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Month: November 2016

Faraway Places: Roseburg, OR

Faraway Places: Roseburg, OR

On a recent trip to Roseburg, Oregon, I got to spend two days exploring the North Bank Habitat Management Area, a 6,500+ acre property, which is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for Columbian white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus leucurus). Columbian white-tailed deer are one of three subspecies of white-tailed deer in North America. They were listed as federally endangered in 1968, but the populations in Oregon and Washington have since rebounded enough that in 2013 their status…

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Rose Hip Jam

Rose Hip Jam

Two weeks ago I had a post about rose hips from Rosa rugosa (click here to read the original post), and discussed that they were a readily available wild edible, and a great source for vitamin C. I’d tasted the fruit in the past and really liked the taste, but I have been generally dissuaded from eating them more often due to the tediousness of picking out the seeds and scraping the small bit of flesh off the inside of…

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Bird Banding at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

Bird Banding at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

It is pretty general knowledge that many species of birds migrate as the weather starts to get cold. But the details about which species migrate, when they migrate, where they go, and which populations stay as year-round residents are best answered through long-term research projects such as bird banding. Although there are a variety of methods employed by researchers to capture birds for banding, the most common method is mist netting. Mist nets are made of practically invisible thin nylon…

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Tar Spot Fungus on Norway Maples

Tar Spot Fungus on Norway Maples

While admiring the colors of some of the remaining fall leaves on the trees around my neighborhood, I noticed that all the Norway maples (Acer platanoides) had leaves with conspicuous black spots on them. By late fall, its not uncommon for leaves to have a number of marks and blemishes, but these seemed unique to me in the regularity of their shape (the spots are almost completely round) and the darkness of the marks (almost black). Norway maples are not…

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Coral Fungi and Puffballs

Coral Fungi and Puffballs

A foraging trip in Falmouth today yielded a number of edible mushrooms (in addition to the sighting of a lot of interesting non-edible ones not described here). Basket of foraged edible mushrooms – Coral Fungi, Puffballs and Boletes. The first edible we came across was a Coral Fungi, Clavulina cinerea, also known as the Gray Coral fungi. The individuals we found were approximately 3 to 4 inches tall, and had an erect, coral-like shape, with many branches forming from the…

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First Frost and Rose Hips

First Frost and Rose Hips

Last night marked the first frost of the season in Bourne. Recording occurrences such as the first frost is important to the study of phenology. Phenology is the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena. The word itself is derived from the Greek word phaino, which means “to show or to make appear”, and the Greek word logos, which means “study”. Therefore, phenology is concerned with the dates of the first occurrence of biological events and natural phenomena in their…

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