The Gift of Gannets

I have to confess I am simply beguiled by Northern Gannets; I never tire of watching them swoop and dive and cut across black skies over a stormy sea. And the amazing thing about them is that, just as I am lamenting the end of “skies filled with swallows”, they show up. Here on the Cape, Gannets are seen off our coast both in spring and fall. April and May, September to November are the times to look for them. But I think of the two seasons, the fall is the most spectacular for the slate gray November skies or stormy Nor’easters provide the most dramatic backdrop for those long, tipped with black, but mostly white, wings.

Today is just such a day; wildly windy, a sky that goes from light gray to dark gray then back again, and I happened to arrive at the beach with the tide on the way out, so the sandbars were sea-glass green. Gorgeous! Again and again I think of a favorite line from a Psalm, “The boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places for me.” Indeed, for me, they have. Not only were there Gannets slicing back and forth across the sky, both mature and immature, but also the sea ducks have begun to arrive.

Medium-sized rafts of Surf Scoters and White Winged Scoters have showed up. The White Winged ones have white on their wings, (there’s a shock eh?) that you see more clearly when they are flying. To someone new to looking at these birds, they all look rather alike, rafts of black looking ducks floating on the water, but there are differences.

Surf Scoters, if they are male, have white on the front and back of their head, and if they are female, they have two white spots on the side of their head. They are also the ones that have this wonderful Disney-like habit of diving all at once, as though there were some underwater buzzer they were all cued to. They pop back up at different times, but it can be puzzling if you see them on the water, then put your binoculars to your eyes and they have vanished. It can happen that quickly. But continue to watch, and “pop, pop, pop”, up they come again. I love that!

Loons also show up off our coast for the winter. They leave their yodeling calls behind in Maine, but here, they spread themselves out along the shore, not in large rafts but, one here, one there. That actually makes them easier to spot because they are, first of all, likely alone, and they are pretty heavy- bodied birds that ride low in the water. For me, finding Loons positioned in their spots along the shore, is another sign that fall is well underway.

Cute little Sanderlings are still working the shore in their manic way, racing one way and then another on those cartoon-like legs. I watched one switch directions continually for at least 4 minutes or so before ever probing for something in the sand. “Not here, no, not here either, back over here.” It would seem more energy was expended than was replenished by the wee crustacean it finally found. Sadly, they will be gone in probably just another week.

The weather remains threatening. It is incredibly warm, but the forecast is for rain, so deciding whether my Walking group is a “go” or not is so frustrating. The gray skies are bringing out the vibrant colors of fall, the warm wind makes it feel like Florida with foliage, but getting everyone soaked wouldn’t make for a good experience either. Ah, the joys of being a walking leader in New England! Guess I will show up and see who are the game ones that a little wild weather doesn’t stop. And if you live on the Cape, the wilder the better for Gannets, so get yourself to the shore and see the beauty unfold for yourself.

A Litany of the Week's "Glory"

Another week of limited time, but another week of a daily dose of “Glory”, and as its Sunday, it seems a perfect time to give credit where credit is due.
And because of that “limited time” part, let’s see if we can keep it more a litany than a rambling description. Not an easy task for a verbal rambler like me!

In no particular order then, God’s kind answer to my request each day to “Show me your Glory Lord”:

-An early morning fog that lay over the bog, swirling mists with a steady quacking of mallards coming from the center of it.

-That Blue jay hiding his acorn stash within sight of my binoculars.

-Raccoon prints on the railroad tracks that went on forever, unseen on my first pass
when it was still dark, but illuminated in the morning sun on dew when I returned. Sign this raccoon up for the circus, what a long tightrope walk he took!

-The Ruby Meadowhawk dragonflies that danced around my school group during a Forest program, landing on several of them to their total delight.

-The incredibly cooperative Peregrine Falcon that flew low over my walking group, not once, but three times, until we all saw it’s magnificent scalloped feathering and black markings on it’s face that make it unmistakably a Peregrine.

-On the way to Bible Study where we would be studying Psalm 8-“You have set your Glory above the heavens” when He did just that. A sunset with every permutation of pink and orange in it, a half rainbow, and a nearly full moon rising-Psalm 8 written across the skies.

-The sunrise that is taking place outside my window as I write this: more variations on the theme of pink and gold.

