Athol Bird and Nature Club

06/14/2026

In The Company of Other Walks

Before I set out on the barn’s Stacked Stone Trail towards NEECA, I might walk the perimeter of the pasture. The early part of this week the sun was hot and bright, but the humidity was low, so I scuffed leisurely in the grass between pasture and logged woodlot, looking for frogs to leap right and left.

This low wet edge between the two habitats is called a swale, and I remember finding Pickerel Frogs there in other years. Living out of water more than in it, the young Pickerel Frogs would flush out of the swale’s grasses and sedges at my feet. The brilliant metallic luster of these frogs when they are exposed to sunlight is unmistakable. In wetter years I recall finding young Green Frogs. They range from drab olive to fluorescent green with dark spots or bars on the back legs – cryptically colored when viewed by a predator from above. Unlike the Pickerel Frogs, I rarely got close before they disappeared into a puddle.

But this year’s drought meant no frogs. Nevertheless, the young aspen, birch and pine pioneering the logged site looked healthy, and the swale’s dry trough was full of sedges and rushes, some of which I learned to identify a few years ago. That was an interesting summer: the barn and my house were littered with stems of grasslike plants I collected. I discovered the identification of sedges and rushes is HARD, plus their appearances change as the weeks go by – a sedge or rush in June looks quite different from the same plant in September.

The drought also seemed not to harm the tangled mosaic of other plants in the swale and woodlot. Sheep Laurel was blooming, Hay-scented Fern grew densely under the Highbush Blueberry bushes, the Blackberry canes were spilling over with flowers and Cinquefoil trailed beneath them all. Where the swale met the barn’s Stacked Stone Trail, there were clumps of Blue-eyed Grass. Not grass, although its leaves are long and thin, but a wildflower more closely related to irises. The flower is simply drenched with blue and has a yellow star in the center, and I remember how much I loved the tiny flower the first June, I saw it.

This sunny exposed trail leading to the horse park is one I walk often. Of the many memories I have, one of my favorites is a windthrown Eastern Hemlock, its root ball wrenched from the ground nearly twenty years ago. One spring the water-filled pit contained a solitary Bullfrog. I asked Vidalia for a whoa, and then slid on my bottom from the elevated trail to where the frog sat below. Crouching like the frog but with one hand holding the lead rope I leaned closer, enough to see the bronze iris of its eyes. It was a solitary Bullfrog, for that is their habit except during breeding season, and the water filled pit was truly a case of “one little room becoming an everywhere”. This frog would not leave the puddle until it dried up.

Where the barn’s trail enters NEECA it can fork into an early successional field, bright and hot, or dip into the cool forest, and that is where I went, to check on a small colony of Pipsissewa under the conifers. I remember last July seeing their waxy flowers in nodding clusters, dainty and delicately tinted white or pink with a magenta ring. Finding them again seemed a good time to end my walk – but just one more stop I thought. A short distance away were a couple culverts, and in one small culvert – barely a big puddle - I would find salamander eggs in May and flush small frogs. Today the culvert was nearly dry, but I approached anyway, perhaps to catch the plunk of a frog into the water. No plunks this time, but I kept looking nonetheless, and slowly like a wish manifesting itself, there appeared a frog on a rock. It seemed very dark in color, and chunky, an older frog. At first, I thought of a Wood Frog, but that didn’t feel right, and after sending a photo to Ernie it was clear: a Green Frog, quite unlike the slender young frogs I used to flush in the swale’s troughs years ago.

We sat there together for a while, for he was not skittish – in fact he was doing the thing frogs do best: he was staring, the very essence of the Zen koan: “Be the frog. When you sit, sit. When you eat, eat.” In other words, be in the moment. Pay attention. If you are quietly aware, things will come to you.

I have read that memories can be a kind of haunting. The time with the frog would become a memory to add to those I have of this place. Something that would come back to me - like the thought of an old home or neighborhood, or a time of life, or a face and voice - recurring without conscious effort, and perhaps sometimes in my dreams.

06/13/2026

This will be wonderful program

06/01/2026

Some walks on the trail are like meditation. These are the walks in which you “arrive with every step” - every stride becomes a destination. They may happen whenever something attracts your eye, and at the same time you are accessible to the full compass of sensations in that spot.

Like this week on the Native Plant Trail at NEECA, when the sun was filtering through the early leaves of trees, and I found what seemed like a dark powdery print. And while I stopped for a while to puzzle out the image, in another part of my mind I noted a nearby Catbird – softly squeaking and chipping to himself it seemed.

That part of the trail opens to a defunct gravel pit. Stopping there this time of year, the sun felt pleasantly warm on my back. Dewberry and Lowbush Blueberry grew thickly at my feet- nutritious food plants favored by the Catbird in this open and disturbed place in the NEECA forest.

During an earlier stage of that same walk, among the tall old pines, hemlocks and oaks, I did what I often do on a shadowy trail: I scanned the darkness of the forest floor for where the sun hits. And that is where I went, to see what I would find in the spotlight. There were small Lady Slipper plants and Bunchberry and Wild Cucumber Root, and while I crouched down to these, a Raven and Titmouse appeared to have an odd interspecific vocal duet above me. “Wheep, wheep, wheep. Grok, grok, grok”. Again, and again.

