Archive for the ‘Connecticut nature’ Category
May 12, 2010
There are so many things that need saving it can really be demoralizing. Whales, wolves, panthers, funny little owls, hundreds of songbirds, frogs. The list is endless. All you have to do is say the word “rainforest” and you summon up images of destruction. It’s why I don’t believe in teaching elementary kids about the rainforest at all. Let them enjoy the pleasure of nature and develop a love for it, before you discourage them with tales of extinction and despair. That people think the only interesting nature exists thousands of miles away, really only demonstrates the need for education about local natural history. There is a fascinating backstory everywhere you look, no matter where you look.
The American Kestrel is a bird in need of intervention. It depends on areas of grassland, and so is getting squeezed out of survival by the minute. Instead of farms with fields, we now have either forests or building sites, so things are tough for grassland birds like grasshopper sparrows, woodcock, upland sandpipers, meadowlarks, kestrels and others.
The American Kestrel is a tiny falcon that resembles its larger cousin the Peregrine, only with a swankier color scheme. It has blue, cream,
black and rusty shades of feathers, along with stripes beneath the eyes that cut down on the glare during high-speed chases after fleeing prey. All the better to see you with, my dear. The female of the species is color-wise a little more subdued, the better to remain camouflaged as she sits on a nest.
Perched on a fence, nest box or other spot overlooking the meadow, a kestrel darts off to snatch prey out of the air. In that way, it resembles a flycatcher. But it has the ability to hover in the air scanning the area and adjusting its trajectory before diving out of the glare like a Kamikaze pilot. The hovering would make you think of a hummingbird. Because the kestrel is diminutive in comparison to just about every other bird of prey, from far off it isn’t too hard to believe you are looking at a hummer, but only for a moment. Kestrels are about the size of a robin, and the hovering behavior is a great skill. Some people still refer to the kestrel as a “sparrow hawk” (I can’t help thinking of Foghorn Leghorn and his precocious sidekick here), from its ability to take down smaller birds.
Kestrels are faithful, both to a mate, and to a nesting place. Research on one pair showed that they returned to the same nesting spot for six years. It is a remarkable statistic, given
that the bird has a mortality rate of nearly 50%. Kestrels themselves are frequently the prey of larger birds, and their own reproduction depends on the availability of cavities within which to make a nest.
They are well adapted to nest boxes, and this is where Hill-Stead and Art Gingert come in. Art is on a mission to save the American Kestrel. With a keen admiration for the little bird, a wide experience as a naturalist and a steady arm with a hammer, drill and ladder, Art is scouring the state for locations that might tempt the kestrel to nest in one of his specially-designed boxes. They are fashioned out of quality wood, and follow a design he has developed based on his long experience.
Art and I put a box up the other day in one of our meadows. One of Hill-Stead’s many claims to fame is the three full-sized elms that have managed to survive the ravages of Dutch Elm disease. One of them, and by far the prettiest in my opinion, sits out in one of our hay meadows. No other tree is near it and the eye is drawn automatically to its graceful form. A Kestrel would probably see it as easily as we do. At least, that is what we hope. Art carefully hung the box, even using a level to make sure the look of it was pleasing. Now all we have to do is attract the birds. It’s a gamble to be sure. There aren’t even that many Kestrels left, comparatively speaking, and it may be vain of us to imagine that one or two will happen along and notice our box.
But there is much to be said for preserving local treasures. Just ask some of those men and animals that used to live in the rainforest.
See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Tags:American Kestrel, birds, Connecticut, Conservation, ecology, environment, Nature, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife
Posted in birds, Connecticut nature, Conservation, environment, natural history, Nature, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife | 6 Comments »
April 25, 2010
My daughter and her friends are playing “house” and one child complains, “I don’t WANT to be the brother.” Another retorts, “Well, you have to. You have short hair.” In the game of “house”, at least, identity is simple, and it is determined by the strongest will. ”Sorry,” the child says. ”You have to.”