-A wonderful hole under a large dead tree near the bog that my dog discovered and I am hoping may be home to another weasel. Maybe.

-A lone Woodcock, yes the Woodcock I seek after each spring to see it’s mating flight, was sitting all alone in the slough, soaking up the sun. My first Woodcock ever seen on the bog, and perhaps never will be seen again, but for that moment, sheer Glory!
-And finally, picking wild cranberries with a friend, in a freshwater bog in the middle of the beautiful dunes of Sandy Neck on a glorious blue day. The view from the dunes of blue sky, white sand, golden beach grass seed heads and the distant brilliantly blue ocean, is a scene I will keep with me always. I always have. In the military we moved about 14 times, and whenever I was asked, in yoga or other calming activities to close my eyes and picture someplace full of peace and beauty, this has been the scene I see. And the scene remains today. Glory! And to add joy upon joy, we returned to the beach, our bag full of cranberries to be treated to Gannets diving and a Harbor Seal watching us watch him.

Thank you God, thank you. All Creation surely does sing your praises, and you have given me eyes to see it. Yea God!

Investment Strategies

From the looks of it, “Acorn Futures” at the bog, are up this year. It’s been a good year for acorns, with both Black and White Oaks producing large crops and “investment strategies” have been clearly on display.

Just the other day, when I walked down to the pond at the bog, I was treated to the “Surround Sound”, chipping of all the chipmunks that clearly suspected me of coming to threaten their stash. It was as though, as I walked, I tripped some laser beam in their security system, for new chipmunks would take up the scolding. In no time, the whole pond was ringing out with the non-stop sound of worried investors.


The “chipping” call they give is pretty amazing in itself. People who note these things have claimed that chipmunks can “chip” at a rate of 130 times a minute, and have been known to keep it up for up to 11 minutes! And fall is the time that you are most likely to get scolded, for they have worked hard to gather that stash and aren’t about to loose it now, for soon it will be their only food.

On that same day, just moments later, I watched a Blue jay flying from tree, to ground to tree again, to ground again, carrying an acorn in it’s mouth. Probably, it was carrying even more in its “carrying pouch” in its throat, trying to decide where to best “invest” its savings. It finally landed on the ground behind a fallen branch and buried them there.
Jays will store their caches in holes in trees, under bark, but also, I read recently, in the ground, which is what I was seeing. They dig small holes, then cover them up, even putting rocks, leaves or twigs on top to camouflage them. Who knew! For that matter, both jays and chipmunks could probably get a spot on some “hoarders” show, for with the jay, they have been known to stash 2,000-4,000 acorns in a given season, and chipmunks have been recorded as storing up to 6,000 nuts! Seems like a bit of overkill for an animal that only weighs a few ounces, but then, winter can be long and best to be prepared.

In my own yard, where I can’t seem to stifle my Italian heritage of “Mangi, mangi ”, I am constantly filling the feeders and setting sunflower seeds out, only to have them vacuumed up by the chipmunks in no time.
But then, to some degree, that’s the point, for I never tire of watching them climb into the seashell I have the seeds in, stuff those pouches full, then scamper off to stash them, and return for more. The irony is that at least some of the chipmunks seem to have found a way back into the house, and sunflower seeds occasionally rain down from the rafters, mere feet from where the seeds are kept in my house. Obviously, a lot of time and energy could be saved if they just helped themselves!


Likewise, with the birds I feed, my husband is often railing at me, for the jays, titmice, nuthatches, and woodpeckers, all hoarders of food, do a similar thing. They take the food from the feeder, than hammer some of it into the shingles, or any soft wood they can find. My husband was not a happy camper when, trying to fix some rotting wood under the windows, out spilled about a month’s worth of stashed sunflower seeds. Oops. You perhaps have a similar thing happening at your house. I guess that’s where aluminum siding might come in handy but here, in the land of Cape Cod weather- beaten shingles, the birds have a hay day.

Well, enough for now. Remind me in some future blog, to prattle on about the wonderful tunnel system set up by chipmunks and what you should watch for as they get ready to close up shop for the winter. Till then; see how many “security systems” you can trip, and how nervous the “investors” in your yard seem to be. They have more in common with you than you might have guessed!

