Category Archives: Nature

Harbor seals

Sunday night’s storm left enough snow to make walking difficult on our habitual routes, so this afternoon I walked along the piers nearest our apartment. I walked out State Pier, past the crane belonging to the Cuttyhunk Ferry Company, dodged a pickup truck driving past the wire and rigging warehouse of New Bedford Ship Supply, watched the Martha’s Vineyard ferry head out of the harbor, dodged another pickup truck belonging to the state environmental police, and went down to the end of the pier to take a look at the harbor in the waning light of a cloudy evening.

When I got to the end of State Pier, I was following a Red-breasted Merganser quite close to the pier when I swuddenly found myself looking into the face of a Harbor Seal (Phoca vitulina) down in the water less than fifty feet away. It looked up at me, and I looked down at it. Another seal head popped up out of the water next to the first; two more seals rolled up out of the water farther out. The first seal dove under the water, and resurfaced again at a safer distance from the pier; I could hear the second seal breathing, a sort of huff–ffff sound as it exhaled sharply and then inhaled; then it dove under the surface and disappeared.

It is really remarkable to come upon such a large mammal in the middle of an urban environment. And seals are large, typically some five feet long and weighing over 250 pounds — in other words, about the size of a small American Black Bear (Ursus americanus). If I came across a Black Bear while I was walking around downtown New Bedford, I’d doubtless feel a tingling of fear and a little bit of awe; because seals stick to the water, I don’t feel fear when I see them, but the sense of awe is definitely there. I don’t feel that same awe when I look at a merganser or a gull — they’re too different, and I don’t feel much of anything when I look in their faces — but a seal has a real and recognizable face, and it’s pretty much the same size as I am.

I stood watching the seals for quite a while. At one point, I counted seven seals with their heads above the surface of the water, or just having gone under the surface moments before. I stood stock still, and after a while they began to ignore me, and they came in closer to the pier. I listened to a couple more of them breathing, huff-ffff. At last a deepwater lobster boat came close by going one way, and a small tugboat passed close by going the other way, and the seals moved further away from the pier. The light was beginning to fade, so I headed home.

Citizen science for urban dwellers

I just discovered the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Urban Bird Studies program. Urban Bird Studies consists of a number of interesting citizen science projects observing birds and bird behaviors in cities: Pigeon Watch, Crows Count, Dove Detectives, and Gulls Galore. As you might have guessed from the names of the individual projects, the target audience for these projects appears to be kids, and they have lots of photos of school groups full of cute kids with clipboards.

Nonetheless, it looks like there’s some pretty interesting science underlying each of these projects. For example, the Gulls Galore project aims to gather data to help ornithologists understand when and in what ways adult gulls relate to subadults and juveniles. And just looking at the tally sheets and the study site habitat form help me better understand what ornithologists do.

Better yet, Cornell Lab of Ornithology understands that it’s a Good Idea to help us urban dwellers to observe and understand our urban ecosystems, through careful observations of selected species. Now I’m trying to decide if I have the time to work on the gull project — it sounds like fun.

Eight things I noticed on the beach yesterday evening

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

A Herring Gull swooped down onto the beach a hundred yards in front of me, carrying something large in its bill. Through the binoculars, I could see that the gull was carrying a fish, maybe a flounder, that looked too big for it to swallow. A young gull stood nearby, watching and hoping the older gull would drop the fish. The adult gull tossed the fish in the air, dropped it several times, tried to maneuver it so the fish’s head was pointing down the gull’s throat, and then, so quickly I didn’t see it, swallowed the fish. I could see a bulge in the gull’s throat. It swallowed hard a couple of times, then flew away.

A light rain shower passed over the beach, leaving the sand pockmarked with tiny craters where the big raindrops had hit.

I looked out over Saco Bay as the rain showers passed. The sun broke through the clouds in the west, and lit up Eagle Island, which is a mile or so out in the bay. The island stood out, bright and green, against the dark blue clouds and the dark gray sea. More sun came out, and picked out the tops of waves as they broke against the beach, turning them from a dull color to brilliant white.