You have to, you have to. If you are a plant or animal you do have to. You must inexorably be what you were meant to be. A duck cannot grow up to become an opossum. DNA controls the whole thing and there is no getting out of it. Whether or not there are ducks out there who feel (as some humans do) that they are stuck in the wrong body, I don’t know. But I hope not. No living thing should endure the kind of imprisonment that can happen when 
genetics go wrong. I suspect that natural selection would winnow the problem out in the wild, and I fear that may be true in a sense among humans, too. It’s rough if you are much different from your own kind, and not enough like another.
But by and large if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. As so it is with animals and plants the world over. We even have math to prove the inevitability of destiny. It’s called the Fibonacci sequence and while its’ application isn’t perfect, it surely gets you thinking. The sequence is this: add together (starting from the number 1) the number, and the number immediately preceding it. Here goes: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55 and so on. If you draw this out in a picture rather than a series of numbers you get a pretty collection of spirals. And here is where the odd part begins. These spirals are the same that are found in the arrangements of pine cones, sunflower seeds, branching plants, seashells, bee family trees and a host of other living things. Admittedly, some of these examples are a bit of a stretch-Fibonnacci was a math expert, not a biologist, but the essence is that there is some plan to the arrangement of nature, and that the arrangement is similar across a range of species. In art, we prove our similarity to others by teasing out our emotional reactions. In math and science we are reminded of it in a formula.
Is an individual’s life predestined by biology? Are accountants born and not made? Theodate Pope, the designer and inhabitant of Hill-Stead would I think, tell you no. The word iconoclast was made for her, a girl born to tea dances and quiescent wifedom who instead became a pioneering architect and lady farmer. Unlike so many who lose their way as they grow up, succumbing to the vises of financial imperative and the opinions of others, she grew into herself. As a girl, she declared she wanted a farm. She wanted to make an impression on the world as a leader and thinker. If ever there was an argument against predestination, Theodate is it.
Miss Pope became what she wanted to be. She was able to follow the path of her choosing and not necessarily the one society of her day understood. She was freed by an indulgent Papa and plenty of money. But her willpower did the rest. For those of us without it, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
Tags:Connecticut, environment, history, math, Nature, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife
Posted in Connecticut nature, environment, history, math, museums, natural history, Nature, New England Museums, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife | 6 Comments »
April 7, 2010
I am dating myself to admit I remember a certain popular song describing the romantic antics of two muskrats. I believe the animal’s names were Suzy and Sam, though I wouldn’t swear to it. If I did, I’d have to admit that I actually remember some of the mortifying lyrics. If there’s a list somewhere of egregious top-forty tunes, this should be number one. The musical duo “The Captain and Tennille” should relinquish any royalties they earned from it to the George Gershwin estate, or maybe Cole Porter’s. The crazy thing is that they unwittingly hit on a certain truth: Muskrat family relationships are marked by a touching constancy.
A muskrat family lives at the edge our pond. Their tunnels extend into the surrounding meadow. The waterside part of their home is made from plants, so if they get hungry during a winter cold snap, they just crawl down and take a few bites. The tunnels make nice, snug winter quarters, and they start low near the water and go upwards, keeping the burrow dry when the water rises.
I enjoy watching the muskrats, and though they are largely nocturnal, you can see them during the day, particularly in the early morning. They glide around the pond, busily chomping up wetland weeds. Sometimes they carry a big mouthful of greens, pushing it along with relaxed determination. They never seem to hurry, even if disturbed by a possible threat. Instead, they gently flip underwater leaving a little eddy to mark their place. I’ve read they sometimes slap their tails to warn of danger, like the beaver, but I’ve never seen that.
Baby muskrats are called both kits and pups, and sometimes pinkies,-though I don’t care for that name because it is the same as the tiny baby mice you can buy frozen to feed pet snakes with. Muskrats do look like little puppies paddling about with their mother in the spring. Prolific breeders, muskrats can turn out up to four litters in a year. Gestation is a month or a little less, and the pup has to move on after about a month of life, to make room for the next batch. In this they are much like big, aquatic field mice. But families don’t stray far, just further on into the wetland. They live essentially in an extended family group, with grandparents, cousins, aunts and parents all within shouting distance.
