Development Threatens Wilderness!

Beavers have built dams on the far side of Potato Pit, next to the road with the black pipe and in a small motion on the other side of that road from Potato Pit.

The Leaves Turning

found whitus tightus!

today while walking near the stone barn i came upon the rare whitus tightus fungus. as with the one that babette and losel found earlier, this one was partially decayed, or perhaps badly damaged in an overwhelming wedgie. let's hope not the latter. this one may be old and unsightly, but i believe it is still edible. pictures included below:

Coral Mushroom

Losel and Babette were walking on the path from the Cottage up to Steel Derrick, gathering moss and rocks for her "Special Place" project for Social Studies. They spotted this giant coral mushroom under a tree. It's old and not edible but still very beautiful.

Magic Mushrooms

wow, just noticed the big yellow mushroom out on the lawn. pretty pretty....

BIG ASS FISH aka B'ASS FISH

Today Los spotted this bigg'on swimming near the dock. She called to Leo who came hither.

Leo said "woah" and then gestured up to the rest of us on the deck holding his hands about a foot and half apart.

Nathen, Dech and i hopped to our feet, scrambled down the gangway and bore witness to this bad-boy of the deep. It was indeed as Leo had said, about a foot and a half long.

If i may, i'd like to dub him "fatty boom boom".

Here are a couple of pics:

Visitor from the Paleozoic?

Found this dragonfly body in our building's courtyard. This is how big it is compared to Abby's hand.

Huge dragonflies have been around a long time. Before the dinosaurs dragonflies were even bigger than this! They had wingspans of 2 1/2 feet. That's the size of pizza!




Look at those eyes

fish catches a frog

check it out, i caught a big frog in the stream over by barbara's house!

2 deer in our yard

the other day i looked out the window and saw a deer eating some plants, literally about 12 feet from our porch. then dechen looked and noticed a second one. here's the pic of the first one:
















and here's its buddy:

Toad photo by Sadie

Sadie took this picture of a toad in the garden today. I cropped it so we can see it better. For information, see Toads.

Cormorant

Adam took these pictures of a cormorant that landed on the quarry, swam for a while. and dove underwater. He came up about 100 feet away and took off in a spiral path, working hard to get up over the trees. It was probably a double-crested cormorant or a great cormorant.

komodo dragon, could it be?

today i saw what appeared to be a lizard sitting on a rock? is it possible? and does anyone know if they are dangerous?

-father of fish

snake spotted by cottage

small snake outside house. quite cute. very slow. ended up slithering under our porch.

-fish

Chipmunks

One or more chipmunks have been running about outside my office window.










I'm not fast enough to catch up with them and take a picture or patient enough to sit outside and wait for one to come and have his picture taken.










But they have been using the tent platform as a table to break open nuts and get out the food inside. The leave the nutshells behind.

I'm pretty sure they are Eastern Chipmunks, but we'll know better when we can get a good picture of one.

Muscrat Sightings

Day before yesterday (June 5, 2009), as I was looking out the window of our bedroom, I saw an animal whose body was about a foot long walk from the corner of the house across the deck and down the gangway. It looked like a big rat but with a fur coat. I ran to the office to get the camera. When I got back and outside, it was gone. So unfortunately I did not get a picture of it.

I checked the BioKids website to see if I could find out what it was. From the pictures and other information there, I'm pretty sure it was a muskrat. What I saw also fits the description of the characteristics and habits of muskrats on Wikipedia.

About a month ago, Babette and I and Barbara all saw a small animal swimming in the quarry in the late afternoon. We didn't get a good look at it because its body was almost all under water, but its face was similar to that of the one I saw on our deck. It swam underwater for 50-100 feet and then surfaced again several times, as, according to BioKids, muskrats do. It may have been the same animal.

Scientists Wanted

Scientists of all ages are needed to study biodiversity in and around Big Parker’s Pit

Big Parker’s Pit is a quarry pond in Rockport, Massachusetts surrounded by forest. The area is a habitat for many species of mammals, birds, reptiles, frogs, fish, worms, snails, insects, trees, bushes, plants, flowers, fungi, and other fauna and flora.

In 1992, the Cape Ann Vernal Pond Team studied and certified several vernal ponds. Other vernal ponds were certified in 2006 in support of the landowners’ application for a conservation easement. There have been no other studies of the biodiversity at Big Parker’s Pit.

So except for a few birds and trees that we know the names of,

We’re surrounded by living things and we have no idea what they are!



Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to:

1. Observe and collect examples of living things and the things they leave behind, like feathers, nests, eggs, skat, tracks, leaves, etc.
2. Record your observations using appropriate media: written descriptions, drawings, scanned images, photographs, sound recordings, flower pressings, etc.
3. Use printed and online research materials to identify the living things you observe, for example, the University of Michigan's Biokids website.
   
4. Present your findings to other scientists: what it is, what you learned about it from research.
5. Publish your findings on this blog.

This is a big project. It will not be completed in one summer or one year or perhaps in the lifetimes of its older participants. But let us begin.

Room and board will be provided, but no pay.

To apply, please post a comment here.