What a crazy spring it’s been around here! Hot, cold, wet, dry, windy, wild, nutty weather every week….
But some days, like this recent day in Chatham have been spectacularly beautiful….
With just sand and sea and sky….
The simplicity of beautiful shells….
It’s all beautiful right now so get out there and enjoy it before the crowds all come!
I love beach flowers. I love that they persevere through sandy and salty onslaughts. I love that they add a splash of color to the landscape before all the sun bathers arrive with their umbrellas, towels and beach balls.
I especially love beach peas…
Like all peas, vetches, locusts and the like, beach peas belong to the legume family and will have pods for their seeds or peas by mid summer. Beach peas are supposedly edible but are always full of bugs when I pick them….that’s a little too much protein for me.
Right now you can find beach peas in bloom on just about every beach on the Cape. You will also find our beach rose, rosa rugosa. Believe it or not, this lovely iconic Cape Cod flower is not native! It is an Asian washashore either brought here in bilge water or by a lovesick sea captain for his beloved wife. You pick the story you like….
I’ll pick the romance every time…
So get on out there and smell the flowers while they last….beach flowers are ethereal things and disappear as soon as a hint of heat arrives….
What a crazy spring it has been! One day every pond and vernal pool is full of water and then it is dry…and then it is full of water again! Imagine being one of the little critters trying to survive out there.
Vernal pools by definition dry up some time during the year but the animals that use vernal pools no doubt hope they will dry up later, not sooner. Most, such as wood frogs and spotted salamanders have adapted by having a short time before full metamorphosis occurs. Compare the few weeks it takes these species to the several years a green frog or bull frog could take.
Check out these spadefoot toad tadpoles. They are being given a bit of a headstart by a local Audubon Sanctuary with special permission from the state since they are a threatened species in Massachusetts. The Cape is pretty much their northernmost outpost and they have a hard time surviving here.
Each of these tadpoles is about an inch long….not very big! You can see that their legs are ready to pop out and within a week or so of this photo these little guys were on all four legs and absorbing their tails. They also go from breathing through gills to breathing through their skin and tiny lungs.
Although spadefoot toads can be found in pine barrens and other areas here on the Cape they seem to have settled into dune areas. They can actually dig down 8 feet into the sand which keeps them from overheating in the summer and freezing during their winter hibernation, called brumation. Here is what a typical dune habitat with a vernal pool looks like.
A closer look shows lots of weedy vegetation and sand.
You can’t see them but there are hundreds if not thousands of baby toadlets in this photo….here’s one I picked up for a few seconds.
Toadlets is really what these little guys are called but when frogs metamorphosize they are not called froglets. You can call them that if you want,though, I won’t tell.
Can you see the toadlets in this photo? They are there….
How about in this one?
Pretty good camouflage, huh? They need it! These little toadlets are easy targets for all sorts of hungry birds and animals and very few will actually make it to adulthood, even with thousands emerging this past week. Sobering, isn’t it?
Later in the season other toadlets will emerge from area ponds and all will face the same challenges. If you happen upon an emergence it won’t hurt to check it out but please don’t be tempted to try and keep one at home or to carry it around. Enjoy it for a minute, let the kids check them out and know you participated in a very cool event.
If you’ve been out and about at all over the last few weeks you probably are well aware that turtles are on the move. Whether turtles live in the sea, the marsh, the pond or the woods, they all seek warm sand on land to lay their eggs.
Although sea turtles come here to feed they do not lay eggs on the Cape but we have plenty of other egg laying turtles. Only one of them lives in the marsh and that is the diamondback terrapin. These turtles are almost never seen on land, spending most of their time in bays, inlets in marshes and other such places. You are far more likely to see them when out kayaking in a marsh than walking along a trail at the beach.
I was out with a group of Sandy Neck Junior Rangers this past week and we went looking for turtle tracks. They are hard to see, both in the photo and in real life but once you know what to look for, they are easy to recognize. Note the little bit of drag in the middle….that is from the shell.
We then spotted the tiny turtle…
This was a baby diamondback terrapin that was recently hatched but from eggs laid last year, not this year.
We eventually found the tracks of other baby diamondback terrapins as well as another en route to the marsh. If you find baby turtles on the move at this time of year, please let them keep on walking. Don’t pick them up and “help” them by taking them to the water. Walking strengthens little legs so they will be able to swim when they get there. Also, baby box turtles should never be taken to water for they are land turtles and can’t swim! You should also be aware that it is illegal in the state of Massachusetts to take baby turtles or any wild turtles home to keep as pets.
This last photo gives you a good idea of how tiny that little turtle was–it is in a child’s hand! We respectfully put this little one back where it had been but not before all the kids got to peek at it up close. So keep your eyes open, it’s a turtle time of year out there!