Later, in the glade, a man-made opening in the forest where the trail ends, I bent down to see what was spotlit under the Mountain and Sheep Laurels. Standing back up, I smacked into the branches of a shrub I had found there last year. I had been a little too focused, for I nearly missed perhaps the most wonderful sensation of all – the scent of a wild Spring Azalea.

Here are some of the sights and sounds and scents I experienced as I walked the NEECA trail that spring day. Each of them telling me - where you are is where you need to be.

05/16/2026

05/15/2026

A Second Vernal Pond Field Trip with Home Schoolers

I wish all children had the opportunity to run or walk through a sunlit opening in the forest. I have memories of many fourth-grade field trips to Pond Meadow Park in Braintree. The small hillside meadow there must have seemed enormous to the kids. We would stop on the path alongside it, and I would wave them off with my hand. “Go. Go ahead. Run.” They would look at my face only once to check my intention, then storm up the hillside through the waist deep grass. Reaching the top, they would turn around out of breath and look at me again, waiting for instructions. “C’mon. Run down.” They whooped and charged back down, inevitably falling on their faces, and disappearing in the grass. Some would pop up laughing and continue running; others instead rolled the rest of the way down the hill. Decades later, I still remember how the tall grass waved and gleamed like silver. And how the sunlight and excitement suffused the kids’ faces so that they shone. And how, standing watching them, the scene warmed me and gave me happiness that surely equaled theirs.

It was a bit like that when this week a second group of wonderful home school students stopped at the glade during our vernal pond field trip at NEECA. We explored the site for a few moments on our way to the pond. Here, instead of waving grass, was a loosely woven carpet of amethyst on the wide old logging road. Sprinkled among the dried leaf litter was Fringed Polygala, a small pink-purple wildflower, low to the ground, with two orchid-like blossoms, each facing a different direction. Two wing-like sepals flanked a fringed tube on each of the paired flowers. The kids liked the other common name, Gaywings, for the two sepals flanking the side of the floral tube resembled the wings of a bird taking flight. One student clasped a miniature bouquet of another flower spreading there: Bluets, their flowers only an eighth to a half inch wide, draping on slender stems in her hand.

We looked up and around the glade, and perhaps the kids began to see the impressive dimensional character of the glade and its surrounding forest. One student wondered, “Are those Red Pine?” They were White Pine, the tallest of course, followed by Eastern Hemlock, Red Maple and Red Oak. Then there was another story of American Beech – they don’t mind growing under heavier cover than other deciduous trees, and their tough branches punch through the shadows to take advantage of any clearings. Joining the beech were some American Chestnuts sending up sprouts, and Black Birch and hemlock saplings. The shrub level was iconic North Quabbin: Mountain Laurel, Hobblebush, Witch Hazel, and Highbush Blueberry. Sheep Laurel rose in dense masses beneath them. And at ground level there was a wild gang of woody plants, wildflowers, ferns, mosses, and club mosses: Partridgeberry, Trailing Arbutus, Starflower, Canada Mayflower and more. Wild Sarsaparilla and Wild Cucumber rose above them. These trees and plants are found elsewhere at NEECA; none are restricted to the glade and its surrounding forest. But nowhere else are they found in such a mosaic - of color and form and structure - and washed in such light and brightness.

I have wondered about the depth and breadth of species found in the glade and its forest edge. Perhaps one of the factors promoting this diversity: the preponderance of beech and oak leaves in the leaf litter. Unlike maple and birch leaves that become plastered to each other and the forest floor, beech leaves are springy and often roll into cylinders, trapping air. Perhaps this aeration of leaf litter has something to do with the diversity there? But it was time to explore the vernal pond a short walk away – another habitat at NEECA with an incredible and distinctive variety of plants and animals.

As in last time, at our approach the Painted Turtles slid off their perch along a partially submerged tree into the water. Again, we found Wood Frog eggs and their polliwogs. The young tadpoles were nearly black in color. These Wood Frog “polliwogs” (Old English for “wobbly heads”) had lately hatched from an egg mass green with algae and floating inconspicuously like pond scum. Upon hatching, the polliwogs ate the handy and nutritious green jelly from which they hatched. They may also consume the soft green spheres from which young salamanders emerged. The individuals we found would graduate to scavenging dead animal matter in the pond as they switched their diet to protein. The adult frog can vary in color and markings yet staying within the hues of dead oak leaves. It is a slender, even elegant frog with a dark face mask and eyes like the fabled toad’s stone-a golden iris in an eye larger than the ear. The perfect cryptic coloration of these frogs is accompanied by their absolute silence once the breeding season has ended at the beginning of May. Unlike the vocal frogs that live their lives in and around the water, the land-loving Wood Frogs depend upon their ability to disappear into the dark and quiet of the woods.

