Nature Watch
Nature Watch 5.16.13
What? Another strange spring? We’ve had no rain up here on the hill in East Montpelier for what must be a month. That last couple of so-called drenchings turned into light sprinkles. And now, with all the future fruits of the land at their most sensitive flower stage, we are bracing tonight for a widespread [...]
Nature Watch 5.2.13
I always love this time, especially because there is a moment, a point, which seems to define the exact day when spring really starts. It’s called Red and Green Day, and I heard about it from the naturalist Jerry Jenkins. You see the red maples blooming, that red cast on the hills from a distance, the [...]
Nature Watch 4.18.13
Many birds are still coming through now, ahead of the big waves of hungry warblers and so many others, timed to arrive with hatches of blackflies. For now, we still have northbound fox sparrows, juncos and goldfinches. Many of the latter two will peel off to stay here and there along the way. And in [...]
Nature Watch 4.4.13
The first rain should now start the big Jefferson salamanders moving. How can they go to the pond when the woods are still full of snow and their mating pools are only melted around the edges? All I know is that when the ice melts, those golf-ball-sized egg masses are already on submerged twigs, with [...]
Nature Watch 3.21.13
March snowstorm! I’m in bed with a nasty bug, lying at window level watching and listening to what looks and sounds like a hundred redwing blackbirds and grackles. They are raucously, joyfully cleaning up every bit of cracked corn and seed we’ve put down for them, faster than the snow can cover it. Yesterday in [...]
Nature Watch 3.7.13
Spring is not far off when the blue jays in our neighborhood form a morning premating flock and start popcorning. How else to describe it? Twelve to 18 of these handsome blue members of the crow family congregate in a tree or bush just above seed we have thrown upon the snow. Then they start: [...]
Nature Watch 2.21.13
Last week, after the storm, we had a barred owl in the yard all day, looking weak. Owls don’t drink water, getting their liquid entirely from the small creatures they eat. If food isn’t available for a few days, they go downhill quickly. So, off to the pet store for a few “feeder” mic—put one [...]
Nature Watch 2.7.13
Will cleated, rubber-boot pull-ons ever make a fashion statement? These icy weeks, they are a fixture in my life, every day, every walk. With them on my feet, and the snowpack frozen hard as wood, I tromp about the fields and forests, over marshes, through swampy places, on top of the crust, with no worry [...]
Nature Watch 1.24.13
Not so many birds in the yard this winter. I can’t think about it without seeing the history: the too early, rain-scarce heat this spring, combined with the previous dry winter and no snow melt and a drought all summer, with almost the only rain coming in nonsoaking downpours. Then the continuing record heat all [...]
Nature Watch 1.10.13
Now begin my eight or nine favorite weeks of the year—the weeks of glorious light. The days are getting longer; the sun is stronger but still low enough in the sky to produce a golden, low-sun sort of light. And the snow! When it’s sunny, like now, the snowpack by the garden approaches peachy gold. [...]