Harvesting the "Crane-berries"

If you happened to read this blog last spring, I shared with you how the term “cranberry” comes from the original name of “crane-berries”, for the flower of the cranberry looks remarkably like the head of a heron, which the early settlers called “cranes”.
Well, the “crane berries” were ready for harvest at the bog I walk around and, once again, it makes me realize how thankful I should be to any farmer who gets produce to my table. What a labor of love it is. The culmination of a year’s work, and hard work it is.
I don’t know if I ever mentioned it, but the man who owns the bog I walk around looks, at least to me, like Santa in his younger years. Ruddy cheeks, twinkling blue eyes, a beard that isn’t white yet, and a disposition that radiates kindness. He lets many of us walk our dogs on his property as though we were the “landed gentries” that owned it. He’s willing to stop and talk about what process he is going through, whether it’s watering, weeding, harvesting etc. He roles with the many punches that nature throws at him throughout the year: coming out in the middle of the night to set the sprinklers when an unexpected frost happens, flooding the bogs, not just at harvest, but also in the winter before a freeze, trying to do his best to cool the berries in the heat of summer. All with a hope and prayer that the harvest will be worth it.

This year looked to be a banner year. We had had lots of sun, although not enough rain, so many times he had to irrigate. But it was looking grand. I watched the berries swell and ripen and just this week when I saw them all floating ready for harvest, this bog seemed to have more berries than I had ever seen. But it turns out, this isn’t his only bog he owns, nor is it the only variety of cranberry that he grows. On another bog in Plymouth he has a variety of cranberry called, what was it? Black cranberry I think. And that is a far more delicate berry and sadly, that crop was entirely ruined.

We had an unusually hot Labor Day weekend that scorched the berries and made them worthless. I never knew that the berries needed to be “hardened” and again, this is a more temperamental variety and the heat was just too much for them at the end. He had to toss all of them out. What a heartbreak that must be, but again, he has the right disposition for this and you don’t hear him grumbling, threatening to sue Mother Nature etc. Perhaps there are some really thankful worms where he dumped them.

Which brings up an interesting point. After each harvest there are always berries lining the bank that didn’t get sucked up in the pipe, but they will remain there, uneaten throughout the winter. I take it that they are not on the menu for the many voles, shrews and mice whose homes line the banks of the bog. Coyotes and fox eat cherries and other fruit, but it never seems there are any missing from the piles. Maybe, if they could add sugar as we do, they would be more likely to eat them.

Surely though, some animals are delighted with the harvest. The Mallards, which have been growing in numbers on the slough, suddenly have an instant lake to cavort in. Much chasing and squawking was going on last week as males chased other males and females squawked their encouragement.
The ponds that they draw the water from to flood the bogs, have their shorelines drop a good 10 feet or so, uncovering all new feeding grounds for the sandpipers that are passing through and working the mudflats. Yellowlegs were present in abundance this week, seemingly delighted with both working the new edges of the pond and wading hip-deep in the flooded bogs finding whatever delectables you find in a flooded bog.
The Great Blue Heron also seemed to like the fact that, in the smaller containment pond everything was more crowded together, so, easier pickings for breakfast. Fast food, heron style.


So, this Thanksgiving, if you, like so many others, have cranberries on the menu, stop for a moment to thank the person who invested their earnings and spent their time bringing those berries to fruition so you could enjoy them. The owner of the bog I walk around sells to Ocean Spray and I always wish there was a way to say, “I want Chet’s berries please.” For that matter, he is so kind that he has always let me “glean” the berries that are left around the edge, for nothing. However, in recent years, I have decided it is only right that I should buy them and in a small way support this year long effort of his. It’s the least I could do, because of course, it is his bog that makes this blog possible. So I owe him for much more than berries, I owe him for the joy in the morning this walk brings me. And in a small way, the education it may be bringing you. Off to the store with you then to buy some “crane-berries” to help support the work of a very kindly man.

A Cauldron of Color

Outside my window, another Nor’easter is blowing, and at this early hour, it’s not looking good for our Forest program. But, I think we all have that “inner child” that loves a cancellation, so my heart is doing a little “yippee” as I snatch this unexpected free time to write about the incredible beauty of yesterday’s early morning walk.