Vegetarians, muskrats don’t pursue prey, they instead forage for plants. Cattails are catnip to them. It’s their favorite food, and not a bit goes to waste. Cattails are edible (even by people) from root to flower. It’s sad that cattail colonies are destroyed by the graceful but useless phragmites plant, an invasive species that overruns wetlands that cattails (and those dependent on it) favor. As cattails disappear, muskrat families peter out too, to disease, predation by coyotes or foxes, or they just move on if they can manage it. Muskrat families become fragmented, much like the American family after World War II. Before 1940 25% of Americans lived with parents, grandparents and children. Often aunts, uncles and cousins lived close by. The habits of children were policed by legions of well-meaning relations. Forty years later, that life had become an anomaly, vanquished by the post- war economic boom. Phragmites is a world war to cattails, and to muskrats. Fragmented family units fare poorly in contrast to those that are intact, be they one mammal or another.
We have a big stand of cattails which is holding its own. We have phragmites, too, unfortunately, but not nearby. Though phragmites spreads like wildfire, it would have quite a distance to cover before reaching the pond. So I think our little muskrat family is safe at least from that threat. I’d hate to see them split up. Pretty soon we’d be seeing those little muskrat pups listening to thumping popular music on ipods, wearing droopy pants, with no nosy aunts to disapprove.
Interestingly, today economics is driving a revival of the extended American family. Expenses for seniors and a paucity of entry-level jobs for young people are keeping us together longer. It’s not muskrat love, but it’s a start. Pass the cattails, please.
See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Tags:Connecticut, Conservation, ecology, environment, hiking, invasive plants, mammals, Nature, outdoors, plants, Uncategorized, walking, wildlife
Posted in Connecticut nature, Conservation, environment, hiking, mammals, natural history, Nature, New England Museums, outdoors, plants, Uncategorized, walking, wildlife | 7 Comments »
March 19, 2010
It rained and rained last week. But it’s spring, and warm enough to ward off snow. So all we’ve had is submerged river banks, and some downed trees and branches. The ground is saturated, so worms flee to the surface to avoid drowning. Sadly, once up top it’s still wet and they die en mass out in the driveway. I once knew a naturalist who tried to save the drowning worms as she walked through a rainstorm, but to my thinking this is misguided. As far as I know, worms haven’t yet made it to the endangered species list, and dead ones make fine food for scavengers.
Children love worms. They love drowned worms that they can “save” by putting them in the grass, and they love the water-logged ones they find on the sidewalk because they can yell, “eeewwww!” and run away from them. Worms not experiencing a flood are also popular with kids. When I take groups around our grounds to look under bug boards, regardless of whatever else might be under there, the kids will shout, “a worm!”. There could be a rare specimen of some kind under the board, but nothing holds a candle to a worm. Mostly, kids want to hold them. If I’ve come across a mother lode of worms, I pass them out like peppermints to all the little cupped hands reaching toward me. This scene is repeated no matter how many bug boards have worms under them, and they pretty much all do. The pinnacle of worm discovery is finding worm “castings”, a polite way of saying worm poop. Nothing tops that. It really spices up a nature walk!
Charles Darwin thought so, too. He spent thirty-nine years studying the “lowly” worm. As a matter of fact, despite their choice in housing, worms are not in the least lowly. Like every single thing on this earth, worms are sensational once you get to know them. Just as we do, a
worm needs air, food, an amenable temperature, and some moisture. If these elements are lacking, they up and wiggle away. Cold-blooded, these helpful though homely creatures bring fresh soil to the surface, mixing it with nitrogen they hold in the slime covering their bodies. For this gardeners prize them. The healthiest gardens are chock-full of worms. An acre of land can hold about a million, a goal for every home gardener.
If only people were more like worms! They are perhaps one of the most practical animals on earth, possessing not only the ability to reproduce (and that’s another story!), but also the ultimate party trick of self-regeneration. As children everywhere know, if you pull off a little section of a worm, you have two new worms! The replication is not completely fool-proof, depending on the species of worm and where the “disengagement” occurs on the body. It’s pretty easy to lose a tail, but not quite as easy to lose a head!
