Posted by New Hampshire Garden Solutions

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I’m happy to say that I’m finally seeing some dragonflies but still nowhere near the numbers I was seeing last year at this time. I have a feeling water temperature might have something to do with triggering their hatching and with weekly downpours the larger ponds and lakes haven’t had a chance to really warm up. I think the dragonfly shown above is an ashy club tail but I could be wrong.

Chalk fronted corporal dragonflies have also appeared. The get their name from the chalky white corporal bars behind their heads, and they’re usually one of the earliest to appear. Though said to be a skimmer they seem to do more perching. I think of skimmers being in constant motion and always hunting, but quite often I find chalk fronted corporals lounging on rocks just as this one was, waiting for a meal to come by.

I’ve seen a few more butterflies including this sulfur, which was being blown over by the wind. I tried to get a good shot of its eye but it was just blowing around too much. Clouded, cloudless, I don’t really care but if you do, feel free to look it up.

This shot of the Branch River in Marlborough pretty much sums it up for all our rivers and streams. Thankfully we’ve had a little more sunshine lately so the water level is starting to drop. I’ve noticed that high water in the rivers for such a long time is starting to affect our aquatic plants. Pickerel weed for instance, is not looking good anywhere I’ve seen it. It looks as if it has some type of whitish scale on the stems, and the plants are stunted with curling leaves.

The water level in this local pond was quite high one evening but it had a cormorant fishing in it. I watched it dive and resurface several times. I had almost convinced myself that it was too dark for photos when it came chugging by but I gave it a shot anyway, and this was the result.

Green herons don’t seem to be bothered by water levels. I’m seeing more green than great blue herons this year but I haven’t seen an egret yet. Though they’re unusual here I saw egrets in two or three places last year. This green heron reminded me of a Muppet character but I couldn’t remember which one.

Right away I knew I was in trouble. “I heard that!” the green heron said. “I’m not a Muppet!”

And of course the bird is right; I shouldn’t have said that. Green herons are beautiful birds. This one posed nicely one evening in the fading light and it didn’t look at all like a Muppet.

On another evening a group of us saw what was thought to be a lesser yellowlegs. Since there were people far more knowledgeable than I there, I accepted the verdict.

But then I saw this side view of the bird and it looked like it had a slightly upturned bill, and that’s indicative of a greater yellowlegs. Google lens and bird people say it’s a lesser yellowlegs though, so I’m going with that. No matter what I call it, I can imagine people writing in telling me I don’t know beans about birds, which is true. As I’ve said before, I don’t do birds due to colorblindness. I’ve never done birds but occasionally they do me. You should never bet the farm on my bird identification skills unless they are the very common birds like robins and blue jays. The birds are doing their best to teach me but it takes time.

I noticed red pines were flowering so I wanted to show you what they looked like. The long orange bits are the male pollen bearing flowers which are usually much more numerous than female flowers. The whitish bits in the center will eventually become new needles.

Female red pine flowers look much like larch flowers only bigger. If pollinated they will grow even bigger and harden and turn brown, and become the red pine tree’s seed bearing cones. The long parts with green tips are new needles. It can take a week or two between male and female flowers appearing on the same tree.

Have you ever looked at a dandelion closely to see how the seeds form and then detach in the wind? It’s a fascinating process that works well. I saw lots of dandelions early on but we’re getting some hot days now and they don’t like heat, so they slowly disappear. Not before letting their seeds fly though.

Many grasses are flowering right now but it’s a side of nature that many pay no attention to, so I always try to point it out. Orchard grass like that in the shot above is one of my favorites because it’s tall and easy to see, and it has a kind of architectural feel to it. Orchard grass seed heads are composed of spikelets that bear two to eight flowers which dangle from thin filaments (pedicels) and shimmer in the breeze.

George Washington loved orchard grass so much so that he wrote “Orchard grass of all others is in my opinion the best mixture with clover; it blooms precisely at the same time, rises quick again after cutting, stands thick, yields well, and both cattle and horses are fond of it green or in hay.”

