Wildlife Watch

Spring Pools Spring has sprung in a way typical of New England: on and off rain, alternating warm and cold days, occasional spits of snow. This is the time of year that amphibians most love. On rainy nights at the end of March or early April that are 40 degrees or above, frogs and salamanders … Read more

Happy Spring? Lately, I’ve been having fun writing poetry, mostly about my walks. They are “prose poems”, they have no rhyme and no meter. In this free form, I can just concentrate on describing my senses and emotions as a “stream of consciousness”. If you write poetry, or want to try it in any form, … Read more

Winter has finally arrived. When the snow flies so do the birds, arriving at our feeders in larger numbers. We get many different little brown birds that on quick inspection we may lump together as “sparrows”. But on closer inspection, we see that they are house sparrows, female house finches, Carolina wrens, fox sparrows, song … Read more

Happy New Year! At this time of year, I like to review your wildlife reports from the past year. It has been a very different year in many ways. For much of 2022 we underwent high temperatures and severe drought. Even this winter has been warm. We have had no notable snow as I write … Read more

The winter of 2022 is predicted to be an irruption year for grosbeaks, winter finches and red-breasted nuthatches. Lucky us! An irruption of birds occurs in winters when the cone crop in Maine and Canada is insufficient to feed these birds that rely on it. The north looks to have a poor cone crop this … Read more