Oh, to remake oneself anew following slings and arrows of assault, to enjoy the endless approval of children, and the eager appreciation of those who tease life and beauty from the soil. I envy the worm.
See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Edit this entry.
Tags:children and nature, environment, invertebrates, Nature, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife
Posted in bugs, Connecticut nature, environment, hiking, invertebrates, Nature, outdoors, slug, Uncategorized, wildlife | 10 Comments »
March 11, 2010
The pussy willows were in full bloom today, and life is waking up again throughout the estate. Today I even saw a butterfly -a tortoiseshell type, the earliest I’ve ever seen one. A butterfly afficionado I know says it might be a record. Along with Mourning Cloaks, tortoiseshell butterflies are seen in the earliest days of spring. I also spied jumping spiders in the meadow, and incredibly, a grasshopper. The Northern Water Snake that naps near the bridge down by the pump house is awake, and a turtle plopped into the water as I walked along the sunny side of the pond. Bluebirds circle the newly-cleaned bird boxes. Skunk cabbage is well along now and woodcock are skulking in the woods surrounding the fields. They rest and forage in the wet woods during the day and come out at dusk to do their bizarre dancing and calling. Wood frogs are awake, too.
skunk cabbage
We’ll have cold, raw days yet before spring takes a real foothold, but the first sunny days of the season provide such relief even after an uneventful winter. Today you could almost hear flowers pushing up earth and green shoots unfurling. Beginnings are so much fun. First date, first dance, first day of school, first car, first love, first kiss, first flower, first caterpillar, first red-wing blackbirds, first phoebes. You might say that without endings, there wouldn’t be beginnings and in a limited sense this may be true. Organically speaking, there is a cycle of birth and death that doesn’t vary. But there are human beginnings that seemingly spring from nowhere, and, heaven knows, unforeseen conclusions. Beginnings are rarely bitter, even in plants this is true. Dandelion salad, for example, is lovely when the leaves are small.
Circumstances and sentiment can all too often dictate endings, when bonds become in their own way overgrown and too big for the container. Last misunderstanding, last farewell, last regret. At least nature’s endings are free of recrimination. The past melts away graciously and makes way for the new. Last snowfall, first snowdrop.
See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Tags:amphibians, birds, butterflies, Connecticut, environment, insects, Nature, Uncategorized, wildlife
Posted in amphibians, bugs, butterflies, butterflies and moths, Connecticut nature, environment, hiking, insects, natural history, Nature, outdoors, plants, spiders, Uncategorized, walking, wildlife | 9 Comments »
February 22, 2010
A lot of people think we should tap our sugar maples. It would be nice. Who doesn’t love maple syrup? When I come down the drive toward the house, with our beautiful old maples on each side, I smack my lips thinking about all the nice syrup we could make. At least I do in winter. In the summer I am just grateful for the wonderful shade our sugar maples provide, and the dramatic way they lead us to Theodate’s pretty country house. Sugar Maples give good shade in summer and good shape in winter, for their branches reach pleasingly toward the sky, and it is agreeable to watch them pointing upward even in their leafless state. This tree is just chock-a-block full of goodness, and I don’t just mean the syrup. It is a highly-favored fuel wood, but more excitingly perhaps it is used for bowling alleys, baseball bats, furniture and dance floors.
Now it’s almost sugaring time. You need freezing nights and above-freezing days to start the sap running. Also needed is someone to run around to all the trees you tapped at least once a day, to collect the buckets of sap. That someone would also have to be willing to lug the precious buckets (no spilling, now) to wherever your boiling operation is. The work is multiplied by the number of trees you tap. Boiling off the sap is also arduous, and it goes on until all the water is boiled out, and what is left is a sugary residue-syrup. Sugar maples give the best sap, though you can tap Black Maples and Red Maples, too. 
The Black and Red ones have a flatter tasting syrup, but when you consider syrup as a whole, that’s not so bad.
