Earthwise Aware

Call Directions Website Contact the organization

Earthwise Aware Nature Conservation as A Way of Life

Democratize Science - Advance Biodiversity & Climate Research

Ethical Nature Conservation For All & Everywhere ▹ With You, We make the World a Better Place for Both People & Nature.

🍂 This Week with EwAEarly October sharpens the signs of the season in Middlesex County. Color is spreading through the c...
10/04/2026

🍂 This Week with EwA

Early October sharpens the signs of the season in Middlesex County. Color is spreading through the canopy, though peak foliage is still generally ahead for much of eastern Massachusetts. Acorns, nuts, and other fruits are feeding wildlife or gathering on the ground, while milkweed pods release their silky seeds. Watch, too, for American witch-hazel beginning its remarkable late-season bloom, often flowering as its leaves turn yellow.

On the Outer Cape, migration continues to shift. Shorebirds may still be feeding along tidal flats, but sparrows become more prominent in sunny fields and coastal thickets. Look overhead for raptors, and scan ponds and open water for the first arriving ducks, loons, and other waterbirds.

Whether you are documenting wildlife, following seasonal change, or contributing to an EwA long-term monitoring project, every intentional observation helps us understand how local ecosystems respond through time.

Aside from our regular field schedule:

□ Join us Saturday morning at the Fells (Hillcrest area), for our 🦌 Forest Explorations walk. It is free with registration.
□ If you're new to 🌿 plant and wildlife monitoring, we still have a few spots available in our monthly orientation session on Saturday afternoon.

📆 Visit the EwA Event Calendar [https://www.earthwiseaware.org/events/ ] for details: upcoming field sessions and events, including schedules, locations, and the latest updates.


📷 Field Milkwort · Polygale Sanguin (Senega sanguinea) | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly.

🍃 This Week with EwAAfter a very wet and windy stretch, we hope you are all safe and dry. Midweek should bring a break f...
09/29/2026

🍃 This Week with EwA

After a very wet and windy stretch, we hope you are all safe and dry. Midweek should bring a break from the rain and a chance to return to the field. Cooler temperatures are advancing seasonal change: color is spreading through the canopy, acorns and other fruits are disappearing quickly, and we are watching our late-blooming trees, including American witch-hazel, closely. Even the bees in the garden have had a hard time weathering the storm.

On the Outer Cape, let the tide guide your walk. Mudflats and marsh edges may still host Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, Sanderlings, and terns feeding during southbound migration. Coastal thickets and dune edges can also hold passing warblers, sparrows, and other songbirds, while raptors may appear overhead on favorable winds.

Whether you are documenting wildlife, following seasonal change, or contributing to an EwA long-term monitoring project, every intentional observation helps us understand how local ecosystems respond through time.

Aside from our regular field schedule, join EwA at 🌾 the Groundwork Harvest Festival this Saturday, where we will be tabling. There will be lots of activities and fun, and we are still looking for volunteers to help. Contact us for details.

📅 Visit the EwA Event Calendar [https://www.earthwiseaware.org/events/ ] for details: upcoming field sessions and events, including schedules, locations, and the latest updates.



📷 Swelling flower buds of Common witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) | © Claire O'Neill, please credit accordingly.

💚 What a rich late-summer forest exploration, and what a pleasure it was to welcome both new faces and old friends!We lo...
09/13/2026

💚 What a rich late-summer forest exploration, and what a pleasure it was to welcome both new faces and old friends!

We looked at almost everything, didn’t we? Our observations ranged from the seasonal changes in woody and herbaceous plants to the insects visiting them, along with fungi, leaf miners, and galls. It was a wonderfully busy walk.

Among the many favorites were the gorgeous little slug moth on hickory, the cooperative harvestman, the many forms of aphid galls on witch-hazel, the ripening fruits of flowering dogwood, and the pollination clues visible on white wood asters. And, of course, there was the pleasure of being together and marveling at the abundance of this moment in the forest.

One of the greatest joys of these walks is sharing observations, questions, and discoveries. Every participant notices something different, and together we build a richer understanding of the landscape than any one of us could alone.

I reviewed the phenology records that several of you logged in EwA Pheno Lite. If you do not see your observation there yet, please open the app once you are home so it can sync to the cloud.

Our next forest exploration is only a couple of weeks away, at the end of September. By then, the forest will be deeper into its autumn transition: summer’s greens may be beginning to fade, fruits and seeds will be more prominent, and the fungi, insects, birds, and plants will offer a new set of seasonal stories to notice together.

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

🪲 Join our urban and walks » www.earthwiseaware.org/events | ⓘ More about EwA Participatory Science Program » www.earthwiseaware.org/citizen-science |

Another fun introduction to plant and wildlife monitoring at the Growing Center. Thanks Gretchen, Liz, and Agnes for bei...
09/13/2026

Another fun introduction to plant and wildlife monitoring at the Growing Center. Thanks Gretchen, Liz, and Agnes for being such diligent phenology students!

