At the Buttinger Nature Center this week, one of our new Summer Camp counselors stopped on the driveway to move a box turtle that was making a slow methodical crossing. Once in hand, the turtle came for a quick visit to the Nature Center, after which it was to be returned to where it was headed. It was a noble intention and right on to return the animal to its home, a place, in this case, that it may have known for up to 50 years,  judging from the size of the turtle.

Everyone in the Nature Center enjoyed seeing the turtle - it had a high-domed shell with brown and orange markings, and thick, scaly feet with big claws. It was a large heavy female, identifiable by its brownish eyes (males have bright orange eyes) and flat plastron (the underneath of the male’s shell is noticeably concave). But there was a problem - the turtle’s shell was cracked in several locations.

So at this point, anyone might ask “What can I do to help this turtle?”  Since neither you nor I are turtle doctors, it is wise to contact someone who is at least certified and licensed to care for such creatures. Where I live that is the Mercer County Wildlife Center. After a brief discussion with the director Diane, it was decided that it was best for their turtle expert to see the turtle to assess its injuries and general health.

In the meantime, the turtle had to spend a night in my care before it could be taken to the Wildlife Center during its hours of operation. I created a makeshift “hospital room” of a clean cardboard box, lined with a clean towel. I provided a few berries as food as well as a shallow saucer to provide some water. At home, my youngest son Emerson, simply fell in love.

It is easy to fall under the spell of Nature’s creatures. This box turtle has a mystical status of sorts - always calm, never in a hurry, and always at home. Emerson stroked the turtle’s shell gently and displayed a deep affection for the turtle. He understood. It is amazing, a child’s capacity for empathy and compassion. It was difficult for Emerson to sleep for he simply wanted to be with the turtle.

It is critical that we as adults set proper examples for our children. This is not always easy or convenient. We share this planet with other beings and we should treat them with care. Our act of caring and kindness was simply the right thing to do. Emerson was sad to see the turtle go but is glad the turtle is getting help. On the way to the Wildlife Center, we briefly stopped to share the turtle with some friends. Now, the turtle will get a little help from her friends. When she is nursed back to good health, we will get a call and return her to her home turf.

Finally - it has stopped raining. At lunchtime I returned to the tradition of eating outdoors for the first time in quite a while. Somehow, food always tastes better outside.  Later in the day, I cracked open a new jar of salsa and shared it with my youngest, Emerson. He told me it was a little hot so he ran inside and got a glass of water. “It’s OK Daddy, I like ‘dipping’ chips.”

Our chip-eating episode was interrupted when a field cricket went bounding across our patio. Emerson’s eyes widened as he hopped off our picnic bench and went to investigate. I watched as he cupped his hands in an attempt to catch the cricket. “Daddy, I need a jar to catch him!”

It was a “her” - a female field cricket with a needle-like ovipositor at her tail end. I went inside to my “naturalist cabinet” (I am not joking), and grabbed a container suitable for catching the cricket. Back outside I watched Emerson put the empty container over the cricket. He wondered what to do next. I reminded him that we need to be gentle. Together we slowly turned the container and coerced the cricket inside with our cupped hands.

Emerson held the container up and his wide eyes just gleamed.  Part of his excitement was that he caught the cricket, but there was much more to this. He was making a new friend. “Can I feed it some leaves?” he asked. He soon began harvesting an assortment of weeds from our lawn and beds, filling the container.  He did this with great care - “Are these good leaves?”

Emerson spent quite some time quietly observing, no, studying the cricket. After a while, I offered to share a little knowledge about the life history of the cricket. He was all ears. After filling his mind with some of the secrets of cricket life, I began to prepare dinner. When food was ready, the cricket sat to the side “eating” while we ate too.

Later in the evening, as darkness fell, I asked Emerson what he wanted to do with his new cricket friend. If we were going to keep it, we would need to transfer it to a small terrarium and provide a little water. “Can I let it go?” he said eagerly and I suggested that we find her a cricket friend. “You mean a mate” he said matter-of-factly. “A male.”

We slipped into the darkness heading toward the cricket song and Emerson released her into the night. His smile lit up the darkness.�

There is not enough time to get thoroughly lost in the wonder of the season. I listen to the sound of blue jay fledglings being fed in the ash tree. The mother chickadee makes a different music, bringing her family to the suet feeder. The house wren nestlings create a tiny commotion from inside their house, begging for food. As I study the ant farming the aphids on a goldenrod in the backyard, I can almost hear their music.

