Written by Gwyn Loud for the Lincoln Land Conservation Trust. She welcomes your sightings and questions at 781-259-8690 or gwynloud555@gmail.com.
Although we have had some brief periods of rain, the last two months have been very dry. In Metro-west the historical monthly average precipitation in August is 3.72” but a mere 0.86” of rain was recorded for the month. Some stream beds were dry, and ponds were low. Lawns turned brown, leaves were wilting, and trees are now showing stress, with some early color and leaf drop. A storm arrived on September 7, bringing high winds, pouring rain, and power outages. Now, as I write, we are back in another dry spell but at least the daytime temperatures are in the 70s and the nights are cool. Fall is in the air; the autumnal equinox will usher in the new season on September 22.
The landscape shows hints of fall foliage color, and unmown fields are yellow with blooming goldenrod. The various species of goldenrod often get blamed for our autumnal allergies, but the inconspicuous light green flowers of ragweed are actually the culprit, being wind-pollinated. Roadside flowers to enjoy include New England Hawkweed (yellow) and low smartweed (pink), and along woodland paths look for white wood aster. Staghorn sumac is showing off its fuzzy fruits and many shrubs are producing berries and seeds. Will it be a mast year, with big crops of cones and acorns? I am finding many white pine cones, but not as many acorns as in the last two years.
Japanese knotweed, a difficult invasive to pull, is flowering now, forming big hedges in some places. If you do not know about porcelain berry this is a good time to notice it. It looks like a twining grapevine and has pretty blue/pink/white little berries. Unfortunately, it is also invasive, growing ten to fifteen feet a year and smothering whatever vegetation it covers.
The Smith-Andover Field, across from the Town Office building, is where we can see the beauty of two native grasses, little bluestem and Indian grass. Stacy Carter, Conservation Planner in Lincoln’s Conservation Department, explains, “Smith-Andover is one of the approximately 100 acres of “biodiversity” fields that the Commission manages for wildlife. These fields are typically mowed once per year in fall to remove woody plants and maintain the meadow, but we try to leave standing patches around the field to provide wildlife shelter and forage through the winter. Unfortunately, Smith-Andover has a lot of invasive buckthorn. Our Land Manager, Ryan Brown, started two experimental buckthorn control patches here and at the Poison Ivy Field (behind the filtration plant next to Flint’s Pond) this spring to eradicate the buckthorn. If either technique is successful, we will expand the control method to the rest of the buckthorn patches in each field and try to restore fully native meadow habitats.” See link to read more about the field restoration plans.
Although our summer birds have finished nesting, there are still many young birds around and often looking a bit scruffy, as their adult plumage isn’t at its best yet. Families of “teenage” downy woodpeckers, blue jays, and tufted titmice are demolishing suet in my feeder. I last saw a ruby-throated hummingbird sipping nectar from garden flowers and the sugar-water feeder on Sept. 12 but they will depart on their journey south any day now. Eastern bluebirds nested all over town in backyard boxes as well as the twelve on LLCT land. Drumlin Farm has long had volunteers monitoring their boxes, where both bluebirds and tree swallows nest. Pam Sowizral sent me the report from the 2025 season, summarizing, “For bluebirds, this was a good but not exceptional year with 70 chicks fledging……This was also an average year for tree swallows with 30 chicks fledging. All-in-all, since 2007 the Drumlin boxes have fledged 1816 chicks – that is amazing!”
The southbound avian migration started back in July, with shorebirds born in the Arctic already on their way, stopping on Massachusetts beaches to refuel. Here in Lincoln, some of our summer favorites just quietly disappeared. Now, flocks of common grackles are turning up, and fall warblers and migrating sparrows are starting to appear. Chris Bensley, in an article for Spark Birding, expresses my wonder exactly when he writes. “Imagine you’re a bird leaving your cozy nest for the very first time. You’ve never been to your destination, you’ve never seen the route, and there’s no Google Maps guiding the way. And no parents leading the way either—just you, your wits, and some seriously built-in navigational software.” He goes on to explain the complex ways in which birds migrate, and there are still mysteries to be solved. Some of our summer birds make very impressive journeys. Large flocks (60-70+) of bobolinks were seen in the Van Leer field; they make one of the longest migrations of any songbird in the New World, going round-trip 12,500 miles. They fly in flocks to Florida, then across the Gulf of Mexico, to winter in South America. The tiny blackpoll warbler has the longest migration of any warbler, flying 1,600 miles non-stop (for up to four days!) from the Eastern Seaboard, over the Atlantic, to their destination in northern South America. Others among our summer residents, such as the Eastern phoebe are short-distance migrants, moving farther south in the USA or to northern Mexico. Robins and bluebirds are examples of species which may migrate to more southern states, but some will also over-winter right here. It’s all about finding food.
September is well-known as hawk migration month. The hawks, such as broad-winged hawks, fly south in groups called kettles, taking advantage of rising warm air, which creates thermals. On a clear day you can join hawk watchers, keeping count, on top of Mt. Wachusett and other high points. Some of our local raptors, such as red-tailed, Cooper’s, and sharp-shinned hawks, have a population which will stay here year-round, and bald eagles will stay as long as there is open water where they can find fish.
A number of people have reported seeing and hearing barred owls this summer, both during the day and at night. Norm Levey wrote about barred owls near his workshop, “ One or two young could be heard quietly begging in the canopy along the driveway. The calls are hoarse. The adults were easy to approach while they patiently waited for chipmunks to exit burrows, watching for almost an hour.”
