November 2025 Wildlife Column 

Written by Gwyn Loud for the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust. She welcomes your sightings and questions at 781-259-8690 or gwynloud555@gmail.com. 

As the the hours of daylight shorten and the sun sets by late afternoon, we sense that winter is around the corner. The weather over the past month has been generally mild, although winter chill arrived in the last week, with early morning temperatures dipping below freezing. In spite of a few inches of rain in October, Middlesex County is still considered “abnormally dry” according to the US Drought Monitor. Rain and wind on October 30 brought down many leaves, so now the landscape is dominated by browns and bare gray branches. The fall foliage color peaked here late in October, but some beautiful yellow leaves still remain on various shrubs and trees such as Norway maples. I was glad to find several tamaracks (aka larches) along trails by Beaver Pond. They are among just a few conifers which are deciduous, meaning they drop all their needles each fall, with the tamaracks turning golden in the process. Their name comes from the Abenaki, meaning “wood for making snowshoes.”  On Hawk Hill I came across another deciduous conifer, a bald cypress, displaying rich brown needles, soon to fall. When walking in the woods, this is a good season to admire mosses, lichens, and plants such as club mosses. Fungi in different hues and shapes are also very visible and you might come across witch-hazel, which blooms in November and has spidery yellow flowers. Hay-scented ferns are turning brown and  partridgeberries near to the ground add dots of red to the palette. White pine cones litter the forest floor, as the trees have produced a bumper crop this year.

The fall bird migration is basically over, although a few late migrants such as fox sparrows, rusty blackbirds, and turkey vultures have been spotted this month. A surprise discovery by Norm Levey on Nov. 16 was a magnolia warbler, flitting about and feeding in a weedy area off Virginia Rd.  It should be in Central America by now! Birds continue to find plenty of wild food in the form of berries, seeds, and insects, either as eggs, pupae, or hidden adults. Birds’ nests from the warm months are easy to observe now that the leaves have fallen, and often bits of trash such as plastic are visible in the nests. Our winter visitors such as dark-eyed juncos and white-throated sparrows are turning up at bird feeders, joining the regular Northern cardinals, black-capped chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, blue jays, house finches, mourning doves, and downy, hairy, and red-bellied woodpeckers. At my feeders a gang of blue jays instantly gobbles up seeds I put out. This year there is only a modest crop of acorns, an important food for many birds and mammals; perhaps that is why the jays are so hungry at the feeder. Quoting Mass Audubon, “Blue Jays cache their acorns and collect a whopping 3,000 to 5,000 acorns in one autumn. And not just any acorns. These skilled jays can determine if the acorn is infested with pesky weevils—a process that still puzzles scientists—by simply picking one up in their beaks.  Blue Jays can hold up to three acorns in the gular pouch located in their throat, along with one in their mouth and one in the tip of their beak, for a total of five acorns per trip.  They store the acorns in the ground, and the ones that don’t get eaten by the jay, or any other creature looking for a snack, are left to germinate and grow.  Because of this, Blue Jays are often credited with spreading oak tree populations after the last glacial period.” Red-bellied woodpeckers also cache food in tree holes and crevices under bark, returning to eat their stored supply throughout the winter. I am impressed that birds and mammals which cache food can remember where the food was hidden. They are smart! I urge us all to delete the disparaging term “bird brain” from conversation.

This is duck season. On the Cambridge Reservoir observers have seen hooded mergansers and up to 300 ring-necked ducks, and on Flint’s Pond, hooded and common mergansers, bufflehead,  common goldeneye, and an occasional common loon. I watched a skein of Canada geese overhead, probably only heading to the middle Atlantic states. Many Canada geese remain here year-round.

Our most common winter raptor is the red-tailed hawk. Conservation Ranger, Will Leona, writes, “It’s no surprise about the abundant number of red-tailed hawks that have been present as we start our late Fall field mowing routine.  Every year they are patiently perched on tree limbs at field edges waiting for the passing tractor to rustle up some tasty voles and other field critters.”  Cooper’s hawks often swoop through bird-feeding stations, hoping to pluck a plump mourning dove (or anything else) for a meal; feathers on the ground tell the story. Bald eagles have become more common in our area and one was spotted carrying large sticks along the western edge of the Cambridge reservoir, heading south. We know bald eagles have nested regularly on Fairhaven Bay, but maybe another nest on the Cambridge Reservoir lies ahead. Time will tell. Norm Levey had what he called a ‘“two falcon day”  when he  saw “a low flying merlin that shot by me like a bullet in the early morning over the softball park behind my village and that very afternoon at Ricci Farm a peregrine falcon appeared over the crop field to hunt and perch on the north tree line for about five minutes. The airfield is a good hunting area for falcons.”  Other raptor sightings include a northern harrier over Lindentree Farm and a sharp-shinned hawk at Drumlin Farm.

Owls have been hooting recently, especially great horned owls, who are staking out territories before they start nesting in January/February. Great horned owls are monogamous and I have been captivated  hearing a male and female calling back and forth in the evening, the female’s call higher pitched than the male’s. Carol Roede’s trail cam has also picked up a screech owl and a barred owl.