On our patio, we have a pot with a compromised broccoli plant growing. It is a rescued “thinning”, a plant that was removed from a row in the garden in order to let the more vigorous plants grow and give us food. We chose to thin it in part because we watched a cabbage butterfly land on it and lay an egg. We wanted to share the wonder of metamorphosis with our guests.

Just about every-other day Emerson and I check our plant and notice the irregular shape of the leaves. Then we hunt for the latest hiding spot for the fleshy green caterpillar. Today we looked and looked again and could not find our caterpillar. Did it turn into a chrysalis? In the Kate Gorrie Butterfly House the cabbage caterpillars crawl high up the wall before going through that magical change into a chrysalis. At home we searched the plant and looked up and down the wall and could not find a chrysalis.

We enjoyed watching our caterpillar hatch from an egg right on our patio. We miss watching it grow daily and we will search again tomorrow in the light of day for a chrysalis. Maybe we didn’t search well enough.  Or maybe, as I warned Emerson, the catbird that frequently visits are patio made a meal of the tasty caterpillar. Perhaps the catbird heard it feeding?

Here is the Metamorphosis Song, created by Gerianne Linden at the Rocky Hill Cooperative Nursery School and sung to the tune of “Allouette.” I first heard this song when her preschoolers sang it to our staff at the Buttinger Nature Center.

Metamorphosis,                                                                                                         We know metamorphosis,                                                              Metamorphosis                                                                                                 means that things can change.

Caterpillar to butterfly,                                                                                      Tadpole to a frog, oh my!                                                                                  Things can change!                                                                                           Things can change!   

Ooooooohhhhh!

Metamorphosis we know metamorphosis . . .

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The birds continue to thrive in our little lot. I watch the frequent visits by the chickadee parents to their birdhouse as I was work in my garden. When are they going to fledge? The excited chirps of the nestling titmice grow in volume each day. The traffic at our suet feeder has seemed to increase - catbirds, blue jays, titmice, chickadees, downy woodpeckers, a red bellied woodpecker,  a nuthatch, and of course, squirrels.

There is undeniable magic in metamorphosis. It is a magic that captivates at the earliest of ages, and it has the ability to fill one with wonder throughout a lifetime. It is for this reason that you will find children observing and facilitating the process in classrooms all over the country.

 At the Rocky Hill Cooperative Nursery School, preschoolers enjoy the magic under the nurturing guidance of Director Gerianne Linden. Gerianne’s love of the natural world parallels that of her charges. Together she and her students embrace the wonder through so many different activities in the school. This includes raising painted lady caterpillars into butterflies.

In this modern age, it is relatively easy to find and raise a variety of creatures at home or in the classroom. Kits for amphibians or butterflies can be found on the open marketplace through a variety of vendors. It is important to consider carefully before making a purchase - what do we do with the creatures that we raise when they are through growing up? Are they native to my location? Can they be released into the wild? I fear that too often these details are overlooked.

When I was a child, one had to be a little crafty and apply a little naturalist intelligence in order to find and locate a creature to raise. Children are adept at finding caterpillars but most will simply add grass to the container and consider them set. After all, if a caterpillar is a vegetarian, it must eat green! But in reality, most caterpillars have specific plants, or a range of plants, that they consider food.  Look carefully and you will find that in many instances, this is a relatively easy thing to discover. The challenge for making the match will come from caterpillars that have fallen from the trees, or caterpillars on the move, like wooly bears in early autumn.

So back in Rocky Hill and innumerable other classrooms, tiny caterpillars came supplied with a provision of a sort of caterpillar “space food”. Real food has been incorporated into an agar substrate, thus eliminating the need to identify and locate the specific plant required to feed your caterpillar.   This strange but relatively fool-proof method of feeding your caterpillars has put the magic of metamorphosis into a huge number of classrooms.

What the students witness in these classrooms is a miraculous transformation. Tiny featureless caterpillars grow, become larger, more colorful, and in this case, ornate. Eventually, they climb and hang in the shape of a letter “j”. This is when the real drama begins.  

Soon each of the hanging caterpillars splits its skin and transforms into a chrysalis, a transitional phase before becoming a butterfly. Days later, an even more dramatic change takes place as the chrysalis splits and a butterfly emerges.

I will never tire of this transformation. I will never tire of sharing it with others - my friends and family at home, and visitors at the Buttinger Nature Center. I am grateful that the Nursery School visited the Nature Center, with their butterflies, sharing their excitement. They also shared their butterflies, releasing them into the Butterfly House where they can completed the cycle all over again We are watching for mating butterflies right now.  With a little luck, they will breed and soon lay eggs and then . . .

A freight train line runs right past our neighborhood, across the street in fact, behind the neighbors’ houses. You can here that train a comin’, with its deep rumble, softly in the distance at first and ultimately, a ground shaking thunder accompanied by the prescribed series of whistles as it approaches the road crossing. It is loud, and impossible to miss, and it is music.

After each train passes, it only takes a minute before a different music continues. Out along the tracks, from the weedy, rocky ditches filled with discolored water comes the most curious call - the song of the gray tree frog. It is a short melodic trill that would seem more at home in the jungle. It is a song that I can listen to all night long.

We suspect that we are raising some wood frog tadpoles. In my youth I raised a wide assortment of frogs from eggs or tadpoles. Wood frogs are among my favorite. Each time I have brought home wood frog tadpoles it felt like a rescue. There in the puddle along the trail, or in the tire ruts in the mud, was a writhing mass of tiny black tadpoles. With each passing hour of sunshine, the puddle shrinks leaving more tadpoles high and dry. It is nature’s way, yes, but sometimes I feel compelled to intervene. Or is it interfere? Either way, I sometimes come home with a few tadpoles to share with my friends or family.

Parents often ask me about this - is it OK for my child to have this creature of nature, to take it from its true home to raise at our home? This is not an easy question to answer and not one to be fully addressed here but I will say this . . . a close relationship with wild creatures breeds empathy.  There are lots of issues that come into the equation beginning with how rare or common the creature might be, whether its home turf is protected (parks for instance) , and how well such a creature does in captivity. Some insects make great pets. Many salamanders do not. Tadpoles are relatively easy. 

If you do decide to share such an experience with children remember that you are now caring for this creature - by taking it out of nature, you are responsible for its care. Treat this experience as the enriching, sacred encounter that it is. If interest or attention wanes, it is time to return your friend back where you got it unless it is showing obvious signs of illness. 

So where did we begin? I have an assortment of terrariums at home ranging from plastic rice and pretzel containers to 20 gallon tanks that you can purchase new or find at yard sales. Before starting be sure the container is clean, clean, clean, particularly if other creatures have lived in it before. If you are collecting something from the wild, obey the laws that protect such creatures, and only take one or a few. In the case of tadpoles, take water from their source if possible. Tadpoles are extremely sensitive to pollutants, including the chlorine that is added to many municipal water sources.

As you may have noticed in the wild, most tadpoles like shallow water. Set up your aquarium appropriately, and, as the tadpoles develop and turn into a frog or toad, you will need a place where they can come out, like a large flat rock. You will need to freshen the water over time - remove up to one third of the existing water and add some new clean water. You don’t want tadpole waste and food debris to accumulate and foul the water.

As for food - your tadpoles are primarily vegetarians. In nature they would be eating a mix of algae and partially decomposed vegetation but at home there is an easier food resource to use. Simply provide your tadpole with some greens that have been compromised somewhat, softened a bit. You can boil lettuce or spinach, or better yet, so that they retain more nutrients, you can freeze these and then thaw them, adding just a bit of the softened greenery to the water. For a small tadpole, it only takes a tiny pinch each day or so but you just need to watch carefully. You don’t want uneaten food lingering and you don’t want tadpoles searching in vain for food.

We’ll return to our tadpoles soon. I cannot wait to watch their transformation and watch the children’s eyes as they encounter the magic of metamorphosis.

Birds continue to occupy the greater portion of my brain. While one chipping sparrow nest at the Nature Center was raided by a predator (a blue jay?), another is nesting in an azalea - two lovely robin-blue eggs with speckles plus one larger cowbird egg. At home, the parent chickadees are spending a bit of time in front of their house, talking actively, urging their young ones to leave the nest. I will likely miss this in the next day or two while at work. We are watching a pair of catbirds poking around a rhododendron and honeysuckle - a nest in the making?

There is not enough time in spring to share all the joys of nature with your family. With this in mind I took another early morning walk with Emerson before work and the babysitter. He was very excited to visit the pond on the Watershed Reserve.

He brought his binoculars along and was excited to use them.  We spied a great blue heron, one of our favorite birds, wading along the edge of the pond for a meal. The heron was searching intensely for a meal, a fish swimming in the shallows, but Emerson did not have enough patience to watch the situation bear fruit, or, umm, fish.  

Later we watched the glassy surface of the pond for the heads of painted turtles rising for a breath of air. Though these turtles are rather common here, we didn’t see any before Emerson wanted to move on. Lots to see . . .

We proceeded down the trail, and up ahead, in the middle of the trail, a cottontail rabbit was finding a breakfast of choice greens. I had to pick Emerson up to see this and it pleased him to watch the rabbit. He wanted to get closer and did his best to stalk the rabbit. As he approached, it hopped off the trail.

