ALMANAC
Month-by-month reporting from the natural world, mostly the Hudson Valley or wherever I find myself.
November out of Wack
November 2024
Hudson River off of Claremont
A Warm and Dry November
November, for me, is a time to build a fire, bring in more wood, hunker down and build bird boxes. But this November was exceptionally dry and warm—I was riding my bike to run errands on November 17. Because of the dry, brush fires ignited in the region, and smoke filled the air. Because brush fires are unusual on the East Coast these burns made me feel even more that the world is out of wack. It was so warm out that on a walk at Greig Farm I saw Checkered Skippers flitting about. And Forsythia buds were emerging, the bushes ready to bloom.
Because of the strange weather—not just dry and warm but also strong storms, birds like Cave Swallows (which I have never seen as they properly belong in Mexico and the south in states like Texas or the tip of Florida) were showing up locally, no doubt blown off course by fierce winds.
Some of the out of wack-ness of course comes from the election, which left many rattled, anxious, or downright depressed. My solution: focus even more on the small things, like the princess pine (also known as Common Ground Pine) that grows among the trees at Thompson Pond, one of my favorite nature reserves. And that journey to Pine Plains took me past ponds where I saw the expected: hundreds of ring-necked ducks puddling about, a pintail or two, ruddy ducks with their pointed tails, a grebe delighting in its deep dives. The ducks and geese blanketing the ponds and Canada Geese working the farm fields were familiar and welcome sights of November.
On November 23 the first snow fell in the Catskills and the snow buntings returned to Greig Farm, which I saw on a rainy Thanksgiving day. As I write this it is 20 degrees out and the fire is going, as if all once again is “normal.”
October is Movement
October 2024
October is Migration, is Movement
October is Sparrows popping out of the dying grasses at Greig Farm. October is messy flocks of geese honking their way south. That cacophony of sound never fails to make me stop, listen, and feel like, yes, the world is not just ok, but joyous. October is masses of Blackbirds; the yo-yoing black dots look like the blue sky has been sprinkled with pepper. And October on the East Coast is, of course, leaf peeping season. Apple season. It is my favorite month.
And I “missed” most of it as I was in France visiting with my sister and her family. It felt hard to leave my favorite month but I knew that the fun on the other end would be my reward (and it was—I wrote a blog post about walking the Stevenson Trail).
But I returned on time to catch the end of the dry, clear days, to see my first Pipits tip-toeing across the fields, and celebrate the Juncos that are back for the winter. Also, to experience an October 31 where the temperature hit 80. Beautiful, strange times, and the perfect distraction from the “real world” rumbling toward election day.
September 2024
September is transition
September is a transition month
September is a transition month. I paddled out almost daily the first part of the month in search of Least Bittern, my wonderful, secretive companions in the North Tivoli Bay. With no luck. So I contented myself with admiring Great Blue Herons fishing the bay and Great Egrets sailing south through the sky. I found a new favorite fall flower, the Bottle Gentian, and wonder, as I often do, how I had missed this all these years. It takes years to learn to see.
A short trip to Colorado allowed me to revisit old friends, the Ponderosa Pines and the Gray Jays and to spy a sleek, cunning Abert’s Squirrel. But I also visited a habitat new to me, a fen. Just the word made me want to visit as it sounded more suited to Ireland or Scotland than to Colorado. A fen is a peat-forming wetland that is fed by ground water (not rainwater, like a bog) and is a fragile, and perhaps overlooked habitat—on the surface it looks like a vast prairie, with long views to the horizon. But fens hold secrets, particularly of rare plants and need to be protected. This area, near Fairplay, is protected by the Nature Conservancy, and as I walked out, I had a sense that anything was possible underfoot. I didn’t see any of the rare blooms but I did see delicate Bog Aster and Slendertube Skyrocket. And I saw my first thirteen-lined ground squirrel. Great name, and beyond adorable.
