You Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker

I thought I knew where the entrance to Harvard Forest was, but was wrong. It was just where a far corner of the 3000 acre preserve was. What I always thought was the entrance was near a shallow murky pond just off route 122, across the street from the upper reaches of the Quabbin Reservoir in Petersham.

(It was here one Saturday afternoon a several years ago where in the middle of a torrential downpour with thunder booming all around, that I reeled in a massive pickerel after a long, epically soaking struggle; with my son witnessing wide-eyed from inside the car parked nearby...it was a big watery mess, and one of my more memorable hauls...)

But this was not the part of the Harvard Forest we were looking for this Saturday; we were looking for the part that contains the Fisher Museum, with it's forest dioramas. We should have looked up the address before we left. Instead, we ended up drifting through Petersham proper, unable to find it and unsure what to do with ourselves.



But as luck would have it, as we rolled along aimlessly, we happily encountered not one but two Trustees Of Reservations sites. Both were located almost side by side along East Street, not far from the center of town. Kelly's ankle is still a little sore, and she needed to feed the baby, so I left her to her work and plunged into the woods to scout out the Brooks Woodland Preserve on my own...



At the entrance some hikers had left their walking sticks for others to use; a class act. The hiking is easy, with a very moderate climb along a narrow single-track path through knee high ferns.



This section of forest struck me as particularly beautiful. Sometimes forests can look and feel ragged or old: unhealthy; silent and dark with dead and twisted trees, thorny brambles everywhere and large areas of muck. But sometimes forests just seem to brim with energy; lush and green, vibrant with life and bird calls; almost built for hiking. This is just such a forest.



It was a pleasure to track through, and it wasn't long before I encountered a couple of woodpeckers, male and female, dodging from tree to tree right above, making a ruckus.



They are the functionally but derisively named Yellow Bellied Sapsuckers. I stopped and watched them as they darted between four or five seemingly specific trees nearby.

It was most likely a mating pair; the male could be identified by the extra orange patch on the throat where the female had none.



Plus they would land on the same tree every few minutes before splitting up again.

They kept jumping between the same few trees nearby and calling loudly. But they never flew too far away before returning. They were definitely aware of the human with the clicking box pointed at them, but they wouldn't take off completely. After observing this behavior for a few minutes it dawned on me that maybe by darting back and forth they were trying to divert my attention, maybe from a nest in another tree nearby...



It had now been over a half hour since leaving the car and I had bothered the birds enough, so I left the woods to the woodpeckers and back tracked down the path. Reunited with the crew, we drove maybe a quarter mile or so up the road closer to the town center, and parked again near the Petersham fire and police departments...



...there nearly across the street was the entrance to the second Trustees' site: the North Common Meadow...



This preserve is a very easy, very family-friendly walk through mostly open meadows. For this one, Kelly and the freshly fed bloggerette were raring to go.



There is a nice little path mowed through the tall wildflower-peppered grasses to follow along, for minimal disturbance to the surrounding habitats.



We soon made our second encounter with a hummingbird moth in as many years, going from flower to flower just like a hummingbird would...



Also a damselfly, -not a dragonfly-, so known because of the way they fold their wings when they land and the way their eyes are spread apart...



And in the small frog pond nearby, hoping they'd both come closer, was this patient floater...



We looped around the path as it swung south and into a section of particularly high grasses.



Circling above and landing here and there in this section were some blackbird-looking type birds. But instead of the bright red shoulder patches we're used to seeing on the blackbirds, these had white streaks on their bodies, and big white patches on their heads.

Ignoring Kelly's impatient huffing, I held still for several minutes, and then slowly inched closer and closer to the area where a pair of the birds kept landing in between their constant short cirlings of the area. I thought I knew what they were, but if so had never seen them up close before. Getting home later and checking my bird book confirmed my guess:

Bobolinks. A fittingly odd name, for an odd looking bird...



They're part of the blackbird family, as can be told by their preference to perch on tall grasses.



The ladies look cool in their own right, with heavy black streaks on their head, back and wings.

I could sense Kelly's impatience growing...and while one-half of the sky was still nice and blue...



...the rain and thunderstorms that had been milling about on the other half seemed to have moved closer. It was time to get out of the meadow.



It was a great stroke of luck encountering another couple of Trustees' sites.

But Harvard forest, we'll have to try again...