Highlights

JUNE 2021 - WRWA, Turtle Walk, Solar, Boiling Spring Walk...

ACTIVITY ALERT - Reminder - June's Turtle Walk Exploring the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve


This spring's Turtle Walk will be June 5, first Saturday of the month, at 7 a.m. 

Meet at Fighting Rock Corner at the intersection of Wilson, Bell Rock and Blossom Roads. Due to the terrible condition of some roads in the Bioreserve we suggest you come via Wilson Road, Fall River.  

Length of walk 1 to 2 miles. Wear appropriate walking/hiking shoes. On walks from now through October insect repellent is good to have. Rain cancels walk.
 
Turtles walking.


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INFO ALERT  - From our friends at Westport River Watershed Alliance (WRWA)


June is National Rivers Month! Throughout the month, WRWA will be holding a variety of guided activities including bird watching, Plein Air painting, a hike to the headwaters, and a paddle in the upper East Branch.
 

If interested, find more info here: https://westportwatershed.org/news-events/calendar-of-events/

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ACTIVITY ALERT - Exploring the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve, June's Turtle Walk 


Next Exploring the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve Walk will be July 10. Meeting location TBD. More info last week in June. Watch for it!

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Everyone loves turtles ..or do they? Saturday morning dawned sunny, warm and damp. Perfect morning for cold blooded turtles to be out and about laying their eggs and enjoying weather that reptiles love. Apparently a not so perfect morning for Homo sapiens since so few came on this walk in comparison with past Turtle Walks. The turtles didn't seem to mind.
 

You looking at me?



Momma Snappa.


Not a turtle. A friendly toadlet.


Lady slipper orchids                            

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INFO ALERT - Losing our New England countryside ....one solar panel at a time



 


In the race and scramble for alternative energy generation what is appropriate for locating solar arrays and what is not is rather fluid. Common sense tells us they shouldn't be sited on valuable forest or agriculture land ...but then we know common sense isn't really common.


Check this out - https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/solar-gone-wrong/


We support solar arrays properly sited without taxpayer subsidies. Such sites include brownfields and other industrially contaminated areas, capped landfills like Republic's Mount Trashmore in Fall River, the roof of the gigantic Amazon warehouse and other industrial and commercial buildings, powerline infrastructure, roadway surfaces, bridge superstructures, highway medians, parking lot solar canopies, etc., etc.


We are in the sixth extinction. The sixth mass extinction is happening worldwide now! More land connections are needed between fragmented wildlands if we are to keep our environment whole for ourselves and our wildlife neighbors. We need another Teddy Roosevelt or even Richard Nixon. Yes, Nixon. Under his administration came the Environmental Protection Agency, the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act.


It is still early in his presidency, but not looking good, at the moment, for Biden.   - https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063734011

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  INFO ALERT - This past Saturday we helped facilitate Westport River Watershed Alliance's walk to the Boiling Spring, a source of the East Branch, Westport River. The walk was part of WRWA's celebration of National Rivers Month. 

A rainy early morning, although it cleared by the time time hikers left the trailhead at 9 a.m., apparently dampened participation. Below are a few photos from the walk. All photos courtesy Liz Garant.

For more of June's WRWA River Month activities, go here:  https://westportwatershed.org/news-events/calendar-of-events/

 

A map of the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. Showing the watershed divide, in the Bioreserve, created by the ridges extending northeast and southwest from Copicut Hill. Copicut Hill is the highest natural topographical feature, at 344', in  southern Bristol County. Rainfall in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve west and north of the divide flows to the Taunton River/Narragansett Bay. All rainfall east and southeast of the divide flows to the Westport River/Buzzards Bay.

 



A colony of Allegheny mound ants near the trail leading to Boiling Spring. If you'd like to know more about these intriguing insects, read the article below the photos. 


 

Hikers viewing the Boiling Spring. Although the spring still flows, it doesn't "boil" as frequently as it did just a few years ago. Wonder if rainfall has changed or perhaps residential development to the east of the Bioreserve may be impacting the aquifer that feeds the spring? Any hydrologists out there with an opinion? 



A fisher pelt. The East Branch of the Westport River begins in seeps, springs, intermittent and permanent brooks that drain Atlantic white cedar bogs, red maple swamps and adjacent uplands of chestnut, hickories, oaks and pines. The indigenous Wampanoags and first Europeans utilized the headwaters area trapping furbearing animals for personal use as clothing and especially for trade. Furbearing mammals, mink, otter, skunk and raccoon are still common along the river. Fisher have returned from northern New England on their own and bobcats are moving east from central Massachusetts. Only the beaver is missing, but may soon return since they are found in the adjacent Taunton River watershed..


