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People have been asking me about the completely browned-off white pines that resulted from the passing of superstorm Sandy at the end of last October.
Well, we finally had a spate of spring-like weather. On Saturday, a phoebe was calling around my house, joining the two-week siege of grackle, redwing blackbird, cardinal, Carolina wren, and tufted titmouse calling and singing. Phoebes show up when the insects begin popping out, and they started popping out over the weekend like mad.
If only Robert Moses, New York’s supreme 20th-century planner and doer, could revisit one of his first parkland acquisitions, Hither Hills State Park, and take a look as the gem of that park system, the Walking Dunes, he would feel very confident that his decision was well made.
Skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, is a plant of the Northern Hemisphere and a species that occurs throughout most of North America except for in the South and West. A flowering plant in the Jack-in-the-pulpit family, it is one of the first plants to flower each year and thus is a true harbinger of spring. The second half of its scientific name refers to its fetid smell, not unlike the effluvia emitted by a defensive skunk or the scent a red fox uses to mark its territory.
Who was it that said you can make naturalist into a scientist, but it’s almost impossible to teach a scientist to become a naturalist?
