Monday morning, the sun emerging on a leafy, June-green world washed by rain, I headed for MacDowell Dam hopeful birds would be greeting the new day with energetic song.
First came a raven’s “aulk aulk.” After years nesting under the cement walkway from high roadway to dam control tower, ravens have spread out to some nearby tall pines. I know people who live near those pines who can attest to a raven’s large vocabulary.
I brought my camera with a decent telephoto lens, but learned long ago that skill and patience beyond mine are needed to take compelling bird photos.
Instead I photographed two favorite wildflowers.
First was the most impressive local spread of bunchberry I know, located near the beach parking area. Under ideal conditions — found more often in cool, northern forests — bunchberry spreads to form a dense colony as subterranean rhizomes inch out, sprouting new stems along the way.
The plant’s pollination strategy is very cool. What appear to be four large white petals actually are leaves intended to attract pollinators to the many tiny flowers at the plant’s center. Upon contact by an insect foraging for nutritious pollen, a flower explodes open with a shower of pollen that lands on the insect to be delivered to the next bunchberry for cross pollination — not consumed by hungry insect or collected by bumblebee queen for delivery back to her colony.
High-speed cameras have captured the explosion of pollen, impressive in velocity and distance. Propelled to the air, wind as well as the triggering insect can transport pollen grains to a neighboring bunchberry.
Successfully pollinated flowers develop into a bunch of bright red berries in late summer.
Perhaps most endearing about the bunchberry is its classification as a “subshrub” (a really sub, sub shrub) that is the smallest member of the dogwood family. A veritable forest of tiny dogwoods.
The other photo is carrion-flower, a vine with tendrils that curl out to twine around neighboring vegetation. It’s common along the shoreline road that used to be Old Harrisville Road before the massive Army Corps flood-control dam was constructed.
Lots of star-burst flowers attract pollinating insects by their fragrance, but, as the carrion-flower’s name suggests, it’s not a flower you want to bring home for a bouquet. It stinks, all the better to attract flies and beetles looking for something putrid to feed on.
Pretty ingenious, the plant has evolved into a niche occupied by few other flowers, thereby lessening competition for pollinators.
As for birds, most pleasing was the number of yellow warblers singing from the shoreland shrubs. Their song is translated as “Sweet. Sweet. I’m-so-very-sweet.” Hear anything remotely resembling that cadence coming from shrubs near wetlands, and then watch for a small, golden bird. Males emerging from cover to sing offer the best views. Camera poised, I hoped for a photo . . . but soon moved on.
Of all the long-distance migrants that nest locally, we have the company of yellow warblers all too briefly. By August they are gone.
There were at least five territorial males along the few hundred yards of shoreland road. Some years I hear too few.
Cedar waxwings showed up, two pairs. The winter flocks have paired off without my witnessing the unique exchange of blossoms or catkins or berries that help the courtship process, male to female and back again, repeatedly.
Be at the right place at the right time and you can see small flocks of these most elegant birds engaged in their courtship exchanges.
An oriole male flashed by, silent, no golden notes cast forth from the treetops.
And so it went, wonderful birds giving away their presence by song if not by visibility.
A walker passed by on a rapid cardio pace and asked if I’d seen anything. “Great birds,” I said. She said she’d seen just one woodpecker.
There were bat boxes installed since my last visit, and monitoring of turtle nesting areas in the sandpit area. By the many turtle eggs dug up and eaten by fox or raccoon, not just humans are monitoring the area.
There also were several herbicide applications as part of the Army Corps management of invasive glossy buckthorn shrubs, some near open water and wetland buffer.
I know the Corps follows management protocols with great care, and uses herbicides following established EPA protocols, but I question whether there is a safe “cide” — be it herbicide or pesticide. The cumulative impacts are mounting.
I pulled up some Japanese knotweed shoots near my car, eager to nip this other invasive nightmare in the proverbial bud before it reaches the herbicidal stage.
Yes, the herbicide zones distract, but the tiny dogwood forest, the unique carrion-flower, broad expanses of water and sky, and all the birds, merit a visit.
Backyard Birder by Francie Von Mertens runs every other week in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.