Newsletters
September 2016 - Pileated Woodpecker, Wood Lily, Gentian
WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES !
SEPTEMBER, 2016
“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
-Niccolo Machiavelli
“The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.”
- Kathryn Shulz
RECEIVED FROM OUR READERS – This month's cache of interesting stuff
Good news. Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument.https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/08/24/president-obama-designates-national-monument-maines-north-woods
A little exploration. https://bangordailynews.com/2016/08/25/outdoors/into-the-north-
woods-exploring-maines-newest-national-monument/?ref=moreInstate
More good news for our overexploited planet. Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument expanded.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/us/politics/obamas-action-will-create-largest-marine-reserve-on-earth.html?_r=0
Drought and logging. Dead trees have ecological value. Oftentimes better to leave things alone. https://www.hcn.org/issues/48.13/california-plans-to-log-its-drought-killed-trees
The importance of dead trees. http://www.ecowatch.com/dont-get-burned-by-misinformation-about-dead-trees-and-wildfire-1957452382.html
Not only in Florida. Similar problem right here locally. Failure to address nutrient loading of our wetlands and waterways from all sources. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/commentary/fl-viewpoint-algae-20160805-story.html
The resource extractors always object. http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-marine-monument-20160805-snap-story.html
Bad move on Chatham's part. Getting their way would set a bad precedent and threaten our federal public lands. http://www.capecodtimes.com/article/20160815/OPINION/160819812
More on losing our federal public lands.http://www.santafenewmexican.com/opinion/commentary/commentary-extremists-want-to-give-away-public-lands/article_f7199e1d-4bfc-56bc-9929-e49dc4eb3338.html
Climate and economy. https://www.c-span.org/video/?408207-1/discussion-focuses-climate-change-us-economy
Current science on bird migration on the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty. https://www.c-span.org/video/?408207-1/discussion-focuses-climate-change-us-economy
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court nixes pipeline tax.http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/08/states_highest_court_strikes_d.html
Celebrating our National Park Service's National Seashores. http://chronicle.augusta.com/life/travel/2016-08-20/celebrate-national-park-services-centennial-soak-rays-sand#
Local and not so local osprey migrations. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/08/21/world/science-health-world/scientists-unravel-mysteries-osprey-migration/#.V7xc4vkrLIV
Hot? http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/20/sunday-review/climate-change-hot-future.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opini
Good article on Flint's water crisis. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/magazine/flints-water-crisis-and-the-troublemaker-scientist.html?_r=1
PLYMOUTH GENTIAN – A delicate and beautiful wildflower
Plymouth gentian blooming in Dartmouth, Massachusetts
Plymouth gentian, Sabatia kennedyana, is a rare wetland wildflower dependent on fluctuating water levels for its survival. Found in only a few scattered locations, from South Carolina to Nova Scotia, we are fortunate to have them right here in our neck of the woods.
The Plymouth gentian is listed as a “Species of Special Concern” in Massachusetts. For more information on this beautiful and intriguing wildflower go here: http://www.mass.gov/eea/docs/dfg/nhesp/species-and-conservation/nhfacts/sabatia-kennedyana.pdf
SO MANY PAID A LOT TO DO SO LITTLE – DCR's mantra? “Underfunded and understaffed.”
It will be four years this December and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) has yet to repair the Watuppa Wampanoag Heritage Trail, hillside and brook that they allowed to be damaged through their negligence.
The public forests and parklands that they so poorly manage, at high cost it appears, are our naturalheritage. Could it be the top managers don't care? That they acquired their lucrative positions via political patronage and could care less whether they are working for DCR or some other state agency as long as they are being well compensated?
Over the past three years our newsletters have contained almost monthly photos showing damage and neglect in the Freetown-Fall River State Forest, a part of the greater Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. It continues.
As we've mentioned in prior articles the problems at Freetown ...and probably other DCR “managed” properties too ...result from lack of responsible leadership, management and guidance from the top, not a lack of willingness on the part of the poorly compensated state employees at the very bottom of the DCR employee pyramid.
Check out these DCR salaries. Our local state forest is getting very little bang from our bucks spent on this crew. Thanks to the Boston Herald for keeping taxpayers informed via their public payroll updates. Check it out here: http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/databases/payroll?database=-2&year=1&last_name=&department_name=Conservation+and+Recreation
DCR also spends millions on questionable new projects across the state. One would think their millions would first be spent on maintenance and repair before spending on new projects. According to some reports their sanctioned 2015 Blue Hills Reservation deer hunt cost taxpayers $2,300 for every deer killed. A few years ago they spent millions enlarging their ill-sited Ponkapoag Golf Course, irresponsibly destroying wetlands in the process, yet they can't spend a few dollars to repair damage to the Freetown State Forest that they allowed to occur and that is still occurring. Shameful!
This month's DCR photo of shame. DCR enlarges a formerly attractive woodland trail by chipping nearby trees and brush and blowing chips into deep windrows that will take years todecompose. As can be seen in other locations in the forest, where chips have been left in deep piles, the first plant colonizers will be invasive species such as European thistle, multiflora rose and autumn olive.
BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – Wood Lily (Lilium philidelphicum)
Many New England wildflowers are small, shy and have to be searched for at the right time of year when in full bloom.
Not the wood lily. The wood lily shouts! Here's a showy wildflower. Our largest and brightest lily in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. Be careful not to confuse the wood lily flower with the slightly smaller and less intensely colored flower of the Turk’s cap lily, Lilium superbum. The turk's cap lily prefers to grow in sunny wetlands, wet meadows and along the side of roadside ditches and streams. Wood lilies prefer dry feet and grow best in full and partial sun in woodland clearings, edges of country roads, utility corridors and old pasture land.
Wood lilies grow from large bulbs and their single stalk may reach three feet in height. Long, linear leaves grow in whorls around the lily stalk. At the top of the stalk form flower buds that open in early summer. The large, red to orange funnel shaped flowers, one to five in number, are three to five inches across. Some blossoms have dark red dots on a yellow background deep within the funnel. Others have the dots without any yellow. Long protruding anthers (pollen bearing part of a flower) are red.
These lilies are not fragrant. Pollinators are attracted by blossom color and size. The flowers are hermaphroditic, containing both male and female parts. After pollination by bees, butterflies and other insects a large three-sided pod forms. By late summer the seed pods mature, split open and release numerous large brown seeds.
Deer eat wood lilies and where deer are abundant wood lilies aren't. Turkeys and various forest rodents will dig up and devour the bulbs.
BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocarpus pileatus)
Photo- By Joshlaymon (cc by-sa 3.0) creativecommons
Back home at last.
Forests in southern New England were just about all gone by the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The demands of agriculture, industry, and wood to fuel trains and heat homes destroyed the resource and folks looked north.
Our friend Henry David Thoreau lamented the loss of his local woods and in his “Ktaadin and the Maine Woods,” published in 1848, he writes of loggers in Maine, “The mission of men there seems to be, like so many demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain side, as soon as possible.”
At that time in Massachusetts not only was the forest gone, but along with the forest went the pileated woodpecker, most of the deer, bear, and beaver, and all of the wild turkeys, fishers, wolves, mountain lions and a bunch of other forest adapted species of flora and fauna.
New England farmers, giving up on their mostly rock and gravel hardscrabble farms, moved west presenting an opportunity for the forest to slowly return. With that return ...and aided by the new science of wildlife management ...came the deer, bear, turkey, fisher and other forest dependent species.
It has taken over a hundred years, but the pileated woodpecker has finally returned to the forests of southeastern Massachusetts. How long they stay will be determined by what happens to the forest they have returned to.
While here, let's welcome back these grand woodpeckers.
With the unfortunate extinction of North America's huge ivory billed woodpecker the smaller pileated is now the largest woodpecker in the United States.
These woodpeckers are mostly solid black with white trim. They have a red crest and males have a red slash just to the rear of their bill. The slash in females is black. Similar to a common crow in size, pileateds are 15 to 20 inches long and have a 25 to 30 inch wingspan. Like most other woodpeckers they have an undulating flight.
Although it took them a long time to return to southeastern Massachusetts they are presently common in forested areas throughout much of North America.
Pileateds have a loud, raucous, laughing call. The also loudly drum on trees when feeding and especially when staking out a territory. A pair of pileateds needs at least 300 acres of forest to settle in and raise a family. They are permanent residents and do not migrate. They patrol their territory year round.
Pileated woodpeckers relish wood boring beetles and grubs, but their favorite food is the carpenter ant. They will also occasionally eat nuts, fruits and berries.
These woodpeckers make very characteristic rectangular holes when digging out insect prey. If nesting season, the male enlarges one of his feeding holes into a nesting chamber. If the female approves of the nesting chamber and the male they mate. Shortly thereafter the female pileated lays three to five eggs. Both sexes incubate and the eggs hatch in roughly two weeks. Pileated chicks can fly and leave the nest by the end of the summer.
Like other tree cavity nesting birds and mammals their eggs and young are preyed on by other forest species that can climb or fly. Fishers, raccoons, opossums and weasels may raid the nest for eggs or young.Newly fledged young and unobservant adult birds can be taken by large hawks and owls.
We think it is great that the pileated woodpecker is back in southeastern New England. Hopefully they won't be driven out again.
SEPTEMBER – Summer meets Autumn
Another summer is almost over and Mother Nature knows it.
Shorebirds have already started out on their endless migrations. Tiny blue-wing teal ducks are the first ducks heading south. Hummingbirds will be leaving early in the month.
The few monarch butterflies left in New England will be gathering along the coast to fuel up on goldenrod nectar for their long migration to Mexico. Follow the monarchs.https://www.learner.org/jnorth/monarch/News.html
Bears, raccoons, chipmunks and squirrels will be eating nuts or eating and stashing away seeds and nuts for snacks during the coming winter.
Wild grapes and hickory nuts ripen and if we get some September showers colorful mushrooms will magically appear on the forest floor.
September and October are perfect months for exploring natural New England. Sunny days, mild temperatures, fewer biting insects than in the summer.
Click on our calendar for other activities.
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