Due to its growth habit I think this might be common or black sedge (Carex nigra.) It’s a beautiful thing that is apparently rare in this area since this is only the second time I’ve found it in almost fifteen years. The male flowers are the yellowish butter color ones at the top and the wispy female flowers are on the two stalks below. These would have been naturally close to pure white if the lighting had been better but instead the shade gave them a bluish cast. Even so they’re very beautiful. It is knowing that I might get to see something as beautiful as this that keeps me going out there. There’s a surprise behind every rock and tree.

Guess who has come back to eat all the fruit on the shad bushes? If you guessed cedar waxwings you know your birds. They love fruit and I’ve seen a small flock of them strip a crab apple tree in one afternoon. That’s why if you want to attract birds you should plant native plants and trees that have lots of fruit on them. Birds eat more than just seeds and insects. Listen to me go on about birds! What I know about them I could store under a fingernail but I’ve absorbed the little I know just by watching them. What I said about cedar waxwings stripping crab apple trees comes from my seeing them do just that near the UPS facility in Keene. I used to have to ship out a lot of packages and the bonus was the birds I got to see. Right now cedar waxwings are stripping the fruit off all the shad bushes at the local college.

An American bittern pretended to be swaying grass but I wasn’t fooled. Then it ducked down behind the swaying grass and I was fooled. In fact I never saw it again. I’ve watched them land in the cattails right in front of me and just instantly disappear, that’s how well they blend into their surroundings. As we can see in this photo, when it pretends to be watching the sky it’s actually watching you. Blink or turn away and this bird is gone. If you want to hear one of the strangest sounds you’ve ever heard come out of a swamp just Google “American bittern call.” You can’t really call it a song. Unless you’re another bittern, I suppose.

One evening as I stood by a small pond a beaver appeared and plopped itself down on the shoreline. Then its mate swam over and began nibbling on it. In this photo the nibbling hadn’t started yet but you can get a good look at a beaver’s tail. You can also see how the forepaws on the beaver looking at the camera aren’t webbed. Only the rear paws are webbed to help with swimming. These are two big beavers. I’ve read that adult beavers can weigh anywhere from 40-60 pounds on average and some can occasionally reach 100 pounds. I’d guess these two are probably in the 40-60 pound range but they’re the biggest I’ve seen. I wouldn’t want to have to help one of them home after a night on the town.

I got home and looked up why one beaver would nibble on another and found out that it’s all about grooming. Beavers are very clean animals and they groom themselves and each other regularly. They have oil in certain glands that helps keep the fine hairs near their skin dry. Or as dry as a beaver can be, anyhow. They massage the oil into their coats on land or in the lodge. They use their teeth and / or their paws to groom and also have specialized split toenails that help comb debris out of their fur.

I haven’t gotten any usable photos yet but I saw what I think was a baby beaver swimming by one day. It was maybe a foot long not including the tail, and had a head about as big as a baseball. It was a miniature version of the ones in these photos so I’ll just watch and see. The adults don’t seem to mind me being near.

I’ve read that many Native American tribes called beavers “little people” because they’re always so busy and because both parents help raise their young. Beavers mate for life and like humans they have long “marriages.”

I was walking around a small pond that usually has fragrant white water lilies in it early one morning when I met some Canada goose goslings. I thought they’d turn away but no, they kept coming, trying to look nonchalant. I’d guess curiosity got the better of them, but I could see this situation ending badly so I turned and left quickly.

The parents of the goslings had been hiding behind a nearby tree the entire time, watching. I thought back to a few years ago when at this very same pond I stumbled into a red wing blackbird nesting site. All of the sudden I had a male red wing hovering inches in front of my face, beating me on the head and face with its wildly flapping wings. That was bad enough. I didn’t want to find out what it would be like if a Canada goose did it.

The young geese have much to learn. Snapping turtles pick many of them off well before they reach adulthood. This big mother turtle was laying her eggs in the soft gravel beside a road as many of them do. I’ve learned by watching them that the month of June is programmed into them for egg laying somehow and sure enough, on the evening of June 1st I saw three of them laying eggs.