Maple sugaring is simple. You wait until winter is beginning to slope off like a guest who stayed a bit overtime. Then you eyeball your maples. How big are they? If the maple is less than twenty inches around you can only put one spile (spout) in. Up to twenty five inches, you can use two, and anything above that you can tap three times. You’ll probably get about 15 gallons of sap per tree. Ten gallons of sap makes about a quart of syrup. After you collect the sap, boil off all the water until the sweet residue is left, then you’ll have to strain it to get bugs and “sugar sand”-naturally occurring mineral deposits, out. Then you can bottle it, if you aren’t dead from exhaustion. The high price of maple syrup is justified, in my opinion.
People keep urging us to tap. I don’t think that is what Theodate Pope had in mind when she planted the maples along the driveway leading to her home. I think she wanted a “look”. (It has always been referred to as “an allee of trees” which is a frenchy/botany way of saying the driveway has trees lining both sides.) And although she would in no way have been opposed to the tapping itself (she was a farmer at heart if nothing else), she would have been sensitive to our perennial, urgent need for thrift. Museums are all feeling the pinch right now, but none more than our own lovely and precious place which lacks a financial endowment of any real kind. We raise the budget from scratch, year after year. I cannot myself understand why we have had no gigantic sugar daddy behind us. But there are many such unanswerable questions in my mind always. So, as far as maple sugaring goes it is ironically too expensive for us. We have no extra to pay for the work involved with syrup-making. Someday, we say to ourselves in a dreamy way, we’ll get a huge gift and we’ll insert the thin edge of the wedge against the idea of some farming. With, just for a start, some maple sugaring in winter to go along with the sheep farming in the summer. Now, that would be sweet.
See you on the trails,Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Tags:Connecticut, environment, Farming, Nature, outdoors, plants, Thrift, trees, Uncategorized
Posted in Connecticut nature, environment, museums, natural history, Nature, New England Museums, outdoors, plants, trees, Uncategorized | 12 Comments »
February 9, 2010
My mother had a saying for everything. Her speech was fashioned by the linguistic effects of verbally colorful Anglo/Irish parents, and from living in Guam after World War II soaking up the Southern and Western cadences of American servicemen. She spoke in a patchwork of literary references and colloquialisms, and until I began school I had no idea that not everyone spoke like that. She was full of song lyrics, too, and would break out singing if the words applied to the situation. Some favorite expressions came from poetry, but I’m not sure to this day the derivation of many of those funny, perfect remarks.
A useful motherly comment was, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring”. This was for when you didn’t know what you were talking about. Another was “Hope springs eternal in the human breast”, which she would say brightly if you asked for something and which meant, “we’ll see”. It was oddly soothing and perhaps the simple addition of the word “hope” introduced a more positive flavor than the flat “we’ll see”, which every child knows is just a stalling tactic for an eventual “no”.
When the world is windy and frozen as it is in February, hope is a good arrow to keep in your quiver. I always give the same advice for cases of late winter doldrums, as I am nowhere near as clever as my mother. I tell everyone who is down and dragging to get out and take a walk. For starters, you need your sunlight and vitamin D to keep you on an even keel, and there’s nothing like some fresh air to improve your attitude. And nothing reminds you more of hope springing within you than a look at a skunk cabbage as it begins poking through the frozen earth. The only way to see that is to go for a walk in February or March!
Despite its repellant name, skunk cabbage is a wonderful thing. One of the very earliest 
flowers, it has a remarkable determination to bloom. If skunk cabbage competed in the Miss America contest, its “special talent” (rather than baton twirling) would be its uncanny maintenance of an internally controlled heat from within, a sort of natural furnace. It runs approximately thirty-six degrees above the ambient temperature. This enables it to “burn” through frozen earth and even ice in an inexorable penetration of the surface of the ground. As it breaches that surface and becomes visible it has a dramatic mottled purple hood called a spathe curled around an odd little flower that resembles nothing so much as a tiny morningstar (that round-headed medieval weapon with all the pointy things 
sticking out of it). This is the spadix, and the little pointy things are the flowers. You see this same configuration on many species of the lily family including calla lillies, peace lillies, jack-in-the pulpit and many others. At the right point in early spring if you walk through a wetland carpeted with skunk cabbage, you might smell a sort of funkiness in the air. That smell draws little bees, flies and early bugs of every kind to come and nectar at the cabbage flowers, sustaining the insects and enabling them to get started on nests and procreation. In a way, skunk cabbage is one of the mothers of spring itself, with its certain internal warmth giving way to the fecundity of an entire season.