Emerson continued to lead the way. I diverted him to an area where our naturalists at the Nature Center had reported some small fish lying on the forest floor. He looked in wonder at the fish on the ground - “Daddy, take a picture of that one!” He marveled at the spectacle of fish out of water and together we tried to guess how this happened. What do you think?

Before much longer, Emerson was done. He wanted to get to the babysitter and play with his friends. He enjoyed his hike, got his fill, and was ready to retreat. This is the way of a curious, energetic four (and-a-half) year old. There is so much of this world - HERE - that I want Emerson to see, to experience. In the juggling act of adulthood - honoring family, partnership, parenthood, self and work - it could be so easy to lose sight of this. I will do my best to share this wonder as best I can, as frequently as possible.

I will never never never never never never never tire of frogsong. Juggo-rum.

I remember my fascination at an early age with the wonder of tadpoles. This was in part due to their improbable Dr. Seussian design. They start, or so it seemed to me, simply as round heads, propelled through the water by a wriggling tail. It seemed so unlikely that this being could somehow become a frog. I trusted my father’s word on this.

So, in order to be close to this magic, to fully embrace it, and, perhaps, to scrutinize it a bit, I had to bring some home. My friends and I captured green frog tadpoles from the edge of a nearby pond and from pools in the local stream. We didn’t know at the time that they were to become green frogs, which coincidentally we called “puddle frogs” due to their affinity for puddles found throughout the woods.

I know that not all of my tadpole adventures ended successfully for the tadpoles. I am sure that any bad episodes made me feel horrible but it was nevertheless the beginning of a lifelong relationship with tadpoles, frogs, and wonder. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been horribly delinquent here. Horribly. I apologize to anyone who is paying attention here. I blame the tiny fawn tracks - small enough to be hidden beneath a quarter - in the mud of the Sourlands. I blame the handsome black snake, fifty feet up in a tree, looking surprisingly well fed. I blame the monarch butterflies, flying over the young milkweed so very early in the season. I blame the robins who fledged from their nest and are now wandering precariously through the neighborhood. I blame the chickadees who are feeding their young in the barn birdhouse in the backyard. I blame the chipping sparrows whose nest got raided by someone, maybe a blue jay. Spring is here, bringing with it a sleeplessness that plagues the naturalist. It is time to share some more.

Mothers’ Day was a beautiful day this year.  The sun was shining, trying to reassert itself after a week of significant rain that pushed the local streams over their banks and filled our trails with water. At the Watershed Association we honored all Mothers, including Mother Nature, with a special hike marking the recent publication of Walk the Trails In and Around Princeton by author Sophie Glovier and photographer Bentley Drezner.

It was a fitting combination of tribute to Mothers and Nature, those persistent guiding forces in our lives that nurture and encourage us year after year. There was a large crowd on hand for this walk, over one hundred people, including many children.

One small band of boys took the lead as soon as we hit the trail. They hesitated at each intersection, waiting for some indication from me which way we would go next. As I approached, I watched them hedge their bets, start to lead down one trail or the other, wanting to maintain their “lead scout” roles.

One young girl walking next to me quipped “Look at those boys, rushing like this is a race.” I told her that I thought that they were having fun but we were seeing lots of good stuff that they were missing. Tree swallows swooping, diving, and posing atop their homes.  A small pearl crescent butterfly, and a black swallowtail. The curious spittle nest of the spittle bug. The boys raced ahead enjoying their equally exhilarating adventure.

I was bombarded with questions along the way. Naturalists and questions go together like bees and honey. I would say that questions are the spiritual sustenance of the naturalist. Questions, born out of wonder, not just to be answered or researched, but to be pondered and appreciated. The questions generated by those around me, young and old, were simply a measure of the sense of wonder of these participants.

There was great beauty in the multigenerational reach of this walk. We all took time on our hike to smell the sweetness of honeysuckles and autumn olives along the trail. We soaked in the view overlooking our pond and our grasslands. We danced over, around and through puddles. We listened to the song of the bluebird and rufous-sided towhee. We poked at spit on the goldenrod, revealing the spittlebug in his modest home. We looked under logs and found pillbugs, centipedes and false-bombardier beetles. It was a gentle, guided walk, with lots of room for discovery and wonder, and a naturalist to share his passion for nature. Most of all it was an affirmation of the important role our shared mother, Mother Nature, plays in our life.