🌱 Join our urban and field orientation sessions » www.earthwiseaware.org/events | ⓘ More about EwA Participatory Science Program » www.earthwiseaware.org/citizen-science |

🌱 🔍 EwA Science Corner: The Practice We Need Most Is the One Growing Least Every observation has value. But photographin...
09/08/2026

🌱 🔍 EwA Science Corner: The Practice We Need Most Is the One Growing Least

Every observation has value. But photographing a species wherever and whenever you happen to encounter it is not the same as monitoring biodiversity.

Monitoring means a documented protocol, effort that is accounted for, and comparable conditions. Without those, a species that shows up more often in a dataset may simply have been photographed more often, in more accessible places, by more people with phones. That is not a signal about nature. It is a signal about us.

This confusion is not academic. It misdirects conservation priorities and management decisions, and we see it well beyond casual naturalists: in coursework, in student projects, in professional reporting.

Meanwhile, photo-based observation keeps growing while protocol-based monitoring struggles to recruit and retain the volunteers it needs. That gap shapes what questions we are able to answer at all.

📈 When Observations Become Evidence. https://www.earthwiseaware.org/when-observations-become-evidence

Lovely nature documentation walks these past two days at Shank Painter, Beech Forest, and Hatches Harbor. Here are a few...
08/28/2026

Lovely nature documentation walks these past two days at Shank Painter, Beech Forest, and Hatches Harbor. Here are a few highlights from this morning. 🌿

Anyone want to guess the species in the collage? I’ll reveal the answers later today or tomorrow! 😉

Our next nature documentation walk is this Tuesday morning at Shank Painter. No expertise is required. I’ll train you on the spot! Together, we’ll identify and document the developmental stages of plants and insects among a few target species, and record the birds we encounter along the way.

Details at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/natures-timekeepers-reading-the-land-tickets-1999129071869

This kind of intentional observation generates data that support climate science and conservation efforts. And we need volunteers to make it happen. The more, the merrier!

Come join us. It’s a wonderful way to slow down, look more closely, connect more deeply with the species around us, and turn that connection into something that helps protect them. 🌿🐛🐦

Exploring Nature’s Hidden Life in August with EwA Naturalists 🧡 What a wonderfully moody late-summer exploration, and w...
08/23/2026

Exploring Nature’s Hidden Life in August with EwA Naturalists

🧡 What a wonderfully moody late-summer exploration, and what a pleasure to see both new faces and old friends! The clouds hung low with rain one breath away, and that soft grey light turned out to be perfect for slowing down.

Fungi offered a treasure in the old man of the wood, that shaggy dark-scaled bolete that looks more like a pine cone with ideas than a mushroom. A brown-hooded owlet caterpillar fed in the open, boldly striped in orange, white, and black. And we were lucky with the Pileated Woodpeckers: not just heard but seen, two of them calling back and forth as they moved through the canopy while we watched. The white wood aster is just beginning to bloom, and we followed how its tiny central florets shift from pale yellow to deep pink once pollinated, a quiet signal to pollinators about which flowers still hold a reward. Bumble bees, spiders in rain-beaded webs, and so many other small lives turned up wherever we looked.

Every participant notices something different, and together we build a richer understanding of the landscape than any of us could alone.

Our next forest exploration is only a couple of weeks away. The fungi will have changed, summer will continue giving way to early autumn, and the forest will once again offer an entirely new story to discover.

A great rest of the weekend to all!

– The Fells Exploration EwA Team

Join our urban and walks » www.earthwiseaware.org/events | ⓘ More about EwA Participatory Science Program » www.earthwiseaware.org/citizen-science |

A goldenrod flower cluster moved, but not with the wind 🐛I had been inspecting sweet goldenrod at Hatches Harbor for gal...
08/16/2026

A goldenrod flower cluster moved, but not with the wind 🐛

I had been inspecting sweet goldenrod at Hatches Harbor for galls when I noticed one small, uneven twitch among the florets. Looking closer, I realized that part of the flower cluster was an animal: likely a camouflaged looper, a caterpillar wearing clipped pieces of goldenrod as its disguise.

It was not simply yellow against yellow. It had remade its own exterior from the very plant on which it fed, becoming, for a while, a moving piece of flower.

🗞️ Meet this remarkable little caterpillar, the goldenrod flower galls I was searching for, and a small cluster of sleeping bees I found nearby ☞ original post at https://www.ecosophical.org/2026/08/when-goldenrod-flower-moves-with.html. I hope you'll enjoy exploring the larger world hidden within this small natural history moment.

Address

Somerville, MA
02143

Telephone

(617) 684-5204

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Earthwise Aware posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Earthwise Aware:

Shortcuts

Share

Category