My mother wouldn’t have touched a skunk cabbage with a ten-foot pole. I’m pretty sure she never even saw one. But, as a mother, she knew all about warmth, perseverance, and hope. It is remarkable at every level how our personalities are reflected in the natural world around us, though we often miss the connection. Mothers, of course, do not have a monopoly on the excellent qualities they share with the skunk cabbage, nor indeed, does every mother have them. But there is no separating the characteristics of animals and plants from our own. The world is a continuum.
It turns out actually, that hope DOES spring eternal for many people, and needs to. Optimistic thoughts stimulate the amygdala, a powerful area of the brain that affects emotion. It is biologically important to have a positive outlook. Not everything in life will turn out perfectly, but if you thought things would always go badly, you’d never do anything. So go out and take a walk.
See you on the trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Tags:Connecticut, ecology, environment, insects, Nature, outdoors, plants, Uncategorized, walking, wildflowers
Posted in bugs, Connecticut nature, environment, hiking, insects, natural history, Nature, outdoors, plants, Uncategorized, walking, wildflowers, wildlife | 10 Comments »
January 25, 2010
When in memory you visit that foreign land that is youth, what do you remember? ”Youth is wasted on the young” they say, and in some respects it’s true. Kids principally have vigor and innocence on their side. But those who think that childhood and the place between that and adulthood is easy or in some way better than what follows have only forgotten the difficulties of youth. Every era has its highs and lows. Experience can kick you in the pants just about any time in this life. The trick is solving the problem presented.
Never mind thinking that because we’re a “higher order” that people corner the market on experiential woe and attendant life lessons. The school of hard knocks admits anyone with a heartbeat. Animals, birds, invertebrates and arguably plants all suffer the consequences of their errors. And boy, when you are young it is so easy to walk into the closet thinking it’s the front door!
Due to that unfortunate tendency on the part of young things everywhere, Farmington is experiencing an uptick in visitation. Heaven knows we’re used to the tourist trade. What with a house full of rare paintings and antiques, plus a one-of-a kind exhibit of Gee’s Bend quilts here at the museum, and loads of other notable happenings in this historic town in the vibrant Farmington Valley, we get visitors all time. But not like this one. A stranger is among us, and he very likely spends a good part of his day trying to figure out how he got here and what to do next. I refer to a Harlequin Duck who has plopped down in the Farmington River by the Grist Mill just down the hill from Hill-Stead. He has caused traffic jams to break out in the usually peaceful Riverside Cemetery, from where you can often get a pretty good look at him. Cars from all over are just pouring in every day, spewing out people with big binoculars, scopes and cameras, just for this little duck who probably weighs little more than a pound. Everyone agrees that his coloration suggests he is a first-year male, so this is his first stab at following a grown up routine.
What’s the fuss? This fellow isn’t even as big as a mallard, and since he’s a “diving duck”, rather than the hiney -in- the- air kind, you could easily miss him as he swims underwater to feed. First and foremost, this chap just doesn’t belong here. He’s a sea-going type, rarely seen inland and not even especially common at the beach where he does belong. Preferring turbulent waters, and cold ones at that, Harlequins nest in the very far north. There is a larger population in the west than here so even if you see them in the waters off Rhode Island (and people do it seems every winter), it is a bit of a thrill. But the real draw, aside from rarity? Well, the bird is drop-dead gorgeous. If George Clooney were a duck and you compared him to a Harlequin, George would come out looking like Rumplestilskin. 
