A few notes of bird song drifted across Route 18 during a momentary lull in the traffic. “A Song Sparrow,” I said to Carol, “now where would a Song Sparrow be?…”; there aren’t many places in a marine industrial zone where a Song Sparrow would want to sit and sing. We came up to the top of the pedestrian bridge over the highway, in the March sunshine. “It’s so warm,” said Carol. “It feels like spring.” It felt like spring all the way over to Pope’s Island, where we bought a newspaper and a couple of magazines. But on the way back, the clouds started to cover the sky, and it felt damp and chilly down by the water of the harbor, and it stopped feeling like spring. Even though the sun peeked out now and then, it felt gray and dim, it felt as though real spring wouldn’t come for months.
Category Archives: Spring watch
Spring watch
Sometimes a rain storm is just a rain storm. 1:55.
Note: video host blip.tv is defunct, so this video no longer exists.
Spring watch
Carol and I were sitting at the table eating breakfast, Carol was telling me about something she was doing down at her office on Fish Island, when something outside the window behind her, moving in the breeze, caught my eye. Look, I said, rudely interrupting her, and pointing out the window. What, she said. The maple tree, it’s got buds, I said; our apartment is on the second floor so we look right into the branches of the Red Maple in the sidewalk across the street. The morning sun lit up the swelling purplish-red buds so that they stood out against the wall of the Whaling Museum, which was still in shadow. Carol turned, and looked. She wasn’t as interested as I was, and she turned back. Red buds on the maple tree, spring is coming, I said. She continued her story. Red buds on the maple tree, I thought happily to myself, listening to her story.
Spring watch
At 6:30 this morning, I was suddenly wide awake. This is unusual, because I always get up at seven on work days. But now the days are longer, and the sun rises early enough to make me think that it’s past the time when I should be awake and out of bed, which made me awaken with a start this morning thinking, Have I slept through the alarm? I looked at the clock and reassured myself that I had another half hour to sleep.
The temperature got up to 50 degrees today, warm enough to feel like spring. But it was dark and gloomy for most of the day, and even though we got rain instead of snow the sky had all the gloom of winter. February is always a difficult month in New England: the days start to get longer, we get occasional spells of warm weather, but you can’t get decent vegetables, it’s bound to snow again, and we’re still sunk in winter gloom. People talk about “spiritual practices,” but as a born and bred New Englander I mistrust “spiritual practices,” because I know the only thing that’s going to stand up to February is good old fashioned religious discipline: so I write every day whether I want to or not (and believe me, today I don’t want to), and I religiously take a long walk every day. With a little bit of discipline, I can ignore the winter gloominess and focus on the tiniest signs of spring, like the fact that I came awake a half an hour early this morning.
Spring watch
Spring must be over by now. It’s halfway through June, it’s time for summer. But the cool weather we’ve had for the past few has caused spring to linger.
The last of the spring concerts in the Classical Music Series was last night, and it was cool enough inside the church that the marimba player asked me to turn on the heat because his hands and his instrument were a little too cold.
When we went to bed last night, we left the skylight wide open. About halfway through the night I realized I was feeling cold and came awake enough to pull the comforter over us.
The thickets of rosa rugosa on Pope’s Island love the cool, damp weather. You can smell their scent from a hundred feet away on a cool evening. As fast as the old blossoms fade away, new blooms take their place.
The high temperature yesterday was only 63 degrees; today was only a little warmer, up to 71 degrees; and a brisk breeze out of the northeast on both days made it seem even cooler. I don’t care what the calendar says, it’s still spring in New Bedford.
Spring watch
Carol and I walked out to the end of State Pier in New Bedford Harbor yesterday, and stood there watching some fishing boats leaving port. We were chatting about something when we were surprised by a splash in the water behind us.
“What was that?”
A hundred feet out in the harbor, we could see ripples and small splashes, and then something big rolled up out of the water and splashed.
“Looks like some big predator fish chasing a school of small bait fish,” I said. I thought maybe they were bluefish, but I’m not a saltwater angler, so I wouldn’t know for sure. Bluefish (Pomatomus saltatrix) winter in Florida, migrate north, and hit the Massachusetts coast sometime in June, but I think of them as arriving later than June 8.
Today when I went out for a walk, I ran into Michael, the librarian at the Whaling Museum Research Library. He was headed across the bridge to Fairhaven, as I was, so we walked along together. On the bridge between Pope’s Island and Fish Island, he stopped and pointed out at the harbor at some ripples and small splashes, and every once in a while something big rolling up out of the water.
“Bluefish,” he said. “They’re up in the harbor already.”
He’s a saltwater fisherman, so I’ll take his word that these were blues. Their arrival means that springtime is almost over.
Not watching spring…
Every May for the past five years, it has happened.
The spring migration of birds is one of the most spectacular events in the natural world, and the peak of the spring migration occurs in May. If you’re good (and a little bit lucky), you can see a hundred different bird species in one day, including birds that have flown thousands of miles to get this far, with hundreds of miles yet to go before they reach their summer breeding grounds. It is one of the wonders of the natural world.
Every May for the past five years, I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to spend a day in the field looking for birds. And it’s happening again this year.
Sigh.
Spring watch
Suddenly, two days ago, I started seeing the cormorants again. They disappeared from New Bedford harbor late last fall, were gone all winter, and then on Sunday I saw this big black bird pop up from swimming underwater: a cormorant, who was just as surprised to see me as I was to see it, and who immediately began swimming away from me, fast.
The day before that, Saturday, I saw three or four Red-breasted Mergansers. They came to the harbor last fall, and have been here ever since. But since then, I haven’t seen a one. It’s almost as if the cormorants and the mergansers traded places. The wintering waterfowl have gradually been leaving the harbor since March. The last time I saw a Common Loon was early last week, swimming around Fish Island, resplendent in his summer plumage. I have to say, I’m sad that they’re gone for the year.
It’s mating season for Herring Gulls. The gulls who live on the roof of the building next to our apartment have been getting noisy at night, so noisy that they have awakened me a number of times. One night last week, a terrible screeching squabble woke me up, then I heard something hit the roof — thunk! — and slide down, scrabbling and scraping. Mating season must be a rough time when you’re a gull.
May 26, 2007 — I’ve added a video showing a number of Herring Gull nests that I’ve discovered on the rooftops of New Bedford, including the nest on our roof.
Spring watch
Three years ago, we lived a mile away from Verrill Farm in Concord, Massachusetts. We used to walk down and buy our vegetables there. In the winter, they’d bring in vegetables from California or Florida, but at about this time of year they would start having some of their own vegetables for sale.
I drove up to see Carol’s parents this afternoon, and I took the route that went by Verrill’s Farm. Sure enough, they had their own spinach on sale, the first vegetables out of their greenhouse: nice, crisp, curly, succulent, bright green leaves of spinach. I bought a big bag of their spinach. By this time in the spring, I’m desperate for fresh local vegetables. The stuff they truck in from California and Florida always tastes a little limp and flat.
It’s a quarter to ten, and I just got back home. I was tempted to cook up some spinach before I went to sleep, but it’s really too late. Now I can hardly wait until tomorrow: spinach salad for lunch, steamed spinach for dinner….