetown you might check out the whale show!

Spring is springing!

Here on Cape Cod spring takes her sweet old time showing up and this year she really seems to be dragging her heels. It's been cold and raw for weeks now and even when the sun is shining the wind will still rip your face off, especially if you're walking on the beach!

We all have our favorite signs of spring and for many I think the sound of the spring peepers is right up there with the pussy willows and daffodils. Last week the first tentative peeps could be heard and by the time the big rains hit last Friday and this Monday a veritable frog symphony was going on around any damp or wetland area.

Vernal pools are wonderful and unique ecosystems. Here in Massachusetts a vernal pool must have at least 3 indicator species, I think. They include the yellow spotted salamander, the wood frog and the fairy shrimp. Vernal pools are spring pools; full of water in the spring but often dried up by late summer. You can find lots of great info about vernal pools here.

The vernal pool in the picture is in Sandwich and was full of wood frogs making their funny duck like quacking noises on a dark afternoon between rain showers this week.