Draining the Upper Impoundment at Great Meadows

Water level at Upper Impoundment side of Water Control Structure is 1.4 feet.

Berm on impoundment side of WCS

Riverside of WCS needs dredging to make it lower than pipe bottom.

 

Riverside of WCS

Doubling Kiosk Size

The Kiosk at Great Meadows--Concord Unit is entirely too small to accommodate the amount of material to be displayed. Today I decided to utilize the rear of the Kiosk to display the eBird Bird Bar Charts I printed a couple of weeks ago.

I removed the poison ivy and a small crab apple tree and transported two loads of gravel for a path.

Front of Kiosk: Left side is a trail map, Right side for announcements.
Blackboard on end is for sightings.
Rack at bottom is for brochures.

The Back of the Kiosk now contains Bird Bar Charts and will soon hold  Plant Lists.

 The only problem is that anything posted on the back side requires lamination to protect the paper from the weather.

Impromptu Evening Walk at Great Meadows

6/1/12 Ruth and I attend Cherrie Corey's evening walk at Great Meadows.
Others attending:

• Emily Wheeler
• Carol and Marty Rogers
• Neela DeZoysa and Friend Cecilia Sharma
• Sarah Purgas - farmer and herbalist, she's head gardener for Gaining Ground and the Old Manse garden this summer; also is trained in historical preservation carpentry
• The Fischer-Frank family - Alan, Nina, and Julian (Cherrie's star homeschooler)

Fox Grape, AKA Concord Grape, (Vitis lambrusca) near start of the dike trail. We also have  River Grapes in Concord with pronounced teeth all around the leaf margin

Multiflora rose smell is stronger in evening
Yellow Flag Iris are everywhere this year.

Tufted Loosestrife

Tufted Loosestrife (Lysimachia thrysiflora) with clusters of yellow flower in the leaf axils (look like miniature wood buttons). They are just going by now. State botanist said he has rarely seen these in Massachusetts.

Viburnum dentatum, Northern Arrowwood, Opposite Leaves, Blooms a little earlier that the Swamp Dogwood.

Arrowwood

Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) is Cherrie's ID, based on leaf, stem ridges/markings, and leaf shape.  Small Shrub just past bench on right side of Cross Dike. Big green leaves with red veins.  Neela said she might find it in Arthur Haines new book Flora Novae Angliae. Cherrie says book is controversial because of new names both common and latin

Talked about Phantom Crane Fly, When it's in the sun you can see the black legs but when it flies into the shade you see just the whitish-blue dots at the leg tips.

Phantom Crane Fly

Buttonbush- one growing just before footbridge on left. Light green turns to dark green as it matures.Spherical inflorescences (from Latin in- + florescere to begin to bloom).

Buttonbush

Purple Loosestrife
Curly Dock

Showy tick-trefoil - pea family, blooms in mid-June with many pink and white pea-like flowers

Wood Sorrel (AKA Lemonies), 3 heart-shaped leaflets looks like clover

Evening Primrose, many  second year plants will bloom this summer.

Evening Primrose

Green Ash - a Floodplain tree, still Fraxinus pennsylvanica (sometimes also called red ash).

Green Ash

False Indigo, Amorpha fruticosa, native west of here in very dry places. Invasive in the NE and NW U.S. rare in other parts of the country.  Fabaceae pea family. May have expanded here at Great Meadows due to the warm winter.

False Indigo

Glossy Buckthorn, veins are parallel and don't run off the edge. It's now the first non-native plant ever recorded growing in Gowings Swamp.

Fine sparsely cut leaves near shoreline belong to either Water parsnip or Bulb-bearing water hemlock, both Carrot Family plants small with small, loose umbels of white flowers in mid-summer, sparser than the Queen Ann's Lace.

Umbels

Milk Parsley, cosmos like leaves emerging now near the water's edge, will have big beautiful umbels of white flowers with green and white variegated bracts in July.  State botanist, Brian Connolly, says that Great Meadows/Concord is one of only four places in North America where it grows.

Milk Parsley

Fleabane, probably Philedelphia (Erigeron philadelphicus) starting to bloom.  Many medicinal uses and, supposedly, when burned it keeps insects away

White Sweet Clover, beautiful long spike of little white flowers on tall, graceful bushes of delicate clover-like leaves.  Biennial.

White Sweet Clover

Rough Avens The fruit is more interesting than the flower, spherical with little barbs on it, leaves look like a strawberry plant.