Bits of a rainbow appeared in the sky: two short, bright bands at the horizon, marking out the north and south points of the bay; and pieces here and there against the dark clouds, so faint that at times I wasn’t sure if I was seeing them or not.

A Common Tern hovered over the water. I managed to get my binoculars up in time to watch it break out of its hover, plunge into the sea, and emerge with a small fish in its bill. It flew up, tossed the fish back and swallowed it, and shook itself dry as it flew off looking for more fish.

Halfway out to Eagle Island, fifty or sixty white specks appeared in a sudden ray of sun, circling around, hovering, and plunging into the sea.

Through some odd optical effect that I don’t understand, broad rays of alternating light and dark appeared in the clouds, radiating out from Wood Island; or perhaps I should say, converging down towards Wood Island. If I wasn’t aware that the sun was almost directly behind me, I would have thought that the sun must have been behind Wood Island, as if somehow the sun were setting in the east southeast, instead of in the west.

A dozen Bonaparte’s Gulls stood on the beach, keeping an eye on me now and then, but mostly doing nothing. They were all molting, losing the crisply-defined black heads of their breeding plumage, losing the odd tail feather, looking rather bedraggled. Presumably, these were first-year birds that never made it all the way up to the breeding grounds in Canada, and so here they sat on the coast of Maine, molting and waiting for the fall migration to begin in earnest. It was a poignant sight, an anticipation of the end of summer.

Posted two days after the fact — I’m a little behind in posting due to spotty Internet access here in Cambridge.

Friday the 13th?

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

This was the last day of children’s program of the religious education conference at Ferry Beach. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6, and this morning we ended up with the 5th and 6th graders.

The morning did not start off well. The children were tired and a little cranky to begin with. Then they found out that they would not be allowed to watch the “Banathalon.” The Banathalon is a strange Ferry Beach tradition — a relay race where instead of passing a baton you pass a banana from one competitor to the next. Years ago, it started out like a triathalon, with running, bicycling, and swimming legs, and then at the end someone had to eat the banana-baton. Over the years, other legs have been added — pull-ups, solving a Rubik’s cube in 5 minutes, etc. And during the religious education conference, the banathalon is a competition between the high school youth and the junior high youth — which means that the 5th and 6th graders are very interested in it.

“This year, we can’t watch the banathalon,” I said. About half the group erupted. We can’t watch!? Why not? We always watch! (“Always” in this context means “last year.”) “It’s not my rule, although I agree with it,” I said. “It’s the conference coordinators who said we couldn’t watch.” They continued to be cranky and upset, so I said I would get one of the conference coordinators to explain why they couldn’t watch. Anne came, and explained why they couldn’t watch. At that point, some of the children said, Well, if we can’t watch, let’s do something else. Two days ago, we had all agreed that the group would spend alone time in the woods, so finally the group calmed down enough that we could walk over to the woods together, and get set up for spending alone time in the woods.

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On film

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

The children’s program of the religious education conference continued this morning. Lisa and I are doing nature and ecology with rotating groups of children in grades 1-6.

This morning we had the grade 5-6 grade group for the entire morning. A film crew came to Ferry Beach today to film a short film to promote Unitarian Universalism. The film makers, David and Anne, felt that a key component of Unitarian Universalist religious education is our focus on Nature and respect for the interdependent web of all existence. They wanted to get some footage of children engaged in outdoors religious education, so they decided to film us doing religious education with the fifth and sixth graders.

Before the children arrived, I talked with David and Anne, and with one of the camera operators (also confusingly named David), about the kind of shots they were looking for. He wanted groups of children and adults close together, in a natural setting, looking at something together. Then I figured out how to adjust our lesson plan (we decided to use the same session plan as we used with the 3rd and 4th graders yesterday) so David could get the shots he was looking for.

All that was pretty straightforward. What really worried me was how the children would react with a camera looking over their shoulders all the time. When the children arrived, I started up my computer and showed them photographs I had taken of the Piping Plover sitting on her nest — I had promised a couple of days ago that I would do so.