What a great weekend we just had! The weather was picture perfect, all sorts of flowers and trees were in bloom and the stage was set for a great weekend long Mass Audubon Field School. I was teaching “A Brush with Botanicals” and was joined by 6 students who turned out to be willing, brave and quick learners, too!
We started off with a bit of a chat about the history of botanical painting in watercolor and then went to work on some color mixing and various brushstrokes that would come in handy for this kind of painting. Many of the students were beginners but it was a different kind of painting even for those with more experience with watercolors.
After a morning of painting exercises everyone was ready to paint a flower. We set up in the shade outdoors. It may have been May but it was pretty hot in the sun already!
Everyone was very quiet as they worked. They were concentrating hard!
Plants wilt quickly out of water but the students were quick to use cracks in the table, their painting water and sheets of white paper as backgrounds.
On Sunday the weather was still fine and we headed out to paint irises we had spied out in a field the day before…
The irises proved to be more of a challenge than some originally thought they would be but they worked hard on getting the petals right. Irises are poetic and fun to look at but tough to paint.
We ended up bringing some irises indoors to paint and then spent the afternoon going out onto the sanctuary to find branches, flowers and plants to draw and paint. I think even the students were pleased and surprised at how well their attempts worked out.
I am always humbled by my beginning drawing and painting students because those first attempts are often awkward and far from what they hope for or imagine. And yet, they persevere. They are eager and willing to learn. They listen, they watch, they absorb as much as they can. And frankly, it seems to me it is very brave to draw or paint in public in a class and share work that shows signs of struggle but for all these students their work also showed signs of triumph. I was honored to be in their presence. It was a great weekend.
I will be doing another Field School “Sketching in Nature for Scaredy Cats” in Wellfleet in August.
First, I can’t take credit for finding this Great Horned Owl and its nest–a friend of mine found it purely by chance this week and sent me some photos. She offered to take me there but I cannot give up its location. I’ll just say it is on private property in the mid Cape area.
Two young owls are still in the nest.
They cannot fly yet though they can scramble around the branches of the tree a bit. You can see some of what remains of the nest beneath them. Great horned owls do not make their own nest but take over other nests, especially those made by red tailed hawks. We found another older nest in a tree not too far away which may have been used last year.
In the above shot you can see that the young owlet is growing its feathers and will soon be ready to fly.
We knew mom couldn’t be too far away and we were right. She had been watching us but when I tried to take her picture she turned away.
Eventually she turned and gave me a good owly glare…
She then took off….heading out over a nearby field, arousing the suspicion and ire of neighborhood jays and crows….Check out those round wing feathers that help this big bird fly silently through the night…
We went back to watching the owlets who were also watching us…
and before we left we had to check out the pellets beneath the tree, of course. These owls are still being brought food by their mother and I will not share them all here but the pellets showed a well rounded, high protein diet that included small mammals and birds. ‘Nuff said, as my grandmother would have said.
Oh how I love this time of year! The late afternoon sun is so pretty on the tops of trees just budding and leafing out…
the colors are so fresh and clean
flowers are just starting to bloom and grow
looking like Asian watercolors against the sky
even the old oaks are showing off this afternoon
but the cherries are about to burst forth and take the stage
let the spring rumpus begin!
Do you like to draw, sketch or doodle but somehow you never find the time? Join me and some of my students in a Spring and Summer Sketchbook Challenge, just for fun!
All you have to do is get yourself a sketchbook and your favorite drawing tool–pencil, pen, colored pencils, whatever.
And then, get outside or sit inside or go to a coffee shop or wherever–but draw! Daily, weekly, it doesn’t matter. Just do it!
Add notes, snippets of prose, lists of birds, bugs or plants….anything you want.
Send me a message to join the loose group we’ve formed so you can get email prompts each week or just go it on your own.
Have fun!
I LOVE this time of year with all the new leaves and grasses showing up in their lovely limey spring greens….
The buds are just busting out all over
Check out these sweet flower buds and their little friends
Back lit leaves are always fun
and on old farms you can find things like forsythia growing amongst the wild shrubs and vines…
and in the midst of all that lovely spring green you may also find the beautiful pinks of quince, letting us know the hummingbirds and orioles will soon be dressing up our landscape even more.
This weekend I’ll be out and about at the first Nature Expo in Hyannis. Sponsored by the Hyannis Youth and Community Center this event involves just about all the nature and conservation organizations and related businesses from around the Cape.
Today we did programs with about 500 5th graders from the town of Barnstable! So much fun and so much energy! My program is about bats and the art activity is making a simple origami type bat. This is a part of our colorful bat cave wall.
Look for this banner and come by to say hello!
On Sunday it is Spring on Main Street and I’ll be on Main St. in Hyannis doing a chalk drawing on the sidewalk that all are invited to join in on.