The wonderful delight of walks in the fall, beside the obvious beauty of the turning of the leaves, is that sunrise is so delayed, that you don’t have to be some wild-eyed woman-of-the-woods to get up early enough to see it. Just as my husband was leaving for work yesterday, the sky turned chalk-drawn pink and I knew, rather than making the bed, making lunch etc, I should grab the dog and the binoculars and get out there. And what a pay off! Some sunrises just creep up with little fanfare, some come under the cover of low clouds or fog, but this one came with the most brilliant oranges and pinks so that the air itself seemed rose colored.
But then, as if having half the sky a cauldron of color wasn’t enough, I turned to look back towards the west and here was this black sky, intensely black with, catch my breath, a complete, vibrant-with-every-color, rainbow, arching over the woods! Glory, the kind of glory that knocks you sideways!


I was almost to the bog, where I would have a much wider view, so I hurried over the tracks, hoping it wouldn’t fade, and there it was, the entire sky laid out with colors. The sunrise hadn’t abated, and neither had the rainbow. You know how, so often, it is only a half-bow, or you don’t see all the colors, often the indigo doesn’t seem to make it, but this one was so remarkable in its completeness, a poster-child of a rainbow. And it seemed to arch from one end of the cranberry bog to the other.

Now, add to a sky full of color, a cranberry bog in the midst of harvest. The berries had been floated and were now gathered by booms in huge circles of magenta, pink and maroon. “Crave the Wave” spread out before me. As often is the case, you will have this classic picture of a sea of cranberries with a flock of ducks floating in the middle. The mallards have been pouring back into the bog, perhaps coming from the north, perhaps fleeing all the city parks they have hung out at all summer, but here they were adding flashes of green to the sea of reds. How much beauty can one walk contain!


The amazing thing was how long the rainbow lingered. It was there for my entire walk, and the final touch was having that thick golden light that you see at sunrise and before sunset that hits the tops of trees with pure gold. So, there were the pines, vibrant green needles, hit by gold, with a backdrop of black and overtopped by a rainbow! “Glorious, You are so Glorious” a song by the Newsboys played over and over in my head. What a morning! Thank you, thank you God!

And here, I almost feel bad, like I am bragging, “Look what I saw!” but please, I never mean it to be that way. But I do want to point out that we all have about two more weeks before Daylight Savings Time comes into play. Two more weeks of sunrises at a reasonable time to be up and at ‘em. So make a date with the outdoors and plan to catch your own Technicolor Morning show. Nature rarely disappoints, if not a wild color show, something else will appear. A piebald fawn, a flock of robins, a passage of ducks, something, there is always something. Yikes, now that the light is appearing, I can see clearing in the sky and maybe that program won’t be cancelled after all! Speak about getting up and getting at it, I had better end this! May glory touch your day in one way or the other.

P.S. The pictures I use for this blog do come from the Internet, and this time, none of the pictures I found did true justice to what I saw, but still, something was better than nothing, but oh for a decent camera and the ability to use it!

Before the Music Ends

The forecast last night was for temperatures in the mid-thirties. That is getting dangerously close to putting and end to the Orthopteran orchestra. Grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, katydids; they have been the main players and sadly, their days are numbered, at least anywhere where there are four seasons.

In mid-summer it was a deafening band that jammed outside my window from dusk to dawn as males of each species did their best to woo their lady loves over to their patch of grass or bush or tree. It is the males that sing, chirp and buzz for the love of a lady. Now, at least here on the Cape, where autumn is asserting itself more each day, the orchestra is paring down to a quartet, with Black Field Crickets usually being the ones who will play bravely on until the ship goes down with a killing frost.

Now, with any group of insects you chose to discuss, there will always be more information than the average reader would like to know. Sorting out what is most important is the tricky part, especially when you are someone like me who thinks everything about them is pretty fascinating. How to proceed- hmmm.

Let’s start with the music itself. I am sure, when I was young, I thought they made their music by rubbing their legs together. Well, I was half-right. Grasshoppers generally make their buzzy, clicky, snappy sounds by rubbing their leg, which has a file, against their wing, which has a ridge on it. Very much like a fiddle and a bow, whereas, crickets make their more bell-like, musical sounds by rubbing the base of their small wings together. The Katydids of the infamous, “Katy-did, Katy didn’t” fame, like crickets, go wing on wing.
And, just to be different, the Carolina locusts and some others snap their wings in flight to make a sound.