We sat in a circle, and did everyone (including the film crew) introduced themselves. Then i reminded the children of the Piping Plover photos, and showed them my small video camera. I was sitting next to David with his big video camera, and we compared the two cameras. I told the children that I like to use my camera to help me observe and remember what I see in Nature. Then David talked about his camera, and the kinds of documentary work he does with it. These introductions allowed the children to become somewhat accustomed to the film crew.

We moved into the same basic lesson that we had done with the 3rd and 4th graders yesterday (“secret agents” and collecting things on the beach), and I set things up so that David got some great shots of children crouched on beach sand sorting through different kinds of seaweed. The film makers needed to do interviews with a couple of children individually, so to accommodate that, Lisa and I took the rest of the children down the road to see where the house had washed into the ocean last winter. I hadn’t really planned for these interviews, and this part of the session didn’t go as well as the “secret agent” activity.

After the snack break, the film crew was pretty much done. We all sat in a circle, and we went around the circle, allowing each child some time to talk about how it felt to be filmed. Many of the children said it was “distracting.” One or two didn’t really notice a difference. Several of the children pointed out how many in the group were kind of acting for the camera.

Then I gave them a couple of choices for activities that they could do in the second half of the morning. Nearly all of them wanted to spend alone time in the woods (just as we did last year). So we did that to finish out the morning.

Overall, I felt this morning’s session went very well indeed. The film makers were a little distracting, but in spite of that I felt that the children learned a lot, and had fun besides.

Piping Plover photos

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

This evening, I managed to take some photos of the Piping Plover nesting up the beach from the conference center. I know some regular readers of this blog might be interested, so I uploaded the photos to Flickr.

View six photos as a slide show.

View thumbnails of the photos, better for slow connections.

I’ve placed these photos in the public domain, use as you see fit.

Wood Thrush

Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine

The afternoon showers drove most everyone off the beach. I walked down to Ferry Beach State Park, and walked under Route 9 through their underpass, and into the woodlands and swamps of the park. There weren’t any cars in the parking lot, but one of the rangers was still there. He saw my binoculars, and we started talking about birds. I asked him if he had heard any Veeries, and he said no, but there were a few Wood Thrushes in the woods.

Wood Thrushes and Veeries can produce more than one note simultaneously — birds have syrinxes, not larynxes like us mammals do, and many birds can produce more than one note at a time — so they can actually sing in harmony with themselves. A Veery sings a song that sounds like it’s descending in a sort of swooping spiral. I’m not good at describing sounds, so I won’t try to describe the sound a Wood Thrush makes, but it’s a series of notes that I find hauntingly beautiful.

A few steps out of the parking lot and into the woods, I heard a Wood Thrush calling. The quality of the sound is such that it can be hard to tell exactly where the sound is coming from. I walked down the path towards the sound of the Wood Thrush, and it seemed as if the bird was slowly moving away from me, flying from tree to tree — but maybe it was two different birds, and one started singing while the other stopped singing as I got close to it.

Eventually, the Wood Thrush stopped singing. It was getting dark. I headed back to the campsite.

On the rooftops

The rooftops of downtown New Bedford host a Herring Gull nesting colony. Yesterday and today I went searching for gull nests. I climbed up onto the roof of First Unitarian church, roamed the top deck of the Elm St. parking garage, stuck my head out of one of the skylights in our apartment, and poked around into a small urban park, and the video has footage from all four places.



Click To Play

If you prefer to download a Quicktime movie, click here.

Yesterday while I was shooting video up on the parking garage, I wound up talking with one of the people who works at the parking garage. Last year, they had a dozen nests up there, and the Herring Gulls made something of a nuisance of themselves. This year, he’s up on the top deck every day, sweeping out nesting material before the gulls get a chance to get settled in. “Just call me an apex predator,” he said.

One final note to those of you who are birders — I’m pretty sure I saw nesting Great Black-Backed Gulls from the roof of the Elm St. Parking Garage, but they were far enough away that you’d need a scope to be sure. They were on a building just about due east from the parking garage.