Additional bird reports of note from Drumlin Farm include American pipits and a flock snow burnings, golden-crowned and ruby-crowned kinglets, American tree sparrows, and a clay-colored sparrow (uncommon).  As I wrote last month, this is predicted to be a good winter to see winter finches and other irruptives from the Canadian boreal forest, as the poor cone supply there is pushing the birds south. Already pine siskins, red-breasted nuthatches, and purple finches have been seen, and a flock of twelve evening grosbeaks were observed on Nov.9 by Ponyhenge on Old Sudbury Rd.

Except for the woodchuck, who has gone into hibernation, our local mammals are out and about, although chipmunks will soon disappear underground to nap in their tunnels. Mammals’ strategies to survive the oncoming cold include gathering and storing food, putting on more layers of fat, or growing thicker fur. White-tailed deer, for instance, as well as building up fat reserves in the fall, shed their reddish summer coats and grow darker gray-brown fur with hollow air shafts. A dense layer of wool-like under fur provides insulation and special muscles allow the deer to change the angle of its airshafts to give maximum insulation. Walter Gundy photographed a buck,”chewing his cud in our backyard after girdling the adjacent sapling by using it to rub velvet off his antlers.” 

Beavers are busy dragging branches to store underwater near their winter lodges; the food must be accessible when the pond freezes over. Mary Holland explains, “ Beavers eat two pounds of bark a day and there can be up to ten beavers occupying a lodge over the winter, so an ample supply of food is essential.” Will Leona writes about beavers in Lincoln, “The beaver population continues to grow!  It’s incredible just how many beaver lodges and colonies are popping up around town if you look hard enough.” 

Other mammals reported this month include a Virginia opossum which I found, dead, on Weston Rd. ,obviously hit by a car. They are the only marsupial in North America, closely related to kangaroos, are primarily nocturnal and move slowly. Their hairless ears, tails, and paws are susceptible to frostbite, partly because their instinct tells them to move to several nesting spots during a week, thus exposing them to the elements. Several people have reported red foxes, and a very large coyote has been observed in fields along Conant Rd. Otters have been sighted, including one in a small pond off Old Winter St. Hathaway Ellis commented, “Never had this fellow before but he spent all day Saturday in our little pond! Seems to be eating snails and such. The heron who comes everyday is incensed- keeps showing up and then leaving after seeing he’s still here!” There have been several sightings of black squirrels recently. They are actually gray squirrels, but called “black morph” because they have a genetic variant producing more melanin. I observed a black morph squirrel near the riding ring in Upper Browning Field, and Ron McAdow photographed one on a trail behind St. Anne’s Church. I invite readers to let me know if and where you have seen them.  Another observer commented that she had seen many more rabbits than usual, looking healthy and hopping away speedily. As always, Carol Roede’s trail cam reveals the night life of mammals around us, including mink, muskrat, otters, weasel, a flying squirrel, bobcats (including kits), and lots of mice activity.

Snakes are now out of sight in their winter brumation but In mid-October Doug Elmendorf snapped a photo of a handsome Eastern ribbon snake soaking up warmth as it basked atop weeds in a swampy area at the end of Farrar Pond.

Most insects are in a state of diapause but you may see a few winter moths in your headlights in the dark. They used to be a big problem when the caterpillars defoliated many trees in the spring. Now their population is minimal, thanks to biocontrol, but entomologists (including my brother)  from UMass Amherst who solved the problem continue to monitor the situation. Several people observed autumn meadowhawk dragonflies well into November. They are a genus of about fifteen species, the last to emerge in the fall and can be found getting warm in the sun on rocks, giving them enough energy to fly even when the temperature dips to 50F. Friends have mentioned finding numerous ticks on their dogs, so be sure to check for them even in chilly weather. One resident found a lone star tick, identified by a prominent white dot in the middle of its cephalothorax; lone star ticks are increasing in Massachusetts due to a warming climate.

Looking skyward, I quote a friend, Tim Sterrett, who writes a monthly column much like mine, in Pennsylvania. He writes about constellations: “Orion with his belt of three bright stars appears in the east late in the evening. Orion is our most easily recognized constellation. Betelgeuse, a red giant star larger than Earth’s orbit around the Sun, marks Orion’s shoulder and Rigel his knee. Orion is followed by his dog, Canis Major (“Big Dog” in Latin) including Sirius, the brightest star we can see at night.”  And from Night Sky This Week, ‘This week brings one of November’s best sky shows: the Leonid meteor shower peaks under dark skies, offering up to 15 shooting stars per hour before dawn. A few days later, the new moon gives us ideal dark skies for trying to find Uranus as it reaches opposition on Friday (Nov. 21) and shines bright enough to spot with binoculars just beneath the Pleiades. “

 

 To read more about Virginia opossums

https://www.massaudubon.org/nature-wildlife/mammals-in-massachusetts/opossums

Read a post from The Bug Lady about Autumn Meadowhawks

https://uwm.edu/field-station/bug-of-the-week/autumn-meadowhawk-dragonfly/

Watch Norm Levey’s video of a magnolia warbler foraging in the weeds:

Watch Carol Roede’s trail cam video of bobcat kits: