Nature Note: A Naturalist's Travels Through Nature

It's always wonderful to find a place where you can relax outside. After having lived in central New York for just over a year, I finally feel like I've found a natural area I can call my own. When I lived in Massachusetts, my sacred place was a bend in the Sudbury River along a trail on Heard's Conservation Land in Wayland. After a half mile walk through mowed fields and old farm hedges, I reached the edge of the thicket. The gnarled trail was often muddy due to its proximity to the nearby marsh and in the late summer, it was bordered by goldenrod, vetch, and asters. Sudbury River, Wayland, MA in 2014 As you continued along the trail, tree roots provided chances to trip and ensnare sandals, while low hanging branches gently brushed the top of my head. Occasionally, an overzealous one would batter me in the face as well, but after navigating this gauntlet, you would be met with a wonderful view. The river is old. Lazily it travels along the marshy edges, while red-w...

After dealing with the piles of snow that have graced New England the past fortnight, my girlfriend Alison and I went to check out two Mass Audubon sanctuaries south of Boston. We first toured the Sharon Beals exhibit at the Museum of American Bird Art in Canton, where the exhibit featured the photographers portraits of birds nests from all over the world. We looked at each of the nests lining the walls of the art gallery as they portrayed the many ways birds build nests ranging from the neat weavings of sparrows and thrushes, to the simple depressions of shorebirds, and then to the macabre stick and bone nest of the House Wren ( Troglodytes aedon ). This sometimes horrid, little songbird has the nasty habit of taking over the nests of other songbirds and will even pierce the eggs and kill the chicks inside to secure the nest site for themselves. The nest in the photograph, set on black to show the subtle details that had gone into each nest, was lined with the dessicated remains of th...