American Lotus
Beaver chewing up first joist on Observation Deck

Downy Swamp Milkweed, furry stem and leaves

Pink/white striped bindweed (Calystegia sp.) vine wraps around thing.

Similar Plants

1.      Arrow Arum flower rarely seen, veins run out sideways from mid-vein

2.      Pickerel Weed has oval leaf and tall stalk with purple flowers, Massive amounts in lower impoundment.

3.      Sagittaria latifolia, Broadleaf Arrowhead - veins orginate at leaf base and run parallel with mid-vein

Moneywort, same genus Lysimachia as the tufted loosestrife. Not native, comes from Europe. Carpet of the floodplain forest.

Moneywort

Blue Vervain, hairy stems, wrinkled, candelabra for flowers..
White Vervain - Racemes that shoot out of the leaf stem.
Galls on maple leaves look like fungus.
Caterpillar, spiny comma or question mark, on american elm leaf.
Red Admiral butterfly

Small Hop Clover

Small Hop Clover

Wormwood or Mugwort (Artemesia sp.): didn't look healthy, all silvery and clumped together

Daisy Fleabane white. Philadelphia is pinkish

Cattail flowers, high on dike and growing out of warm rock crevices are producing pollen. Natives used pollen as flour.

Sensitive ferns right side of dike near end.

Sensitive Fern

Hawthorn (Rosaceae/Crataegus sp.)
on right before first bench, lower impoundment trail.

River Bulrush, flowering, on left side (Holt) used to be state protected.
Fresh tracks in mud near beaver lodge.

Ground Nut

Groundnut

Marsh Bedstraw (Rubiacea/Galium palustre)Marsh bedstraw

Flowering dewberry
Completely white bindweed, also called moonflower when grown horticulturally
Lots of Bittersweet on Upper Impoundment side of Cross-dike just after the Observation Deck.

These photos are by Cherrie Corey and Larry Warfield and web images.

Interns: Tod & Tyler at Concord

Tod and Tyler joined me for their last day of US Fish & Wildlife Service internship. We filled a collapsed muskrat tunnel, cut maple saplings along the dike and up-rooted a few saplings with a "Weed Wrench". Then we attacked a rock in the middle of the Edge Trail. By quitting time we had a great appreciation for the people who constructed all of New England's stone walls. It's going to take a couple more pry bars, some chain and a come-along to finish the task. Anyone looking for some exercise please give me a call.

Tod and Tyler attacking rock

The rock split several times and moved a few inches but more work needs to be done.

eBirding Great Meadows

Dave, Toby, Zena's Mom, Zena, Kevin, Ruth and Joan

Nine of us enjoyed a great morning at Great Meadows NWR today seeing 35 species of birds http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist?subID=S10830729. Our best (hard to find) birds were Least Bittern, Pied-billed Grebe & Green Heron. We talked about using ebird "Alerts" to help find new birds. The highlight of the day for me was discovering that Zena, a highschool student, is already using ebird.org to keep track of her growing list of sightings. She's got sharp eyes and will have great lifetime records of her sightings.

Dave, generously, donated a butterfly net that I intend to keep in the electric truck along with 

 

Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Massachusetts

Butterflies through Binoculars: A Field Guide to the Boston-New York-Washington Region

We were able to find Red Admirals and a Monarch. 

Snapping Turtle laying eggs

 

Snails

A Day with Tod & Tyler, High School Interns

Today I was joined by high school seniors, Tyler and Tod, who are completing a work study program with the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Tyler and Tod have an impressive knowledge of the outdoors. We filled muskrat holes with gravel, pulled garlic mustard, cut silver maple saplings, watched a pair of Hairy Woodpeckers feeding young and observed a bunch of birds.  We found a Blanding's turtle with a transmitter, several broken robin eggs, predated turtle eggs, many painted turtles, a deceased pickerel and a carp head, muskrat, and a couple of snapping turtles. Along the way we met Derick Yorks who explained how he is studying the movements of Blanding's turtles.

After a long day of shoveling gravel both students said they'd like to come back and help another day. With that attitude these young adults are going to have a great future.

Tyler & Tod with Snapping Turtle

  

Tyler & Tod with Painted Turtle

Pickerel 

Pickerel saying Hello

Unidentified spots on silver maple

Slippers, Snappers and Interns

Lady Slipper found by Susan Ticknor on the refuge side of the RR Bed, between the gate and the first bench 

Summer Intern Matt and our invasive plant biologist Amber Carr They're holding beautiful but invasive flag iris 

More Interns: Danny and Tod

First snapping turtel I've seen wandering this year.