Allegheny Mound Ant (Formica exsectoides)

 

When you were a little kid and closer to the ground did you ever watch a battle between red ants and black ants? When outdoors playing did you ever inadvertently stand or sit next to a red ant mound? …OUCH!

 From Nova Scotia to Georgia and from Michigan and the Upper Midwest south to Kentucky the Allegheny mound ant is the “red” mound building species you likely encountered.

 Although commonly called “red” ants, Allegheny mound ants are actually reddish-orange on the head and thorax and black on the abdomen. Worker ants are about a quarter-inch long, queens a half-inch in length.

 These ants build large mounds in which to live and raise their young. These mounds serve as solar collectors providing warmth necessary for egg incubation. Worker ants kill nearby trees and shrubs with injections of formic acid to prevent any shading of their mound.

 Mounds are usually located in areas of dry, sandy, nutrient poor soil. As the ants construct their tunnels and chambers they bring up particles of sand and gravel piling them up higher and higher. A thriving Allegheny mound ant colony may have a mound four feet high and four feet underground.

 Allegheny mound ants are alert and they post sentries to sound the alarm if their mound is threatened. A large mound contains thousands of aggressive workers ready to lay down their lives in defense of their mound. They are quick to bite and their mandibles will lock on even if their head is separated from their body. The stinging sensation one feels from the bite is due to the formic acid injected at the bite site.

 Unlike most ants, Allegheny mound ants can have more than one queen. Young mated queens may stay in their home mound or they may leave to start their own colony. New mounds often have tunnels connecting them to the original mound.

 Allegheny mound ants eat small arthropods and insects, including other ants. They also protect and tend aphids and eat the sweet secretions the aphids produce.

 A number of spider species and large predatory insects will catch an Allegheny mound ant away from its mound and devour it. Some insect eating birds, especially flickers, enjoy an ant meal. In the SMB striped skunks are known to raid a mound for the eggs and ant larvae until the biting stings of the angry worker ants drive them away.

 If out hiking within the range of the Allegheny mound ant watch for their large, obvious mounds. They are a marvel of insect engineering.

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Bike Fall River:

Ride Around the Taunton River

On a beautiful Friday morning a group of 8 riders circumnavigated the Taunton River.  Our ride started at the Park & Ride in Somerset. Along the way we stopped at the Dighton Boat Launch for a panoramic view of the Taunton River.  We then rode over the Dighton/Berkley bridge and stopped on the Berkley side for refreshments and a pit stop.  We then decided to check out Dighton State Park for another beautiful view of the river.  To the north we could see the Dighton/Berkley Bridge. Across the river we could see the boat yard we had passed on the Dighton side.  Proceeding a little further we found Conspirator’s Island.  This is where Loyalists plotted their next steps in the Revolutionary War.  The next leg was the hardest, with many hills on the east side of the river.  Finally, we acrossed the Veterans Memorial Bridge, back into Somerset.  What a fantastic day...
 

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INFO ALERT - Celebrate National Pollinator Week June 21 to 27, 2021


35% of our food crops and approximately 85% of all flowering plants depend on pollinators
 
We are losing our pollinators. Local wild pollinators include native bees and non-native, feral, honey bees; flower wasps and flies; butterflies and moths; various species of pollen/nectar beetles and hummingbirds.

It is a wonder there are any insect pollinators left.  Uncontrolled development, continuing fragmentation and loss of our forests and wildlands, climate change, rampant use of pesticides and herbicides, landscape wide application of neurologically disrupting neonicotinoids and incessant seasonal spraying/fogging by county mosquito "control" of synthetic pyrethroids all show how dumb we are. If we continue to lose our pollinators we jeopardize the survival of our own species.

Losing the rusty patch bumblebee.  https://www.fws.gov/midwest/endangered/insects/rpbb/



 
A wild pollinator garden at the Mill Brook Bogs Wildlife Management Area within the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve.
 
 

A close-up of the bottom panel of the above sign.



A leaf-cutter bee house 


Go here to see what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has to say about pollinators. https://www.fws.gov/pollinators/

Looking for ways to celebrate National Pollinator week? Check here: https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator.org/assets/generalFiles/2021-
Pollinator-Week-Toolkit.pdf


 

 

 

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