Many many thanks to everyone who followed this blog during my Mass Audubon Visual Arts Center residency. I will be away for a bit, but when I return to NYC I will resume posting - check back December 1st!

A list of the birds and mammals seen the last three weeks at the Mildred Morse Allen Wildlife Sanctuary:

When I get back to NYC, I will link it to a larger, more readable image… today, by the way, is the last day of my residency at the Visual Arts Center/MMAWS…

I did my loop through the woods here, to have a little goodbye. Leaving the house, I first hit the feeder, which had run out of seeds over the weekend and was completely abandoned. I refilled it, thinking that I was thinking of the birds but realizing that I was really doing it for myself, that I wanted the company, and I wanted the place to feel alive and perpetual and not melancholy. The sanctuary is infinitely quieter with the true arrival of fall, despite today’s eerily warm temperature. We have not yet had a killing frost, but the leaves have turned and are doing their thing, and much of the field and forest understory has withered or gone to seed.

At the field I heard a Red-tailed Hawk scream, and looking up was surprised to see a kettle of migrating hawks and one Osprey. They were interacting as they rode up a warm column of air - there were about six birds: the Osprey, a couple of Red-tails and a few Red-shouldered Hawks, and while not fighting, they were obviously not exactly comfortable with each other. Some words were exchanged. The Osprey peeled off first, at a relatively low altitude. I think it was probably headed over to the pond East of the refuge. The hawks were more sincerely interested in migrating, and rode to different heights to head off, singly, in a Southish sort of way, though one Red-tail, who rose significantly higher than the others, headed due West. It was over in a matter of a minute, and it made me think of all of the things that one must miss.

The woods were fantastic: warm, and now familiar. I visited my favorite trees: a White Pine and a Yellow Birch that have grown from the same spot, the bases fused, their trunks wrapped around each other in a spiral, each leaning outwards to maximize their exposure to light. It is interesting to guess which tree is older - White Pine is a rapid-grower, a tree of early succession, and usually suppresses hardwoods like the birch underneath. Yellow Birch needs an opening in the forest canopy to shoot up as this one has, and usually requires a disturbance such as a fallen tree to establish itself. They must be unusually similar in age, though perhaps the birch is slightly older. I wonder what they originally germinated upon, to be so close together. They are locked into a fierce competition at this point. I would guess that the pine will out-grow the birch, and eventually kill it off. But if the birch weakens and falls, it may well take the pine with it. It is really only things like this that make me wish I could live forever - I would like to see what happens with these trees.

Perhaps there is truly no need for this in your life, but here you go - the wrong end of a groundhog:

It has been hitchcockian (hmmm, spellcheck doesn’t seem to think that that is a word, but then spellcheck doesn’t seem to think spellcheck is a word either, nor does it like hmmm, and perhaps capitalized would better, Hitchcockian, but no, it still doesn’t like that, and I guess this is why in the real world there are editors who know all about this) - I really need to start over.

It has been Hitchcockian in the studio today. First there was a massive wave of European Starlings that descended around my windows and landed on the lawn below. I did a standard ‘count by tens’ and came up with something over 200 birds, all chattering away and wrestling and eating something mysterious out of the lawn. I do not know enough about these birds, except that they were introduced to our continent via Central Park and have pretty much taken over the world. They are trash birds and we do not pay attention to trash birds, but really, as a species they are just like us.

But wait, that’s not it: the Hitchcockian madness continues: as soon as the sun hit the windows, there were masses of ladybugs crawling around the panes. Perhaps there are no real references in any Hitchcock films to insects, but you know what I mean. It took them about an hour and a half before they found their way in somehow, and then they spent the rest of the day crawling around the insides of the windows. As I write now, many of them are circling the ceiling lights. It is a little weird in here. Some research turned up the following facts: they are an introduced Asian species that would normally “overwinter in the cracks and crevices of of limestone outcroppings.” So they like white trim and warm places, and will disappear into the walls until spring, and generally do no harm. My info source (Mass Audubon), says that they are not harming the native populations and in fact are pretty beneficial in the war on aphids…

Who knew that under their spotted elytra was a striped abdomen? Not I…

Quite frankly, the chipmunks are annoying me. I have spent no small amount of time in the woods these past few weeks, and I am ready to have it out with these guys. Over the years, when I should have been doing something useful like looking for a job, I have learned to move softly through a forest. Sometimes this is a bad idea, like when we kept surprising bears (so many bears) in a state park in New Brunswick one time, but mostly it means that you get to see more wildlife and take some cool photos. Yesterday, walking through the 2,000 acres that comprise Moose Hill (which, by the way, is Mass Audubon’s first refuge), I managed to surprise five deer over the course of a couple of hours. One fairly impressive buck snorted at me from the top of a ridge and took off, one lone doe stood and watched me, hoping I would move first. The best was when I came across three does having a lie-down just off the trail. They blew out of there, and when I reached the spot where they were resting, I reached down and felt a depression in the earth. It was still warm.

The thing about the chipmunks is that they are constantly sounding these piercing alarm calls, and their timing always seems a little off. It is true that it can be more unnerving to wildlife when a human being is acting oddly, in my case moving quietly. Sometimes I think that they prefer you to stomp around and talk and generally make a ton of noise and thereby miss 99% of what is going on around you - this is what they expect from us. Stalking around means trouble, like maybe I might be looking for someone to eat. But these chipmunks go a bit overboard. For one thing, they send out a shriek and then run off madly to some invisible hole, but only after you have passed and are clearly no longer coming at them. This never fails to cause me to jump. Secondly, they set up an incessant loop of shrill chirps, often in pairs, slightly off beat from each other, whenever I am standing in one place for a long time, waiting for some or other bird to appear from behind a twig or tangle of leaves. It’s like alright already, the whole forest knows I’m here, so can you just SHUT UP NOW?

I have tried to photograph the little devils on a number of occasions. They are are strangely brave for their diminutive size, but they do not like to sit still, and the woods are usually too dark for a decent shot. Photographing them is therefore also annoying. But yesterday, at the end of my walk, something wondrous and new happened: I startled a chipmunk, and it ran, but found itself trapped without a hole against a stone wall and a big scary road, and it froze. HA, I thought as I fired off a round of shots, you’re not shrieking now, are you?

A nice hike around the Moose Hill Sanctuary this afternoon/evening yielded few birds other than future winter residents. I saw one Brown Creeper, which is always nice, and a couple of migrant Ruby-crowned Kinglets and Yellow-rumped Warblers in with the usual Chickadee/Titmouse crowd. I will do a full post tomorrow afternoon…

Here is that landscape again; I worked on it a bit more. The drawing is about 5 x 7 inches, pen on gray paper:

The Visual Arts Center and I would like to invite anyone in the vicinity to drop by either of two lectures I am giving this week:

ART TALK series:
On Thursday, October 18 from 10 - 11 a.m. in the Visual Arts Center Gallery
Drop in program - No registration required. M - $7, NM - $9

RESIDENCY RECEPTION & TALK
Please join us for an informal presentation and discussion of my work and experiences this
month while at my residency.
Friday October 19th from 7 - 9 p.m. at the Visual Arts Center Gallery
Drop in program - No registration required. Free.