Where and when they sing is another clue as to who is who. Grasshoppers are generally found either in the grass or the edge of fields and are happy to call out throughout the day. Crickets are said to do their best singing at night, as do the Katydids, but once the days get shorter and cooler, you are more likely to hear those males sounding a bit desperate and calling throughout the day too. Katydids call from higher in the trees, as do the Snowy crickets and, not surprisingly, the Tree crickets.

Trying to track any of them down by following the sound can drive you crazy, for many of them are great ventriloquists. A wonderful strategy for fooling their predators, but, must not somehow, fool Mrs. Grasshopper or that would surely defeat the purpose. They are also all skilled at hushing up the moment you step toward them. Well, some go quiet, while others like the Carolina Locust will leap up in your face, flash that band of colors on its wings and hope to startle you, which indeed they do.

Should you happen to catch a cricket or grasshopper you can sometimes tell male from female by looking for an appendage at the base of their abdomen, called an “ovipositor”, for the positing of “ovi’s”- eggs. In the Field Crickets, it is long and slender, in other species it is more like a sword.

Many of them lay their eggs in the ground, something I’d really love to see someday. They props themselves up tripod like on their hind legs, then injects the eggs into the ground, which is often really hard, with this impossibly slim ovipositor. Amazing.
Then, even though Mom is destined to not outlive the fall, her prodigy will remain safely in the ground through winter until the world warms again in spring and out pop the “nymph” grasshoppers and the orchestra will be born anew.

If you ever read your children Eric Carle’s “The Very Quiet Cricket”, the cricket was “quiet” because, until it molts about 5 or 6 times, it won’t have any wings, nor is it sexually mature, so, no singing. All of the Orthoptera go through what we call “incomplete metamorphosis”. A butterfly goes from egg to larva to a pupa (cocoon or chrysalis) then adult. Grasshoppers just go from egg to nymph, to adult- no cocoon. So they just look like cute, tiny, crickets or grasshoppers in early spring.
And that’s why the music doesn’t start right off the bat, no one is mature enough to use a fiddle yet.

All right, truthfully, there are pages and pages more that you could write about them. How they eat, what they eat, those 17-year locusts and what’s up with that, etc, etc. But surely you have had enough for today. We shall leave something for a future telling. Like, how I got my first grasshopper bite while showing one to my granddaughter, but not now. For now, let’s just enjoy the music that remains and when that frost comes, may we bless the eggs within the ground, praying that they make it through the winter to renew the world with music next summer.

From Balmy to Beastly

It's New England after all, and this is what we are famous for. One day you feel like you are in the Bahamas, the next day you might as well be in Newfoundland. The wind has obviously shifted, and for the last three days has been blowing in from the Northeast, giving us a three day long Nor’easter. Which, of course, is kind of cool.

Birders are always telling us to watch for these north winds, especially during fall migration. A sort of “Going My Way” opportunity for birds. They say, if you are lucky, you might just get to watch a whole flock of migrants delivered to your door- how convenient. But you must be out early enough to see it. On the first day of the coming storm, I, like the birds, was trying to get out ahead of the forecasted sheets of rain. And wow, just as they described, a flock of maybe 200 swallows, that were specks way up in the sky, suddenly pointed their little beaks earthward and in no time were swooping all over the bog again. Wow and double wow!

The bog has been swallow-less for a couple of weeks now, and to suddenly have the sky a swarm of swallows again is the kind of thing that makes me dance around, throw my hands in the air, thank God and delight in watching them. I watched how so many of them swoop back and forth, like a pendulum, probably their way of harvesting the sky of its insects. I watched how, once again, no one had any fender benders, no collisions though they were thick as flies over the slough. I listened to their tweets and chirps and thought maybe I detected a Canadian accent, “twout” instead of “tweet”. Of course, I am kidding, but the fact that they had been flying so high made me think these aren’t the swallows of the dunes, but ones that are just getting here from further North- not that I can be sure. But life as a naturalist is all about making your best educated guess, so that’s mine.