Unfortunately many snapping turtle eggs will end up this way, dug up by everything from crows to raccoons but nature always has a way, and there always seems to be plenty of snappers around. I’ve read that they lay their eggs in layers, starting with the deepest and working up to as many as three layers. The eggs in the first two layers might get dug up and eaten but those in the deepest layer often survive.

I was amazed when I looked at this photo and saw what looked just like a solar eclipse going on in that turtle’s eye. According to the National Audubon Society the snapping turtle family Chelydridae, evolved in North America and has haunted our wetlands almost unchanged for nearly 90 million years. Others say they and other turtles have been here for 200 million years and walked with the dinosaurs. All it takes is one look at that face to convince me that they have been here for a very long time indeed.

I should mention that these photos were taken using a zoom lens so I was not as close to this turtle as it might appear. Snapping turtles can move faster than you’d guess and what looks like a short neck is long enough to almost reach around to its tail, so it’s best to give them plenty of room and let them be at peace to do what they have to do. They are gentle creatures and won’t hurt anyone as long as they’re left alone. Having said that, I and just about anyone else who has grown up with snapping turtles as a child has poked at them with a tree branch and seen them snap it easily in half. “Whoa, I’m glad that wasn’t my finger” is what was usually heard afterwards.

I remembered to go back to the pond once the geese left to get a shot of a fragrant white water lily. They’re beautiful things only with us for a short time, so I go to see them quite often. I like to try for a glimpse of the golden fire that burns in their center but it’s not an easy thing to see from shore.

I like seeing these little mycena mushrooms but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them this early. This shows exactly what they do. Though I’ve seen one or two you can usually count on them forming large colonies like what is seen here. They are wood eaters that help break down forest litter. If you think it’s hard to walk through a forest now think of how it would be without the wood eaters. I’d guess probably close to impossible.

I went off the trail into the woods to see a white flower and looked down to discover that I was surrounded by tiger’s eye fungi. They are also called cinnamon fairy stools and grow maybe 3-4 inches off the ground. They’re very tough, colorful and concentric but they lose their color as they age. They are said to form root connections with pines, oaks, beeches, and chestnuts. This one was big at maybe two inches across and had another tiny example growing on its cap, which I’ve never seen before.

A fly sitting on a fly agaric mushroom might seem fitting but this fly might have been playing with fire because this mushroom gets its name from the way it was once cut up and put in pans of milk to kill flies. What looks like dust under this mushroom is its spores. This usually happens only on humid, dead still days. Mushrooms rely on wind for spore dispersal so when this happens you know that it didn’t go quite according to plan.

This pretty dragonfly was as fresh as one can be. When dragonflies emerge from their exoskeletons they usually fly to a quiet spot and hang from vegetation until their wings extend and strengthen. I saw this dragonfly land and noticed that while it flew its wings were very weak. They kind of flopped around and looked like plastic wrap in the wind. But it looked good overall and I’m sure it was fine once its wings strengthened. Dragonflies also change color and I can’t be absolutely certain of its identity but if I had to guess I’d say it was an eastern pond hawk juvenile due to the colors. Juveniles and females look a lot alike for a while.

Pond hawks come by their name from the way they pounce on any insect that happens to fly near, including damselflies. They take food on the wing and then rest on nearby plants and shrubs.

These little dragonflies taught me something interesting last year when I saw several of them perched in the gravel at the side of the road. While I tried to get photos I watched them snapping up the ants that left the anthill they were watching. They’re here again this year but we’ve had so much rain I’m not sure the ants are coming up to the surface. This one was perched on a bent cattail leaf, surrounded by water. Its name is the “dot tailed white face.” The white face is obvious enough but you have to look closely to see the yellow dot about two thirds down the length of its tail. I hope to be able to show better photos of them in the future. I never knew they were so hairy until I saw this shot.

Words can never convey the beauty of a tree; to understand it you must see it with your own eyes.
Language cannot capture the melody of a song; to understand it you must hear it with your own ears.
~Hua Hu Ching

Thanks for coming by. Happy Summer.

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