Allens Pond Landscape

Allens Pond Audubon Sanctuary Field Station

I have just started working on my e-book "Photographing Allens Pond and Vicinity" and went up to the field station to discuss what nature events occur monthly, because this will be an integral part of the book. It was a very cold day with different types of clouds in the sky, sun and snow on the ground. Even though it was mid-afternoon, still with bright light I had to obtain some photographs of the area.

The next three photographs show how the clouds and sky changed over a 10 minutes. When you are viewing a scene and at first it doesn't look like anything with photographing, be patient and wait you can be very surprised.

Clouds 1

Clouds 2

Clouds 3

More Clouds

Animal tracks in the snow, Phragmites looking toward Allens Pond

Sunrise in Bad Weather

The weather forecast for Sunday January 6 was for snow showers, so I decided I would get up before sunrise had tried to catch how the land and seascape at Allens Pond would look in bad weather.

Allens Pond Beach Loop in the Snow

Driving was a little slow due to the weather but the roads were not bad. I packed at the beginning of the beach loop and as it became lighter toward sunrise (no there was no sun present) obtained a series of photographs to try to show the mood of the landscape.

The closer we got to the actual time is sunrise, the snow slowly turn to some sleet then stopped. My series of pictures I've try to convey some of the different feelings that I had with the weather, from cold to the drama of the sky.

Allens Pond Beach Loop in the Snow

Rocks, Cobbles, Sean and Sky with Clouds

On the way home, we stopped in the state forest where I obtained some photographs of the marsh and snow and of a little stream running through the woods.

Marsh in B&W

Running Stream and Snow

New Year's Day Beach Ramble.

The Ramble Group with Doug (center person)

Looking over the marsh towards Allens Pond

The Beach

 Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary held what is to become an annual event a New Year's Day Beach Ramble.  It is a great way to start off the new new year, by exploring the beach and surrounding area on the sanctuary.  The ramble was led by my friend Doug, who is a volunteer naturalist and leads the rambles during the spring to fall season.

I was there to photograph the event.  The day was mostly cloudy over us, with son in the distance temperature in the 30s, and a intermittent wind blowing.  We had a total of eight people come on the ramble.  Doug explains about the history of the sanctuary and the various ecological features.  While were on the beach.  We look in the wrack line and on the shore for different "things" that the tides brought in.  There were various types of shells, seaweed, shell cases and other objects.  Doug would take it and explain what it was and similar brief natural history of the object.

Despite the cold weather, everybody had a great time, and hopefully learn more about the natural history of Allens Pond.

Garden Snails

Brown-lipped Garden Snail

As I have been looking around the butterfly garden at Allens Pond Sanctuary, on a number of the plants that have been snails.  Researching what species are the snails, I come to find out that two varieties of the garden snails are an invasive species in the United States, actually have come from Europe and they have established themselves.  One of the snails is the Grove Snail or Brown Lipped Snail (Cepaea nemoralis) and the other variety is the White Lipped Snail (Cepaea hortensis).  Both snails a very similar in appearance, except for the band at the lip of the shell, which gives them their name.
The snails are air- breathing, terrestrial gastropod mollusk.  It is a hermaphrodite and does have to mate in order to produce fertile eggs.  The diet consists of grass and a low low-lying plans, including nettles.
The white-lipped snails are slightly smaller than the brown-lipped snails.  Both of them have considerable variability in shell color and banding.  The most distinguishing feature between the two types of snails is the color of the lip at the aperture of the show in the adults.  Except for rare instances, the white- lipped snail band is white and the brown-lipped snails band is brown.

White-lipped Garden Snail

White-lipped Garden Snail - back side view

White-lipped Garden Snail

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A Mornings Birding at Horseneck Beach and Allens Pond

For today's blog I will first wish to thank Paul Champlin, our volunteer ornithologist at Allens Pond Massachusetts Audubon Sanctuary, for his post about the shorebirds in the parking lot of Horseneck Beach.  The other day, Paul had posted about the large number of semipalmated plovers that he had found in parking lot three of Horseneck beach.

Semipalmated Plover

This morning, Doug, my grandson Kyle and I traveled out to Horseneck beach and went into parking lot three, and all around in the parking lot was semipalmated plovers, semipalmated sandpipers and some least sandpipers, along with a large number of different species of gulls.

Herring Gull

Semipalmated Sandpiper

Least Sandpiper

Just as we were leaving the parking lot, Doug noticed a bird high in the tree and on closer inspection, it turned out to be a Cedar Waxwing.

Cedar Waxwing

We took a walk down to the shore and there were a large number of Sanderlings, Least Sandpipers and Semipalmated Sandpipers.

Comparison of a Sandeling and a Semipalmated Plover

As we were churning to leave we noticed, what we first thought was piping plover running around, however, it turned out to be a young least tern, which was being watched over by an adult.

Least Tern Chick

Least Tern Chick and Adult

We then traveled and checked out the parking lot at Gooseberry, where black scoters were still around.

We finished up at Allens Pond where a good number of different species of birds were present including A Lesser Yellowlegs in the pannes, and a Ruddy Turnstone on the beach.

Lesser Yellowlegs

Ruddy Turnstone

We finished the morning with 44 different species of birds, so a good day was had by all.