August 2024
August is Abundance
August is Abundance
August is abundance. Both good--baby birds begging for food, then learning to fly. And bad—water chestnut clogging some of the passages in the North Bay, and blanketing the south Tivoli Bay making it a wide, empty (of birds) habitat. “Weeds” exploded by the side of the road (or in my yard). It all felt enormously green and lush. Amidst this richness there was a report of a rabid beaver in the North Tivoli Bay (it “attacked” a paddle boarder and deflated his board with a beaver bite), and many of my friends got covid (for a second or third time). I felt this dis-ease as a caution. Rare birds showed up at a regular rate, pushed around perhaps by the many summer storms south of here. I joined friends to watch Laughing Gulls—not common in this area—over the Hudson River. It rained for days and was humid; then it cleared. In other words, the natural world felt a little manic, which is maybe a reflection of the world itself.
July 2024
July: hope, no hope
July is filled with hope
July is the quiet month. Birds are sitting on nests, wanting to be as stealth as possible. I should, perhaps, be like the birds and hunker down on my own nest, clean out a closet or rearrange a room, but my instinct runs more to wandering. So wander I did, in this case to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
The UP, as we say, reminded me a lot of Alaska: dense often boreal forests, narrow roads snaking through where people drive too fast, gas stations spaced far apart. People were friendly. The birds were few but beautiful, a surprise.
The first surprise was a Black Crowned Night heron (or rather a few) on a lagoon at Bay City State Park (before the UP for those who are geographically up to date). When I heard the purr of Sandhill Cranes, I thought I was hallucinating. But there they were, two adults with their long-legged young, which looks like a colt in its ungainly way (which is why they are called colts).
Now these first unexpected birds—had I done my research I would have known I was going to see them. But I didn’t. And I did not because for me the joy of birding, the joy of a road trip, is the unexpected, the surprise. I’m sure I miss a few things as a result, but I will trade that for the joy of rounding a corner and seeing Sandhill Cranes tiptoeing about. It felt like a true discovery.
The highlights of my journey were driving Seney National Wildlife Refuge (took me three hours to drive seven miles) water and sedge coming together, hearing Sedge Wren, seeing loons, and Trumper Swans; the Porcupine Wilderness State Park where baby Merlins screamed from the treetops; families of red-breasted Mergansers camped on a rock in Lake Superior. And—I got to swim in three great lakes: Huron, Michigan and Superior.
Home and the katydids were katie-diding and everything seemed over green. I had to head out right away to check on what was happening. The osprey nest off of the Saugerties lighthouse has two young, not sure yet what to do with their wings. The osprey nest off of Cruger Island looked abandoned, the pathetic pile of sticks hardly a nest and no babies to be seen. So, nature at it again: hope, no hope, like a steady heartbeat. Mostly these days, I’m ending on hope.
June 2024
June was filled with love
June was filled with love
June I turned my eyes from the thrill of May migration to see what birds/animals are sticking in this region of the Hudson Valley to breed. For me that means heading to the hills—the Catskills—and onto the water—the Tivoli North Bay. In the bay, I can report that the snapping turtles are doing well—more snappers floated about like lethal submarines than ever before. But the Least Bitterns—perhaps my favorite marsh bird—are here as well and by the end of the month I’d spied at least three different birds. Here’s hoping they meet and make bittern babies. And my hike on June 2 to the summit of Slide Mountain (the highest peak in the Catskills) also proved bird-rich: eleven Bicknell’s Thrush, one of the fussiest birds out there, were seen or, mostly, heard. Fussy because they breed only above 3,500 feet and only in habitat that has been disturbed by snow and ice. But they have loved the summit of Slide for decades now and here’s to many more years of Bicknell breeding. The other stunning news of June was my friend Peter reporting he had heard, seen, and photographed baby Saw-whet Owls, our smallest owl, and a first for Ulster County. Peter is a fan of the Saw-whet and his line, offered up early in my birding life, is one that I live by: to see saw-whets you have to believe in saw-whets. Isn’t that true of much of life? Like, to fall in love, you have to believe in love. Here’s to June love.
June 2 Hike up Slide Mountain. Eleven Bicknell’s Thrush seen/heard. Also a Ruffed Grouse exploded off the trail on my trip down, lots of Ovenbird sang the length of the mountain, as did Blackburnian, and Black-throated Green Warblers. A porcupine loitered by the side of the trail and a fawn emerged from the bushes in the parking lot.
June 3 Was my final Monday morning walk down Cruger Island Road as Ascienzo Naturalist in Residence with the Red Hook Library. A devoted crowd showed to listen to the lingering singers like Redstart, Yellow Warbler and Common Yellowthroat.