And the wild thing about this day was that I had already had a super-deluxe treat that had me transfixed and thanking God just moments before the swoop in of swallows. I was just coming up to the tracks when I heard a snort that I knew would be a deer, at least that seemed likely at this early hour. We aren’t overrun with deer, as say, you folks in suburban DC might be, but throughout the year I get a glimpse of a pair of deer and they usually produce a fawn or two each year. I see the little pointy tracks next to larger tracks that leap from the bog across the path and into woods.

But on this day, while I expected to see an adult, I also saw two fawns. And, here is the wild thing; the first fawn had hindquarters that were white with just a few brown splotches. Arresting, looked half deer, half Pinto, or half Scimitar Oryx if you want to think exotically.
Whom had this doe been dating after all? What I was seeing was a very rare, piebald deer.
Only 1% of the deer have this condition, which is a genetic one. Articles say that they can occasionally have other defects as well, but it looked sound. Although I must say, it didn’t seem the sharpest knife in the drawer, for it couldn’t find where it’s mom had jumped into the woods. Poor dear, it raced back and forth along the dike, then jumped onto the bog, then back again, giving me quite a show and I was so thankful my dog, rather incredibly, was missing this lengthy performance. Suddenly another fawn, normal coloration, and better at tracking mom, came across the tracks and entered the woods right where the doe had. Our little pinto fawn finally figured it out and reached the safety of the woods. Shew. Now I can wonder if I will ever have the good fortune of seeing it again. And praying it has the good fortune, not to be seen by hunters. You just know that a rare animal, rather than being left because it is rare, would be taken.

So, what a day it was, and now the rain has been coming down like something Biblical and more childhood verses spring to mind. Think you can stand another?


“The rain is raining all around,
It falls on fields and trees.
It falls on my umbrella here
And on the ships at sea.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

Who Has Seen the Wind?

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you;
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I;
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
-Christina Rossetti

A poem from my youth that keeps coming to mind as the wind has been definitely “passing by” of late. At upwards of 50mph, passing by! Today we had a program with 6th graders at the Salt Marsh where the wind was blowing so hard that the Silver-Sided Minnows we caught in a seining net were going airborne before we could scoop them out. I wondered if we could have claimed to have caught some Flying fish? So windy, that my hair wouldn’t stay out of my face, so trying to ferret out Fiddler crabs while on my knees, just wasn’t working. Which I am sure was just fine with the crabs.


But it has been beautiful. On another wild day, I kept stopping as I walked around the bog just to watch the wind whipping the clouds over my head with such speed that it looked exactly like those time-lapse films where time is sped up. The wind also burst down on the pond sending waves scattering first one way and then another. Beautiful. It was predominantly a southern wind, making the Cape feel more like the Florida Keys than Cape Cod, saving us all a lot of Airfare while providing the same balmy experience. I always wish I had a plastic palm tree I could drag out for just such days to complete the illusion.

The wind causes a certain amount of amazement in me too. Amazed, as I watch birds that weigh no more than a few ounces, fly directly into the wind and actually make progress. How do they do that? I should Goggle some info on it but at the moment, as usual, I don’t have time. The day I was at Sandy Neck with my granddaughter and we had that hurricane of swallows, flying about 2” over our head, was another day of amazement. Why the wind didn’t blow them into the dunes, into each other, into us, is a true wonder. What Ace pilots they all seem to be- more skilled than Blue Angels.


Yesterday, with Tropical Storm Nicole whipping up the East Coast, I went back to Sandy Neck to see if the waves were huge, if the swallows were still there, and if the Northern Gannets had made their fall arrival yet. No, was the answer to all three questions. No waves (Sandy Neck is on the north side of the Cape, on the Bay, and this storm was coming from the south), no swallows, (which doesn’t really mean they are gone, but they weren’t on the part of the beach I was on. It is 7 miles long, perhaps they were further down) and no Gannets (too soon no doubt, just wishful thinking on my part).
But the wind did make an appearance and it was blowing the sand making white mist out of the air close to the ground and pinging off the top layer of skin on my ankles. And, amazingly, there, floating against the wind, was a small white moth. Incredible, I was nearly being blown over and here this infinitesimal creature was making headway!

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you;
But when you’re blown right off your feet,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I;
But when the minnows fly out of your net,
The wind is passing by!
Pat, with apologies to Ms Rossetti