Have you ever felt you were just in the wrong place but you weren’t sure how you got there or how to leave? If you are a man, this has surely happened to you while on a car trip. Our little chap may have fallen in with the wrong duck group and migrated just a little bit outside the proper range. Right now, he is sharing the river with some scaup, ring-necked ducks, wood ducks, black ducks, some mergansers (both hooded and common) and about three thousand rude, honking Canada geese. (See “Goosey, Goosey Gander, Whither Shall I Wander” for more on Canada geese). Every day, birders flock to our little town to get a look at him. We don’t know how long he’ll stay. Surely he’ll get the urge to get himself back with his clan. It isn’t long before he’s due way up in Canada so he can meet a nice girl and settle down. If he gets there too late, he may not find a mate, or he’ll have to settle for one with “such a pretty face” that no one else wanted to dance with. As winter melt and spring rains come, our river will rise, and the choppy riffles the Harelquin likes to bounce around in will smooth out. If the biological imperative doesn’t get his attention, maybe the water conditions will. But he isn’t going sit around looking silly (but beautiful) for long. After all, the lesson isn’t complete unless you find a way to solve the problem. Those adept at solving problems will rise to the top, accumulating life’s lessons and ruefully recalling detours to places like Farmington.
See You on the Trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Tags:birds, Connecticut, environment, Nature, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife
Posted in birds, Connecticut nature, environment, natural history, Nature, New England Museums, Uncategorized, wildlife | 6 Comments »
January 13, 2010
When Theodate Pope came east from Cleveland to go to Miss Porter’s School here in Farmington, her letters reflect that she felt her new school and indeed, the town that housed it, was her sanctuary. She didn’t cotton to the life of tea dances and frivolous time-killing that was her lot back home. At Farmington, she enjoyed the study of languages, art, and classics. The curriculum at Miss Porter’s was influenced by the intellectual life at Yale, where Sarah Porter’s brother was president. Young Theodate revelled in the heady atmosphere of the school and the place.
Such was her feeling of asylum she determined to make her permanent home in the small but sophisticated Connecticut town. We know a lot about the building of the house, the architectural details, the pictures chosen, the stone walls built by masons brought from England. When complete, it was a place of warmth and cheer, where friends and family installed themselves sometimes for months at a stretch. Theodate built not just a structure, but a true home in every sense.
Every living thing fashions a dwelling. Certain animals have little use for complicated structures and a scrape of earth will suffice.
But if real refuge is required, say from cold winters, more ingenuity is required. Evidence of such is everywhere in the meadows at Hill-Stead once the snow flies. One way to beat the cold is to huddle. More than a dozen kinds of mammals who usually prefer solitude team up and share a bedroom for the winter. Temperatures in such shared quarters can be more than twenty degrees warmer than the ambient temperature outside. Meadow vole nests may reach 50 degrees in the darkest days of winter. The little “blow holes” where the voles come up for escape and air cover our meadows. Evidence suggests there are a lot of subnivean group snuggles going on at Hill-Stead. Meadow vole nests have an echo of human homes about them. There are distinct sections for bedroom, kitchen and latrine. I had an apartment in New York once with the bathtub in the kitchen, so in that respect meadow voles are way ahead.
There is a more individualized way of doing things, for animals who just can’t stand the youth hostel atmosphere of a squirrel drey in January. Instead of staying outside,they go inside! The Pope and Riddle families as country people certainly had their share of mice. But they had cats. Today, the staff at Hill-Stead gamely stores every snack and lunch bag inside the refrigerator, and keep all the styrofoam fruit used to replicate Pope family mealtimes in metal tins. Apparently even if it only looks like fruit, mice will eat it.
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in”. Frost writes “when”, not “if”. Home is incontrovertible. We inevitably return there, if only in thought.
It may be that home is not only a structure, but more like a state of mind. If home is where the heart is, then Theodate was perhaps wiser than she has been credited. She fashioned her home after her heart, the framework following the feeling.
