I know this is true…
This little girl was jumping up and down, pulling her friend’s hair and screaming really loudly just before she sat down to draw….she sat like this for over half an hour filling page after page with pictures of leaves, flowers, birds and bugs…. Continue reading
This post was originally published in the Cape Codder on August 10, 2012 as my column, Nature’s Ways. It has been a popular column so I am reprinting it here for readers who do not get the Cape Codder (since it is not available online)
Gather any group of folks of a certain age and at some point in the conversation the point will be made that when we were young our parents sent us out for the day and told us to come home when the street lights came on. Some had a bell to listen for, some had a lesson to be home for but mostly, we ran pretty freely through our neighborhoods, the woods, the fields and around the ponds. It doesn’t take long for these same groups to lament the lack of freedom today’s kids have accompanied by a lot of head shaking and making of concerned faces but no solutions are really offered. Everyone just agrees that the world has changed, alas….. Continue reading
It must be summer on Cape Cod because days are busy around here….
I’ve been leading walks for families….
Hanging out with the Junior Rangers on Sandy Neck….
Hosting an art and nature table at Hyannis Harbor on Thursday nights…. Continue reading
I am presently working on a coloring and activity book with a Cape Cod theme and while doing my programs this summer came up with a small, easily downloadable booklet called “My Cape Cod Beach.Book.” It is printed on both sides of one piece of paper, cut in half and either tied together with string or yarn or stapled. It fits easily into a pocketbook or backpack and is great for those times kids have to spend waiting….
Here’s a quick picture tutorial of how to put your booklet together. Ordering information is at the end of this post. Continue reading
This weekend has been picture perfect here on the Cape and I’ve been lucky enough to be outside enjoying it almost all weekend long. Yesterday we headed down Cape for a long meander and while doing so decided to see if the wood lilies were in bloom in Truro.
They were. It took us a while to find them because first I had to remember how to get to Bearberry Hill in Truro. On the way to finding it we found some other wonderful places and to be honest, it was such a lovely summer day we would have been hard pressed not to find wonderful scenery wherever we ended up. Continue reading
This column was published this past week in the Cape Codder and has elicited a huge response from my readers. Since it is not available online I am posting it here.
Nature’s Ways, 6-29-12
By Mary Richmond
Ode to a Catbird
Way back when, in 1964 when I turned 10 to be exact, my grandmother gave me a beautiful hard bound copy of John K. Terres collection called “The Audubon Book of True Nature Stories.” I had read all the Thornton Burgess stories and any other nature stories I could find but this was my first book of “grown up” nature stories and I read it over and over. It was in these pages that I first met Crip, the brown thrasher from “Crip, Come Home!” that revisited Ruth Rowland Thomas’s home each spring and summer. Like her, I fell in love with him. Crip still carries on from my bookcase in spirit though he himself is long gone.
I have been thinking about Crip and the woman who loved him this week for I have my own Crip of sorts. Mine is a gray catbird and to be fair, I have no way to be sure it is the same bird I see each spring but each year for the last seven years a catbird arrives each spring and chases the resident winter mockingbird from its preferred territory and begins to sing. It usually doesn’t take long for him to attract a mate for he has some prime real estate safe in a holly tree, close to a garden and a feeder and a good supply of fresh water. He’s also quite handsome.
There’s something about a catbird that amuses me, perhaps going back to when, as a child, I would hear them “mewing” in the branches just out of reach of our feisty cat. Even as a youngster I knew the bird was taking a risk mocking a cat like that but in most cases the bird prevailed. It would be years before I realized that the catbird was a successful mimic and could sing its own melodic but often confusing song long after dusk began to creep upon the land. Catbirds come by their mimicry honestly, being related to mockingbirds and brown thrashers. Continue reading
When I was a kid we found beautiful scallop shells at almost every south side beach on the Cape but especially at Kalmus and Dowse’s Beaches. Due to over harvesting and the depletion of eelgrass beds the population of these tasty little scallops, also called bay scallops, crashed. It is slowly rebounding and once again I can find scenes like this one on my early morning walks….
Blue eyed scallops are bivalves, having two shells. Often their shells don’t match which makes collecting different colored shells easy and fun. They only live about 2 years and grow to about 3″ max. Continue reading
Our calendars say summer is still a few days away but according to the meteorologists the meteorological summer began on June 1 and it sure has been feeling and looking like summer here on Cape Cod already.
I’ve been out in fields and meadows a lot lately so thought I’d share some of my field flower photos.
Yarrow is always easy to spot. Some of it is yellow and some is pink but so far all I’ve seen is the white variety.
Indigo is just coming into bloom and is very common in our fields and along roadsides.
If you look at it closely you can see it is related to the peas.
You might also see sweet pea–but it is not a wildflower, just an escapee…
Several kinds of clover are in bloom, including the common white clover we have in our yards
And there is also the pretty pink or red clover as well as the fuzzy rabbit foot clover…
And of course everyone’s favorite–including the Monarch butterfly’s–the milkweed…
I’ll post more over the week but these are all in bloom right now and easy to find.
One of the pleasures of wandering about with no real agenda or expectations is that one sometimes comes across a real gem….
How beautiful is this little flower? It was just standing there with another of its kind in a little old wild cranberry bog in the middle of the dunes in Sandy Neck in Barnstable and was only about 5-6″ high.. I was there leading an art and nature group this past weekend and we had special permission to do some meandering but this little cranberry bog is actually right off to the side of a main trail going out to the beach from the marsh side–about 4 miles out.
This sweet ‘bog orchid’ is known as Rose Pogonia, Pogonia ophioglossoides and according to Mario DiGregorio is not as rare as you might think. In fact, back in the day this little flower was so commonly found in cranberry bogs that young girls were paid a penny a plant to rid the bogs of these pesky “weeds.”
The other name for this plant is Snakeweed, due to its ragged, tongue like appearance. Look for it in old cranberry bogs, especially in dune areas like High Head and Sandy Neck. You can find more information in the wonderful Cape Cod Wildflowers: A Vanishing Heritage by Mario DiGregorio and Jeff Wallner.
When we arrived at the beach around noon the sun was shining brightly, the sky was blue and there were some big puffy clouds on the horizon…
As we walked along the shore the clouds got thicker and thicker…
They looked very dramatic over the dunes…
and on the backside of the dunes the bright light lit up the sand against the violet and blue clouds…
We began to feel a few drops of rain and began to walk a little faster….
and faster….
and the rain got a little heavier but all the while parts of the sky remained bright blue…
Yep, just another day at the beach….
Photos taken today on Kalmus Beach in Hyannis.