Where’s the bear?

If you’re on the Cape or anywhere near, you know we have a very famous visitor here–a young black bear! Everyone’s talking about it and the jokes and stories are multiplying faster than mosquitoes around here. This guy is on the move and was noted in Brewster early yesterday morning. Well, it just so happened that my daughter, grandson and I were also headed to Brewster yesterday morning and yes, we were pretty excited about maybe seeing the bear along the way.

We were headed to the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and when we got there we found we were far from alone. A news helicopter was overhead, people with cameras and binoculars were everywhere and down the road were police cars and other official cars from various agencies charged with checking out the bear and keeping people safe.

Behind this scene were several dozen people scanning the marshes and nearby woods. This was taken at the corner of Paine’s Creek Rd. and Rt. 6A. Everyone was in a happy, anticipatory mood and I couldn’t help but feel that this little bear has made a lot of people happy. For all the chatter about how disconnected from nature we all are this moment proved that really, people want to be connected to nature. They are even a bit excited about it. Now, will these same people be excited 10 years from now if bears actually begin to repopulate the Cape? That’s another story. I remember when people were excited that coyotes were here back in the beginning. These days very few people are excited about coyotes and in fact many actually hate them.

In the end none of us saw the bear….

But over the past week we’ve seen lots of other things like this lobster shedding its shell in an aquarium at the museum…

or these lovely Jack-in-the-pulpit flowers in East Sandwich

or beautiful scenes like this one at Sandy Neck

One day this past week I even was witness to a wild swarming of winged carpenter ants that came and went in a matter of hours.

So……no bear photos but a great week to be outside nonetheless!

Late May on the beach….

It is only a few days before Memorial Day and the Cape Cod beaches are beautiful…and still pretty quiet so come for a walk with me…

First we’ll take a turn by the sweet smelling rosa rugosa’s which are blooming really early this year…

We will stop to admire the beach peas, also blooming really early….and while we’re at it we’ll look out over Nantucket Sound…

Here’s a close up of those lovely beach peas…

We’ll enjoy the view of the sliver that remains of Egg Island, that only shows up at low tide. That’s Great Island in Yarmouth in the background.

We’ll stop to look across Lewis Bay in the amazing light…

Check out some courting least terns…

and smile at the ones lined up at the edge of the water…

And then we’ll take one last long look at the sand, sea and sky before we head back to work…

Discovering new places….

I love getting out and discovering new places, especially here on the Cape where I’ve lived virtually my whole life. Over the next 7 weeks I’ll be leading art and nature walks on Saturday mornings for the Barnstable Land Trust and while preparing for these walks I’ve discovered some wonderful places. This morning we were at the Sydney Woodlands in Hyannis, a new piece of property for the BLT sandwiched between town watershed land and a very suburban neighborhood. You would never guess it to look at it but this area even has its own crystal clear spring outlet with drinkable water.

The area is off Pitcher’s Way heading south toward Craigville Beach Rd. and you would never know this little gem was there. It backs up to Simmons Pond on one end and Ben’s Pond on the other. We started off looking at the wonderful ground cover plants and doing some sketches. Star flower, Canada mayflower and sarsparilla are all in bloom–among the very healthy poison ivy plants.

We heard a lot of the usual bird suspects you would expect to find in a fragmented woodland and pond area like this–towhees, pine warblers, common yellowthroats, yellowwarblers, robins, catbirds, blue jays, red winged blackbirds, downy woodpeckers, white breasted nuthatches, song sparrows, titmice, grackles and so on….and at one point we heard the sounds of grackles in distress. It didn’t take us long to find their nest, or the cause of their distress….

Their nest was being raided by a Cooper’s hawk! The hawk landed nearby and began to enjoy its catch while the grackles continued making distress sounds.

After taking its fill the hawk turned, the young bird still in its talons, and flew into a tree nearby…

There, up high in the tree was its own nest. We watched it join the other adult bird which then took off, leaving this hawk with the food and the hungry young, which we could hear begging.

Look closely toward the top of the nest and hopefully you can see the hawk–its long tail is sticking out toward the right and just looks dark.

Soon the other hawk was raiding the same grackle nest and it became apparent right away that ma and pa grackle had made a dreadful mistake in their choice of nest location. These grackles will probably build a new nest, lay more eggs and try to raise more young but hopefully they will choose a different neighborhood….

Anyway, it was pretty exciting to find this hawk nest–which is very close to homes and busy paths. We know that Cooper’s hawks have adapted to suburban living with the proliferation of bird feeders offering them easy pickings and this was just one more example of that. Also, don’t feel too sorry for the grackles….they raid plenty of other bird nests themselves…

For more information on upcoming Barnstable Land Trust walks please check their website.

It’s time for the Mass Audubon Bird-a-thon again!

Please consider supporting me and my team as we raise funds for the Coastal Waterbird Program housed at the Long Pasture Sanctuary in Cummaquid. The event begins tonight at 6 p.m. and ends tomorrow at 6 p.m. but you can donate any time in the next week.

You can  donate through my First Giving page online or send a check to Coastal Waterbirds (please note my name, Mary Richmond, in a note, not on the check) to Long Pasture Sanctuary, Box 235, Cummaquid MA 02637

And here’s a quick video of a common yellow throat I spotted at Long Pasture just this morning!

 

 

Painting a few eggs and babies….

Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to go to some wonderful places, including gull nesting colonies, while working with people doing various bird studies, etc. The nest that I painted here was off Plymouth and I did many sketches and took many photos during the few days I was there helping someone weigh and measure baby gulls. These are most likely herring gulls since they were the prevalent bird nesting in that area but I can’t swear to that–when this tiny the baby black backs look similar and so do their eggs. Gull nests are built on the ground and have an average of 3 eggs. The baby in this nest has just hatched and you can see the pip, or hole being made by the next gull that will hatch.

I thought it might be fun to show you my process while I painted this. I don’t pretend it is perfectly done but it was fun to do.

First, I sketch in the basic shapes with a pencil and then lay in the first watercolor wash.

I build up the painting, layer by layer by adding different mixes of colors

Watercolors need to have their layers built up gradually, allowing for a lot of transparency and play with colors and their complements…

I start to add some details…

Continuing to add layers I am darkening the darkest parts but beginning to add more layers to the eggs and bird, too

More details, more layers, another wash or two…

and it’s done! The finished piece is 8 x 10″ and makes a nice addition to my bird painting portfolio. I hope you enjoyed seeing how it was done.

It’s Mayflower Time Again….

Although technically I spotted my first mayflowers in March today I saw them blooming everywhere. Mayflowers are the state flower of Massachusetts and they are a quiet little blossom that many people probably walk right by.

Usually you find them in patches along the sunny side of a trail. They like rather poor growing conditions and are often half buried by winter’s twigs and leaves…in the picture below the mayflowers are in the middle of the frame..

They don’t look like much, do they? But get down close to them and they are lovely and elegant and they smell wonderful…

Their leaves are often tattered and brown looking but you can often find new leaves forming, too. The leaves are tough and sort of hairy feeling. The blossoms are somewhat waxy and able to survive the changing weather that often marks our springs.

Also called trailing arbutus, mayflowers almost always bloom in April, which somehow amuses me. Maybe they bloom in May in other places but usually by May the blossoms here are gone.

You can find mayflowers in many of the Cape woodlands, especially those that have ponds –which is most of our woodlands.

While looking for mayflowers take note of the little Canada mayflower leaves that are beginning to poke up through the pine needles. Also, watch for the red unfurling leaves of sarsparilla, one of my favorite and most whimsical spring woodland flowers.

This is such a great time of year to get out and about–migrating birds are arriving almost daily, toads are trilling and everywhere you look new life seems to be opening up.

Do keep watch for ticks if you hit a woodland trail–they are everywhere already.

Humpbacks and Gannets in Provincetown

What a day! I spent the day with one of my daughters and a good friend heading down Cape to Provincetown. We hoped to see some whales but were generally happy to get out and about in Provincetown before the crowds hit.

It was much nicer there than we anticipated–the weather forecast had been iffy but when we got there it was pretty sunny. Later we would get clouds but the sun was nice.

Race Point was picture perfect and in the distance we saw hundreds of northern gannets diving and fishing. We even saw an Iceland gull fly by quite lazily. No pictures of these as my lens doesn’t really go that far.

Nice view though, huh?

The tide was very low and the flats went on forever into the horizon from our viewpoint on the edge of the breakwater.

This fellow and his dog were taking a leisurely meander across the sand…

Which seemed like a reasonable response to the circumstances.

Later, when we returned to Race Point we were treated to a fun show of multiple humpback whales spouting, feeding and slapping their flukes before diving. One pair seemed to be a mother and calf but from the distance it was hard to be sure, even with good binoculars. Yes, or no, it was still a spectacular show out there.

It was a great day to be in Provincetown, that’s for sure. If you go, be aware that much of Commercial St. is torn up and being worked on and walking down the street is trickier than usual. Maybe it will be done soon.

 

A day at the beach

is always better than a day at the office, don’t you think? I am very lucky because in many ways the beach, the woods, the ponds and the fields are my offices. They are the places i gather inspiration for my writing and for my art. They are where I work the best.

I love seeing the opreys on their nests

and watching a mockingbird search for food, singing all the while…

I love finding shells that look like the bleached out skeletons they really are….

and I love finding the washed up egg cases of whelks that look like twisted backbones along the high tide wrack…

And I love seeing the little piping plovers running in and out of the quiet waves as the tide recedes…

yep, a day at the beach sure beats a day inside an office….

A little sunshine on a cloudy day….

We really, really can’t complain too loudly about the month of March this year….It was so mild for so long that the little bit of cold, wind and sogginess that we are experiencing this week is nothing but a reminder of what March is usually like.

Yesterday, in fact, I found my first blooming mayflowers, trailing arbutus, in the woods. Technically, my young grandsons found them

and this morning, to counter the dark and dank day full of drizzle I brought a few daffodils inside to paint, to brighten up the day.

You can find this painting on display with many other botanical watercolors at my Mary Richmond Design Etsy Shop.

Signs of Spring are everywhere….

It’s no secret that it’s been an early spring but as I was out and about this week I took some pictures to share…

Skunk cabbage is easy to find around most wetlands and it is way ahead of itself this year…and it has the funkiest flowers.

And the red maples are starting to bloom, always one of my favorites…

Here’s a closeup of the lovely, delicate flowers…

and of course there are plenty of these still in bloom…click on the link to see a very short video…

Daffodil Hill

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