If you would like to purchase a copy of Walk the Trails In and Around Princeton , please visit the Buttinger Nature Center during hours of operation. It is a great introduction to walks in the area to share with your friends and family, young and old. Profits from sales of the book support the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association.

There is magic in the nesting of birds. Now is a great time to watch for birds building nests. In addition to the birds nesting in some birdhouses in our yard (read on below), Emerson and I spied a blue jay with a stick in its mouth. We watched it as it cautiously moved about in the spruces until it settled in a branch thick with needles - and a partially built nest.  At our Nature Center, I watched a chipping sparrow tugging and tugging at a root or piece of foliage on the ground. After a brief struggle it managed to free this material from the ground and it flew straight to its new nest, still under construction. 

WATCH the birds.  Watch for a bird out of place. Watch for a bird with nesting material or for a bird behaving “differently”. If you see something curious, keep watching.

We love birds around our house. We listen to their music. (Emerson can identify about over a dozen birdcalls easily and he likes to imitate their songs with me.) We invite the birds to our yard. We have birdfeeders and maintain our suet feeder year-round. We also have lots of bird houses.

Many of our birdhouses were gifts from one family member to another - for Birthdays, Mothers Day, Christmas. One birdhouse was a gift from a student - thanks Jake. Sydney made a birdhouse with Girl Scouts. And some of our birdhouses were just indulgences, bought on a whim at the nature center or the local garden shop. Currently we have ten birdhouses up on our third-of-an-acre lot.

Over a week ago, I watched a chickadee bringing moss to one of our birdhouses. I was on task in the garden and looked up to see one chickadee sporting a large beard of moss about its beak. It disappeared into the birdhouse and emerged shortly thereafter and returned to the task of finding the right materials for its nest. Luckily, this birdhouse has a back door that allows viewing inside. Later that day Emerson and I peaked in to find the house nicely furnished with lots of soft green moss. We continue to monitor the house and now the chickadees have eggs. We will watch diligently for frantic parents going to and from the house with food - an indication that the chicks have hatched.

Another one of our houses - a plain wooden box mounted high up in one of our spruces (see the picture above) - harbors a titmouse nest. Again I discovered this while gardening. I saw some moss atop the mulch I had laid out in a garden bed earlier in the day. I looked up and wondered. It didn’t take long before there it was, a tufted titmouse with a beak full of moss. I quick ran inside and alerted all of our new neighbors. We watched the titmouse gather moss from beneath our large pin oak and fly directly up into its new home.

The house wrens are now back from their winter respite. They are active and on the move, their bubbly calls emanating from all corners of the yard. We will watch them carefully as they will be gathering twigs. They will surely nest here as they do every year, claiming several houses at first before the female chooses which house she really wants to nest in. Emerson and I added our tenth house when these birds arrived, giving them the freedom of choice. “I think they’ll nest in this one Daddy.”

Wood frog tadpoles have sprouted legs. Their parents have long since stopped singing and have dispersed into the forest. Their tadpoles pray for rain as their nursery puddles shrink. Spring peepers are still calling though many have laid their eggs. Pickerel frogs are snoring their way into the height of their mating season. We even heard one early bullfrog, warming up for its season of calling.

Every year, at the Buttinger Nature Center we hold a Frog Slog for families. We gather under cover of darkness by the pond on the Watershed Reserve to learn about frogs, their calls, and lots of their secret business. Mostly we just celebrate frogs and seek them out for a close encounter or two.

As the program begins, each participant states why they are there. Kids profess to a passion for frogs and parents often confess that they are there to support their children’s interests. Perfect! Many children also tell stories about the frogs they have caught and sometimes have kept, temporarily, as pets. Anastasia told us how she just released to the wild two wood frogs that she caught earlier in the spring in her backyard.

This year on the Frog Slog, the spring peepers really challenged us. Their deafening calls left no doubt that they were there, and we even knew where to look - in the marsh, where the grasses and standing water meet. We each listened carefully trying to locate the sound of individual peepers among the masses; we searched among the individual rushes within suspect hummocks; we used teamwork, relying on triangulation; and ultimately, we mustered up as much patience and determination as possible. And we were successful.

We do the Frog Slog at night because it is harder for the peepers to see us, the seekers. It is of course harder for us to see as well but the mixed magic of frogs and the nighttime are most memorable for all of the participants. We found several peepers, watched their calling with their inflated vocal sac, and gently grabbed them for closer examination before returning them to their places. Anastasia and her sister Alexandra proved to be champion frog-catchers. They were not only successful in finding frogs but they were also very gentle in their technique. Kenny hovered over one tussock of rushes for some time before his diligence paid off. You could see his smile from across the marsh despite the darkness.

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