See you on trails,
Diane Tucker, Estate Naturalist
Tags:environment, Miss Porter's School, natural history, Nature, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife
Posted in Connecticut nature, environment, hiking, museums, natural history, Nature, New England Museums, outdoors, Uncategorized, wildlife | 4 Comments »
January 5, 2010
Many of my neighbors have big thermometers in their yards that tell temperature, time, barometric pressure, the Dow Jones Industrial average and who knows what else. I don’t have one, but then, I don’t need one. I have rhododendrons. I like to think of them as nature’s thermometer. Rhododendron have a large, leathery leaves which normally spread wide. But when the temperature falls, they curl in on themselves, edges turning under, to lessen their overall exposure to the cold. Frigid air can’t easily cross the curled leaf, and it doesn’t dry out quite as much as it might. Too much water loss can kill a shrub. The branches get in on the act when it gets really freezing-they hang down toward the ground, when normally they stretch out wide.
The rhodie is a very accurate forecaster. If the leaves curl up cigar-sized, it’s cold. When they look like pencils, it’s freezing. Wear a hat. If the part of the plant closest to the sun is uncurling, make sure to dress in layers. The rhododendron fortells what the weather later in the day is going to be. You may be in pencil-leaf territory now, but later when that sun shines on everything it’ll be warm enough to unwrap yourself a little, just like the plant.
There are some darn big rhododendron at Hill-Stead. Their name doesn’t trip gently off the tongue, but if you know its derivation it helps keep the syllables in the right place. “Rhodo” comes from the Greek and means “rose”. “Dendron” means tree. Rose Tree=Rhododendron. If you look at the shrub with that in mind, you realize how much the flower actually resembles that of an old-fashioned rose.
The rhodies at Hill-Stead and in my yard too, are nursery- bought specimens, though the Hill-Stead plants are ages older than mine. Accordingly, Hill-Stead’s are quite large. There are a couple of beauties near the entrance to the Sunken Garden by the Carriage Porch, and several others around the the house. I haven’t noticed any native rhododendron on the trails, though there may be some wild ones further along on the connector to the Metacomet Trail.
To create what we now know as a rhododendron, Colonial Americans sent native plants from here back to England which were bred with Asian plants already being cultivated there. New England native plants came then as now in white and purple, but today the cultivar rhodie blooms in many lovely colors, the result of the pairing of the eastern and western types of plant.
I like looking out the window for a plant to advise me on how to dress for the day. I’m a sucker for homely virtues, I guess. It seems right to me that something earthy should spell out winter comfort. We are part of each other, united certainly in our need for protection from the cold. Comfort comes, after all, from an organic place within us. What comforts us most? A hand, a smile, a flicker in a loved one’s eye? Warm words in a cold world? All of the above no doubt, and each one as real as the curled leaf and bent branch of a plant seeking surcease from a long winter day.
Tags:climate change, environment, Metacomet Trail, Nature, plants, trees, Uncategorized
Posted in Connecticut nature, environment, natural history, Nature, outdoors, plants, trees, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
There are so many things that need saving it can really be demoralizing. Whales, wolves, panthers, funny little owls, hundreds of songbirds, frogs. The list is endless. All you have to do is say the word “rainforest” and you summon up images of destruction. It’s why I don’t believe in teaching elementary kids about the rainforest at all. Let them enjoy the pleasure of nature and develop a love for it, before you discourage them with tales of extinction and despair. That people think the only interesting nature exists thousands of miles away, really only demonstrates the need for education about local natural history. There is a fascinating backstory everywhere you look, no matter where you look.
The American Kestrel is a tiny falcon that resembles its larger cousin the Peregrine, only with a swankier color scheme. It has blue, cream,
black and rusty shades of feathers, along with stripes beneath the eyes that cut down on the glare during high-speed chases after fleeing prey. All the better to see you with, my dear. The female of the species is color-wise a little more subdued, the better to remain camouflaged as she sits on a nest.
that the bird has a mortality rate of nearly 50%. Kestrels themselves are frequently the prey of larger birds, and their own reproduction depends on the availability of cavities within which to make a nest.
But there is much to be said for preserving local treasures. Just ask some of those men and animals that used to live in the rainforest.
