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Bought fantastic sweet corn the previous summer from that nice farmer at that vegetable stand in front of the corn field. Go back this summer and the corn field is a 40 acre solar “farm.”

Went away for two weeks on vacation. Arrive home and see the beautifully forested 30 acre woodlot next door is now a vast expanse of mud and stumps and solar panels being assembled.

Are we crazy? Who wants to live in a New England with a landscape blighted by solar panels where forests used to be and farm fields dead under row after row of metal and plastic?

We are all for solar, wind, geothermal, hydro and other alternative energy sources ...properly sited.

Living in a heavily populated area, where most of our food has to be imported at a great expense of energy and labor, shouldn't we be using our farmland to maximum advantage for growing food? Does the energy produced by a few solar panels on a farm field exceed the energy cost used to deliver food to New England that could have been produced on that field had it not been turned into a solar energy collector?

Why are we spending our tax dollars, providing funding and giving incentives for such folly? Without those funding sources most of these solar companies would shrink back to the states they came from.

New England forests, private and public, provide tremendous benefits. Selectively logged they provide wood. They sequester carbon and give off oxygen. They shelter beautiful and unique native wildlife species and provide areas for outdoor recreation. During and long after storms, forested watersheds filter water and allow for controlled flow to drinking water reservoirs and into aquifers.

Only very foolish people would sacrifice their farmland and forests for such miniscule amounts of energy.

In Massachusetts there are millions of square feet available on roads and along roads, in median strips, parking lots, urban “brownfield” sites, rooftops, bridges, etc. where solar collectors could more appropriately be installed.

Save our irreplaceable forests and agricultural land. Massachusetts bridges, such as the long and large Route I-195 (Braga)bridge could be covered in solar panels. Why not too, the southeast, south and southwest sides of those humungous 500' cooling towers?

BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – Gray Birch (Betula populifolia)

A case of mistaken identity. Many southern New Englanders call our native gray birch ...white birch. They are wrong. The white, paper, or canoe birch (Betula papyrifera) is a tree of the north. Although one will find a few white birch strays in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve and other area forests and woodlots, white birch is a tree preferring higher latitudes and longer winters than what we experience here in southern New England.

The gray birch is a small, pyramidal-shaped tree, often with multiple trunks, rarely growing more than twenty feet in height. This birch has grayish-white bark that is tight to the tree unlike the loose and peeling bark of the white birch.

On the gray birch tree trunk, beneath each branch is a black slash mark. The leaves are roughly triangular in shape with toothed edges and dark green in color. In fall the leaves turn light yellow. This birch is a prolific stump sprouter hence the often multiple trunks.

Gray birch is monoecious, having both male and female flowers (catkins) on the same tree. The flowers appear in early spring. Male catkins droop and are up to four inches long. Female catkins are one-quarter to one-half inch long and erect. Following pollination of the female catkins by wind, small cone-like fruits, called samaras, develop. These samaras mature over summer and during late fall and winter are released to the wind.

Gray birch is native to New England, eastern New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and in Canada from southeastern Quebec east to the Maritime Provinces.

Gray birch is a quick growing early successional species beating out other trees in appearing first on abandoned pastureland and in farm fields, forest burn areas, old spent quarries, gravel pits and other such disturbed sites. It prefers well-drained sandy to rocky soils, but can also be found along disturbed wetland edges.

During hot and humid summers gray birch often suffers from leaf miners, aphids, wood borers and from various canker causing fungal diseases. Sapsuckers drill holes to feed on birch sap in winter and late winter/early spring appearing mourning cloak butterflies, fresh out of hibernation, feed from these same sapsucker sap sources.

Although not a preferred food, beavers and porcupines will gnaw the bark to reach the cambium layer. Juncos, chickadees, siskins, sparrows, redpolls and other winter woodland birds eat the seeds and ruffed grouse feed on the catkins and buds. Deer and snowshoe hares browse the twigs and foliage.

Gray birch is sometimes used in the manufacture of plywood and light furniture. It also makes good kindling wood.

BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Acadian Flycatcher (Empidonax virescens)

Photo - Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Acadian flycatcher is a noetropical migrant that barely reaches southern and southeastern Massachusetts during its summer breeding season and never gets anywhere near Canada's Acadia. During the summer season, in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve, this approximately five inch long flycatcher can be found in mature deciduous woodlands along streams and wet ravines, often nesting in understory beech groves.

These small flycatchers spend the winter in southern Central America, Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador. In summer they are found in closed-canopy forests east of the Great Plains and from southern New England to mid-Florida west to east Texas.

Both male and female are similarly attired. Olive-green and gray plumage, darkening on their upper parts, horizontal white wing bars, pale eye ring and buffy-gray to light-yellowish breast and underparts. The Acadian flycatcher is not a showy bird and is often first noticed by hearing its sharp, frequently uttered, “pee-sah” call.

Like other flycatchers Acadians feed by darting from a favorite perch to pick flying insects out of the air. They can also hover in place while hunting their insect prey and will also feed on caterpillars, spiders and other invertibrates plucked off leaves and tree branches.

When Acadian flycatchers arrive in the spring the males stake out a territory and attract a mate by chasing a female around, hovering and displaying before her. After mating the female builds a small, cup-shaped nest of grass, vines and twigs in a fork of a horizontal tree branch. Once the nest is complete the female lays two to four brown-flecked white eggs. The eggs hatch at the end of their second week of incubation. The nestlings can fly after another two weeks.

Acadian flycatchers often raise two broods a summer. While the males feed the newly fledged chicks from their first brood many females are laying another batch of eggs for a second brood.

Cowbirds often lay their eggs in Acadian flycatcher nests and in fragmented forest areas, attractive to cowbirds, cowbirds may seriously harm Acadian flycatcher populations.

Other natural enemies of Acadian flycatchers include arboreal snakes, small species of hawks and owls and tree foraging climbing mammals such as raccoons, opossums and fishers.

SHAME ON DCR – January's DCR Photo of Shame

Commissioner Roy, pick up your trash! This discarded trash and its can are over by East Rock in the Freetown State Forest portion of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. Been there for many years.

The problems at the dysfunctional Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) go way beyond lack of funding and short staff. Don't let them use that as an excuse for their lack of care and management.

Our past e-newsletters go into detail on a fraction of DCR's Freetown State Forest problems. They are many and varied.

Although more pronounced at Freetown than at other state forests and parks, due to lack of outrage from area citizens and legislators, other DCR forests and unimproved parks have some similar problems that are also ignored.

Unlike the Freetown State Forest dirt bike and all-terrain-vehicle free for all, Myles Standish State Forest prohibits that activity, but apparently, from the complaints below, it doesn't matter.

Here are some comments from the Myles Standish State Forest Facebook site. “We were having a lovely ride this morning when 3 dirt bikes blasted up behind us on the blue blazed pine barren trail just off Liggett road. Nearly put 2 very experienced riders in the dirt. It's a crime the way they are destroying the trail. Reported it to Park Watch.”

“Yes they've absolutely destroyed the Pine Barren Path at the east end of the park. Makes me so mad I could spit daggers.”

“The Pine Barrens Trail north of Halfway Pond Road to the Power Lines has been restored by the Friends of MSSF and with funding from generous equestrians. The dirt bike problem will persist until the Environmental Police start to actually do something.”

“In just a few months they have destroyed that section as well. I rode it Thursday and the dirt bikes have dug trenches and banked the corners.”

“Damn, 30 hours of work and $1,100.00 of machine rental later...“

Let's euthanize DCR and put our state forests, reservations, wildlife sanctuaries and unimproved parklands in a new Massachusetts Department of Natural Resources or Massachusetts Department of Public Lands and Waters. Maybe you have a better title? Maybe a better idea? Let us know.

WINTER SCENES FROM THE BIORESERVE

Every season out in natural New England comes with unique activities to do and different things to see. These winter scenes, below, look quite different when viewed during the other seasons of the year. Have a camera? Go take your own photos out in the Bioreserve or in other area forests and woodlands this winter. Take them again in spring, summer and fall. Amazing ...isn't it?

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