By Henry Lappen
A few winters ago, a drama unfolded outside my door that highlighted the conflict that can happen when migratory species and year-round residents (“settled” species) compete for the same resource. A Northern mockingbird, a settled species, was confronted with a flock of migratory Bohemian waxwings, which occasionally visit our area from the north.
By Katie Koerten
“Maybe we should just go home, and try to find it another time,” I suggested to my partner Matt. It was an April evening, and daylight had all but disappeared. We had been wandering around a meadow in Amherst for over an hour, hoping for a sign of an American woodcock. Neither of us had ever witnessed this fascinating bird or its famous mating flight display. We had been tipped off that it could be found in this particular meadow after sunset. But after what felt like ages, there had been no sign of it. We were just about ready to call it quits when Matt suggested, “What if I played the sound of it on my Droid? Do you think that would attract it?”
By David Spector
For people who collect things, rarity brings value — rare coins, art, bird sightings. While rare bird sightings are not kept in vaults and sold for millions of dollars, they are very much sought after and enjoyed by birdwatchers. It may seem paradoxical, but rare bird sightings, wherever they occur, are actually fairly common and mostly involve common birds. While no one can be certain exactly when or where the events will occur or which species will be involved, it is almost certain that in any given year there will be multiple instances of such sightings. Most of these birds are not rare in a global sense; a bird that is common in California, Europe, Asia or Florida might be extremely rare here. With roughly twice as many birds in the world now as there were in the early spring due to the breeding season, and with many of those birds young and inexperienced, the fall migration is especially rich in errant birds.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth
Northampton is a walkable city, with shops, theater and a plethora of wonderful restaurants. What’s a bit less obvious to those who stroll Main Street is that an equally wonderful river runs through the town. The Mill River courses through 18 miles from its headwaters in Goshen to its confluence with the mighty Connecticut River via Hurlburt’s Pond, west of the Oxbow. Many walking trails traverse the riverbanks at Mass Audubon’s Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary in Easthampton, and in neighborhoods west of Smith College.
By Elizabeth Farnsworth
As summer winds down, I find myself reflecting on the highways bustling with Winnebagos, camper vans, motor homes and silver, sleek, retro Airstream trailers. I’ve always been impressed with these portable abodes — how they can afford all the comforts of home on four wheels. Who says you can’t take it all with you? Well, humans aren’t the only creatures who carry their homes along for the ride. Among nature’s most amazing architects are some of our tiniest insects: the caddisflies.
By David Spector
On an August afternoon at home, my wife removed several impressively large caterpillars from our tomato plants. These animals were tobacco hornworms, common feeders on tomato (and tobacco) foliage.
By Ted Watt
Some years ago I lived on the campus of a Quaker retreat center near Greenfield. I had explored a lot of the forested areas around the facility, and the trails up and down the ridge had given me opportunities to see and hear some terrific warblers during spring migrations, along with the pleasure of just being and observing in nature. But I hadn’t ever really explored the cliffs. Then I read a lovely, nostalgic letter in The Recorder asking if there still were porcupine dens at the base of the cliffs, and I decided to investigate.
By Jessica Schultz
I met a widow whose style and grace captivated me. Her glossy black skin glowed, dimpled here and there, in all the appealing places. Long graceful legs extended from her body and moved with delicate flow. In the late afternoon, her short hair glinted sliver in the softening light. And her red tattoos, unique to her, made her an instantly recognizable standout in any crowd. She was, of course, a black widow spider — in particular, a southern black widow (Lactrodectus mactans), one of several species found in the United States. How she came to be here in Amherst was a mystery; she was found on a piece of firewood.
By Mary Kraus
There has been a fair amount of discussion in recent years about children being disconnected from the “real world”: the outdoors, trees, fresh air, rocks, bugs, soil. Our cultural norms seem to involve keeping children inside, plugged into a TV or playing with some complex manufactured toy that defines the game for them. It’s an expectation that each child should own innumerable toys, games and electronic devices, at significant financial and environmental expense. Children are suffering from a lack of time and space to run free, exploring the wide world outside, using their imaginations to turn twigs and pebbles into fairy houses, feeling the roughness of bark and the warmth of the sun under bare feet as they climb trees and clamber over boulders.
By Michael Dover
Longtime readers of this column may remember an essay from October 2010 by Annie Woodhull about the disappearance of honeybee colonies, a phenomenon dubbed colony- collapse disorder, or CCD. As she pointed out in that column, we depend on honeybees to pollinate a tremendous number of food crops. “Bees pollinate not only the vegetables and fruits that we eat, but clover for the cows, goats and sheep that make milk and cheese, and cotton plants for the clothes we wear,” she wrote. “[They] are responsible for one out of every three mouthfuls of food we eat.”
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Hitchcock Center for the Environment
at Hampshire College
845 West Street | Amherst MA 01002 | 413.256.6006 | 413.253.2809 fax