At 9 months pregnant, my woods walking speed has slowed to almost a snail’s pace. But the beneficial side effect of this is that I notice tiny details I would’ve otherwise missed. On Friday, for example, I noticed a single strange seed pod mixed in among bear oak and huckleberry shrubs. This was a seed pod I’d never seed before, but I was hopeful that it’d be fairly easy to identify. It was part of a low-growing (only ~6-8 inches…
Everywhere you look, preparations are underway. Sometimes those actions are easily observable. For example, people are preparing for holiday gatherings and festivities, and gray squirrels are lining their nests for additional warmth and stashing away acorns in preparation for winter. Even within our own house, my husband and I have been doing our own preparations – getting ready for the birth of our first child (who’s due any day now!). But sometimes those preparations are more subtle, and require a…
While the majority of flowers have their peak bloom time in the summer months, the fall is the asters’ turn to shine. Although a quick look outside will leave no doubt that fall is here, with autumn colors and crunchy leaves falling to the ground, and insect numbers are definitely down, a number of important pollinator species, such as bees and moths are still active… and still need a source of food. Cold hardy late-blooming perennials, like asters, are a…
On a recent walk along the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Beech Forest Trail, I noticed some rather unique knobby fungus protruding from a fallen oak. iNaturalist helped me quickly identify it as poor man’s licorice (Bulgaria inquinans), also known as black bulgar or black jelly drops, as they somewhat resemble licorice or black gumdrops. Despite its resemblance to these edible sweets, poor man’s licorice is not considered to be edible. It is also not closely related at all to the…
Throughout the summer you can find a variety of galls – the wool sower gall, the oak apple gall, the scrub oak gall and many others. Many galls, like the ones listed here, are found on oaks, which are common host plants for many gall-producing insects. But a few weeks ago, I noticed a gall on staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) for the first time. If I hadn’t been inspecting the undersides of the leaves closely, in search of a butterfly…
On a recent walk I led along the Agawam River Trail for the Wareham Land Trust, I noticed a small clustered group of 3 caterpillars on the underside of a greenbriar (Smilax sp.) leaf. While I normally don’t try to identify most caterpillars, which tend to be small, green and nondescript, these caterpillars were so striking, with their bold black and white markings and yellow undersides that I figured I’d give it a shot. It didn’t take long to pin…
I recently pulled the memory card from my trail camera, and in addition to the expected eastern cottontail rabbits and “normal” white-tailed deer, the area in front of my camera was visited numerous times by a deer with an abnormal antler formation. I have never encountered anything like this before, and some brief googling regarding abnormal antler growth produced a fascinating array of bizarre antler shapes and forms, but nothing that quite resembled the drooping club of an antler that…
The brown-lipped snail (Cepaea nemoralis), also known as grove snail or wood snail, is one of the most common species of land snail in Europe. It was first introduced to North America in the mid-1800s, both intentionally and accidentally. In fact, one scientific article I came across called them “invited invaders”. They are now relatively common in the northeastern United States and around the Great Lakes into Canada. Brown-lipped snails come in many color forms, ranging from reddish to yellowish…
This is a great time of year for nature observation in Massachusetts. Almost every day something new is happening: a new plant is flowering, some new insect has emerged or I’ve spotted a new bird, recently returned from its winter away. So these days, when I’m out and about, I try to keep my eyes pealed to spot these “happenings”. A few days ago, while poking around the woods in my backyard where I was checking on the blooming mayflower…
I took a quick walk at Wareham Land Trust‘s Agawam River Trail after work today, enjoying the abundant late-day sunshine. Although signs of spring were seemingly everywhere, from the red-winged blackbirds calling in the nearby wetlands to the red maple flowers bursting in vibrant color, I did notice an interesting trend. At least five different plant species were pushing out new green leaves, but none of these were native. Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) 2. Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora) 3. Shrub…