Notable avian sightings from Drumlin Farm in recent weeks were green herons on the ponds, brown thrashers, a least flycatcher, field sparrows, a yellow-throated vireo, a red-breasted nuthatch on multiple days, a dicksissel, and several warbler species, including American redstart, yellow warbler, Nashville, chestnut-sided, black-and white, and pine. One morning nineteen gray catbirds, with lots of young ones, were spotted, no doubt moving south. Solitary, least, and spotted sandpipers have been seen in a couple of locations. Carol Roede’s’ trail cam picked up a Virginia rail and a woodcock, and she watched an Eastern phoebe following a deer around, picking off bugs. She also saw a hummingbird chasing other birds; “one was chasing a young bluebird in the backyard….and I even saw one buzz a great-horned owl.” Those hummingbirds are feisty! As for water birds, a lone mute swan is still at the East end of Farrar Pond. Sadly, the loon chick which hatched on Flint’s Pond did not survive, perhaps caught by a predator such as a snapping turtle or large fish.
Many of our local mammals such as beaver, woodchucks, squirrels, and chipmunks are busy fattening up and collecting food to get through the approaching winter. Chipmunks seems to be very “chatty” now, making all sorts of clucking and chipping sounds, communicating important warnings or news. Observers have reported seeing coyotes, river otters, busy beavers, and many deer, including young bucks. Bobcats have been spotted in several parts of town: one crossing Bedford Rd. near Wheeler Rd., one on Meadowdam Rd., and one near my neighbor, Carol Roede, on Conant Rd. She wrote on Sept. 14, “Bobcat was here this morning too – right up on the stone ledge behind the house, feeling right at home – grooming, chilling, then grabbing some breakfast in the backyard…” Residents on Tabor Hill Rd. almost certainly had a bear cub in their front yard a month ago, judging by the heat patterns image on a trail cam and a repetitive cry at night.
I was glad to see bats over my garden this summer, as usual, and to know they were scooping up insects to eat on the wing. They are probably little brown bats, and will soon migrate to caves for the winter.
The sounds of insects are all around us in the warm days of September and many species of bees and wasps are busy gathering nectar or pollen. It is wonderful that so many people have planted pollinator plants to help the many beneficial pollinating insects flourish. The LLCT has also planted pollinator patches in many visible places around town.
Norm Levey, a keen observer of insects, wrote about several of his finds, including a beautiful solitary wasp, a blue-winged scoliid wasp, feeding on goldenrod nectar. “This colorful wasp is an important one in the control of the Japanese beetle as it is a parasitoid. The female after mating will search for a (beetle) grub, excavate, lay an egg on the victim which will host and feed the developing scoliid wasp larva. Of course the grub does not survive and voilà, one fewer Japanese beetle chewing on your garden plants.”
Climate change is causing Northerly range expansion for many species of flora and fauna. For example, Norm found, for the first time, a lesser angle-wing katydid, once only known south of New York. He wrote that jumping bush crickets and red-headed bush crickets, which arrived in our town fifteen to eighteen years ago, are now incredibly abundant but “Cicadas seem less abundant than a few years ago though I am seeing and finding more cicada killer wasps and nests than I’ve encountered in two decades. The females excavate a nest in sandy gravel and spend the day hunting cicadas by sight. The cicada is a large prey item for this, the largest of our wasps, so she paralyses the victim with her venomous sting, carries the cicada up the tree to gain altitude and flies as far as she can carrying the enormous insect with her middle pair of legs to as close as she can get to her brooding nest, dragging the poor cicada the rest of the distance and into a brood chamber she previously excavated where she lays an egg on it before sealing the nest.” Norm also sent a photo of the largest bald-faced hornet nest he had ever seen. “ It must be eighteen inches tall and is fixed and wired-in to the propane tank situated along the South Food Project crop field. Stand back. This species is not taxonomically a true hornet, a Eurasian species, but just another kind of yellowjacket.”
Marcia Gnagey, on Beaver Pond Rd., was not happy to discover, for the first time, a Chinese mantis, almost five inches long. She shared this information, “Although exciting to see and observe, I had mixed feelings because of the fact that it is an invasive species out-competing our native Carolina mantis. The Chinese mantis was mistakenly introduced in PA in 1896. Although the Chinese mantis consume mosquitoes, flies and crickets, they also eat beneficial insects, including monarch butterflies. Additionally they eat small reptiles such as toads and little frogs— even hummingbirds! Michael Martinez, an Entomologist, wrote ‘You should destroy all Chinese mantis egg cases. It’s an invasive species that eats beneficial insects and pests like all mantids. But the Chinese mantis is much larger than our native mantids and preys on hummingbirds, eating them alive. The Chinese mantis is also causing the decline of our native mantises, such as the much smaller Carolina mantis, by preying on them. Let’s stop aiding the spread of the Chinese mantis by selling their egg cases.”
Another invasive insect, the spotted lantern fly, has been spotted in Middlesex County. These insects are not a pest to humans or pets but they can do serious damage to various trees, farm crops, and other plants. Michelle Grzenda wrote about it in her latest Conservation Dept. Newsletter. See link below for more information.
Monarch butterflies are now headed on their migration south to over-winter in the mountains of Mexico. Anecdotally, people report seeing only modest numbers in Lincoln this summer, but the size of the population will not be known until the surveys are done of the wintering monarchs.
Last but not least, a neighbor sent me a photo of a gelatinous blob he found in his pond. It turned out to be a colony of bryozoans, and a sign of healthy water. Check out the YouTube video to learn briefly about these animals which have been around for 500 million years!
To read more about how how birds migrate