Our water nets brought up other pond organisms. There were at least two species of dragonfly nymphs, one short and squat and the other larger and elongated. Through our magnifiers we also saw the smaller and more delicate Damselfly nymphs, and a new aquatic insect for us I think - a Water Boatman, rowing on a pair of long legs.

How did these animals obtain oxygen in a watery environment? Some showed gills or an air bubble carried around like a scuba tank. Others broke the water’s surface for a dose of air. And how did they locomote? Some rowed with oar-like legs or wriggled flattened tails. Others crawled on the bottom of our collecting pans, or jet propelled themselves by expelling water from their rear ends. Some had unique appendages, and others seemed to simply drift about.

The kids sketched their finds, and then we took a short walk into the forest that protects and buffers this vernal pond. The Join Up Trail is also NEECA’s Native Plant Trail, and the beautiful signs created by our local artist Krissy Dorn helped us identify some of those same trees, shrubs and wildflowers that grow in and around the glade. The kids had sharp eyes, especially for the red fruits of Partridgeberry. But perhaps a favorite find was the few small Painted Trilliums glowing white in the dark - a lagniappe (an “excellent word” said Mark Twain). A small extra gift, like the thirteenth cupcake in the baker’s dozen.

05/06/2026

Home Schoolers Investigate NEECA’s Vernal Pond

It was an enthusiastic group of home schoolers who studied NEECA’s vernal pond this week and explored the forest along the Native Plant Trail. Our field trip was led by aquatic biologist Cathy Czal and educator Bonnie Benjamin. We discovered an amazing number of vernal pond organisms, from fairy shrimp to masses of frog and salamander eggs to the nymphs of dragonflies and caddisflies to turtles, tadpoles and newts.

I have always loved water insects, and I was excited to see a globular body maneuvering and tilting beneath the surface of the water in the collecting pan, much like a tube raft being pulled underwater by a rope. It was about the size of my thumbnail, dark brown and black in color. Its paddlelike hindlegs were flattened and fringed with long hairs. Like all beetles this Predaceous Diving Beetle possessed chewing mouthparts and was an active predator of aquatic animals. The earlier larval stage, also in the collecting pan, is called the Water Tiger for good reason – it’s a deadly baby, with a helmeted head and mean-looking jaws curved like sickles, hollowed inside to suck body fluids from prey.

After observing and sketching our finds, we started out on NEECA’s Native Plant Trail. This trail winds through the White Pine/Eastern Hemlock/northern hardwoods forest that is characteristic of the North Quabbin area. The pines and hemlocks stood like columns, quiet and undisturbed in the coolness of the trail. They are the foundational species of the forest, the oldest, tallest and largest in diameter. But they are foundational in other ways as well. The hemlocks modulate the slow decay of needles and wood, and gradually mete out nutrients to soil microbes, worms, and snails. And thence to others - such as predatory salamanders. Beneath the forest floor debris are Red-backed Salamanders, mute and secretive, and so numerous that their biomass may equal that of the small mammals here – even twice outweigh that of breeding birds. To walk through these woods is to step atop a kind of blanket of living salamander flesh.

NEECA’s forest is a sort of multi-storied structure: directly below the upper story of old pines and hemlocks is a middle story of Red Oak, plus the maples, birches and aspens. Underneath them is a shrub story of Mountain Laurel, Witch Hazel and Hobblebush. Then, the groundcovers growing cheek-by-jowl. There is Goldthread with leaves that are shiny, evergreen, and 3-parted. Its tiny white flowers rise above the leaves on thin stalks in mid-May – one of my favorite spring sights. Partridgeberry, also evergreen, has tiny fuzzy white flowers a short time later. The fingernail sized leaves are dark green with a white mid-rib and paired along the creeping stems. Partridgeberry’s small berry represents the North Quabbin to me – scarlet, shiny, with a pair of eyelike indentations peering out from dark green leaves. And then there is Wintergreen, what I call Teaberry – many students were familiar with the cinnamon-spicey flavor of its leaves and berries.

Each story or level of the forest is home to its own community of birds and mammals, mosses and lichen, insects and other invertebrates. And we didn’t have time to begin to investigate life within the soil itself! Beneath the brown leaf litter is a whole world of fungi, microbes, spiders, insects, and vertebrates like the salamanders, arising from the old tall hemlocks and pines along the shaded trail.

There will be another Vernal Pond field trip at NEECA next Tuesday May 12, and I can’t wait! If you have a home school student interested in joining us, please contact Cathy at [email protected].

04/22/2026

03/04/2026

Spring Hawk Watch at Adams Farm
Monday, March 9th - Saturday, May 9th 2026
Every day (weather permitting) - 8am - 3pm

Spring migration is almost here! Come count migrating raptors at the Adams Farm lookout in Athol.

Opening day will be Monday, March 9th and continuing thru Saturday, May 9th, 2026 (always weather permitting). A lead counter will be there generally between 8am - 3pm each day.

All are welcome regardless of experience. Bring some binoculars and come count with us.

For more information, click on this link: https://atholbirdclub.us17.list-manage.com/track/click?u=245e155b62c6bfcdf940c2ac2&id=640f77021d&e=b9147ea399