If there’s one bird I can almost guarantee to see every day from my house, it’s a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura). And while most people are familiar with their high soaring flights, I have been luckily enough to catch them at an entirely different activity: waking up. Almost every morning over the last couple months, as my dog and I are taking our early morning walk, the turkey vultures in my neighborhood are only just starting to stir from their…
In my opinion, berry season is the best season. Scattered throughout the understory of forests and along field edges various kinds of berries, including blue berries, huckleberries, blackberries and black raspberries, are ripening. Wineberries (Rubus phoenicolasius), also called wine raspberries, are another edible berry ripening at this time. Less common and less well known than our native berries, wineberries were introduced from Asia for their ornamental value and with the goal of creating hybrids with red raspberries and blackberries. Wineberries…
Visit a salt marsh anywhere in Massachusetts and what you’ll see is an assemblage of grass species, largely indistinguishable from each other to the casual passerby. Although difficult to tell apart from a distance, and sometimes difficult even up close when their flowers or seeds are not present, salt marshes are generally comprised of a variety of species. One of the most common, however, is smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora). S. alterniflora grows 2 to 6 feet high and is typically…
It was a very butterfly-filled weekend for me. I attended the Thornton Burgess Nature Club’s monthly adult natural history program on Saturday. This month’s topic was “Butterflies” with an up close and personal look at a variety of species within the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History’s Butterfly House. Within the Butterfly House, I was able to closely observe monarchs (Danaus plexippus), red admirals (Vanessa atalanta), and question marks (Polygonia interrogationis). A newly emerged monarch butterfly. A question mark butterfly. …
To me, one of the quintessential summer-blooming wildflowers is the common St. John’s wort. By, or shortly after the summer solstice, you should start to see its sunny yellow blossoms everywhere. Common St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) can be distinguished from other Hypericum species by its five-petaled yellow flowers (with black dots on the margins) that are approximately 1-inch across, and its many branching stems, growing to a height of 1 to 3 feet, as well as its oblong oppositely…