June 4 Morning paddle in the North Tivoli Bay and two American Bittern flew over.
June 12 I hung some of my bird boxes at a friend’s house in Syracuse, not expecting residents this late in the season but within days House Wrens had set up shop, bringing in nesting material and tossing out the cedar chips we had offered them.
June 17 Overnight in the Catskills near Andes where many Hermit Thrush sang through the night.
June 18 Heat hit—much too early in my experience—but that did not stop one Least Bittern from tip-toeing to the edge of the marsh.
June 20 Heat continued. Muggy. Two Least Bittern wander the North Bay on my morning paddle. Barn and Tree Swallows coast over the bays gobbling flies and other bugs. And the babies are out of the nest and just learning to fly.
June 21 A visit to Vlei Marsh, a Winnakee property in Rhinebeck where I’ve never seen so many baby Wood Ducks! A real treat.
June 22 Heat continued with thunderstorms.
June 25 A trip to the Cape and I get to spend time with baby Piping Plovers, which look like pom poms on sticks. The Cape was often home on summer vacation as a child so visiting old haunts was fun and let me spend time with Osprey carrying fish to their nests and Kingbirds flitting over ponds.
June 30 Micro burst storm takes out trees (and power) throughout my region.
May 2024
May was Cuckoo
May was Cuckoo
This spring of 2024 I had the pleasure of being the first Ascienzo Naturalist in Residence for the Red Hook Public Library. I led bird walks, gave talks about the Hudson River and about nature writing. I met young naturalist and older naturalists all curious about “what’s out there.” On one of the walks someone asked: why don’t you write an almanac?
I loved the idea immediately. Sand County Almanac is one of my favorite books. It’s a quirky book that begins indeed with an almanac of the seasons there in the Midwest were Aldo Leopold made his life. The foreword begins: “There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.” I am one who cannot, and that sense of cannot only progresses as the years go by.
An almanac in my mind means a deep connection to a place, a paying attention to the shifts day by day, season by season. And so I’m using this site to write a sort of almanac of my observations, month by month reporting from the natural world, mostly the Hudson Valley, but wherever I am.
May 2024 was Cuckoo. That is, there were more Cuckoos—both yellow-billed and black-billed—than I have ever seen before. The reason is obvious: we here in the Hudson Valley are in the midst of a tent caterpillar and a spongy moth (formerly gypsy moth) outbreak. There is a lot of food that the Cuckoos enjoy. And so though the spongy moths in particular are just a bit much (an invasive brought over in the 19th century by a Frenchman enthusiastic about increasing silk production in the U.S.), I’ve had a great time hearing Cuckoos from my front yard.
The first of May I saw my first columbine in bloom on a walk at the John Burroughs property Slabsides.
May 4 for Big Sit at Great Vlei marsh we saw sixty-six species of birds, including Virginia Rail and Screech Owl.
May 5 Dawn Chorus on Cruger Island Road brought fourteen people eager to listen to Screech Owls trill and with the coming of light, the “fitz bew” of the Willow Flycatcher.
May 7 I saw and heard Cape May and Tennessee warblers in my front yard.
May 10 Dawn Chorus at Thompson Pond (following in the footsteps of FDR) brought Least Bittern and Wilson’s Warbler, but no Whip-poor-will as we had last year.
May 11 May Census, a decades-long tradition (which is now more of a Big Day) brought 116 species but fewer warblers than in previous years.
May 19 Paddle in the North Tivoli Bay where that spooky rare plant Golden Club was not just in bloom but thriving, spreading. Lots of “peeps” flew about, mostly Least Sandpiper. Lesser Yellowlegs tip-toed the flats.
May 20 Dawn Chorus along Cruger Island Road with Screech Owl returning to serenade us.
May 21 brought crazy heat—87 degrees—that lasted a few days.
May 24 Paddling in the North Tivoli Bay and a Gallinule appeared, hanging out with a Least Bittern. This is the first Common Gallinule I’ve seen in the Bays.
May 30 Time to turn to finding baby birds! Baby Hooded Mergansers floated on the pond at the Elizaville Diner.
May 31 A baby Grackle sat in a nest in a snag at the Great Vlei waiting to see who might arrive as an upstairs neighbor.
(photos: Cape May; Wilson’s; Baby Grackle; Lesser Yellowlegs; Golden club)