Stephen Maier

29 October 2009

This afternoon, Thursday, October 29,2009, I was a little dismayed at how the day had proceeded; therefore, a walk into nature was entirely necessary to lift my spirits. I left my car at 1:33 p.m. with the sun was beaming down and heating Williamstown to a pleasant temperature of 62°F according to the digital thermometer in my dashboard. The worries once existing within me were gone when I noticed the horses grazing at the fence through which I pass on my way into the forest. There were three: one white, one white with Dalmatian spots, and the third was white with brown patches and black spots. They were majestic animals, strong looking and well groomed. I wanted to run my hand down their backs and tell them they picked a beautiful day to take a walk together, but I don’t know horses well enough.

I walked past them and followed the vaguely beaten path into the West Clark Woods. Today’s objective was to explore the various natural tastes existing here. The horses appeared to be enjoying the grass they were devouring, so I extrapolated and tried convincing myself that I, too, would appreciate the flavors of the forest. As my mind wandered over paper birch leaf dinners and hemlock pine needle desserts, I heard something behind me. I turned and noticed the horses poking their heads into the woods, seeming like they were checking on me.

With the sharp onion savor remaining from lunch, it was difficult to smell, let alone taste, anything else. I bit into a tree branch and got nothing in return, besides a bit of a toothache and onion. After trying another branch from the same tree and experiencing the same taste, I knew I needed to clean my palate somehow. Without food or water, there was not much of a choice. I had to press on, so I continued my adventure and chomped on some hemlock needles. Wow! The onion flavor was no match for the hemlock’s powerful taste. After two bites, the Christmas tree scent we associate with winter overwhelmed my senses. I was seeing, tasting, feeling, and smelling Christmas trees, oh, what fine memories. I had to spit out the needles immediately after chomping down, for they were unbearable to chew more than twice. After chewing on several different branches of needles and tasting their pungency, I felt my taste buds were adequately in commission so I surveyed the woods in search of something different to try.

During my wandering for edible entities, I came across four red squirrels, multiple birds, and a snake, leaving me to conclude the animals appreciated the weather, too. The snake was the most impressive of the bunch due to the rare appearance of its species. It was black and roughly a foot and a half long with a yellow stripe running along its ventral side. According to A History of the County of Berkshire, Massachusetts, by Thomas Hunt, et al, this snake is most likely a “striped or streak snake” (p. 41).

After my encounter with the serpent, I found a new shrub about six feet tall with bright green leaves still attached. Its leaves looked appealing and appetizing, so I indulged. It took several tastings prior to extracting a real flavor, but I eventually tasted the skin flavor of a pear or an apple. The leaf, clearly, didn’t have the juice that is so delectable in a pear or an apple, but it did have a hint of the pear or apple flavor. The best way to describe to taste is this: if you were to separate the skin from the inner portion of the pear and eat it, it would be similar in taste to the leaves of this tree. Perhaps this species is related to the species of pear or apple trees.

I didn’t taste much else because the alarming piles of horse feces scattered throughout the woods were enough for me to declare that everything on the ground was off-limits for ingestion. I did, however, sample some paper birch bark, which shared the identical taste of printer paper, and a yellow birch branch that I broke off a small tree myself. The yellow birch’s flavor was not as distinct as it had been four weeks ago on Stone Hill. I concluded the salicylic acid is produced directly proportionally to the leaf growth, in that as chlorophyll is being produced in the tree, salicylic acid is produced simultaneously. After making this hypothesis, I left the woods, just over an hour after I had entered. What a beautiful day.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/30/09

Field Journal #6: Taste

When I went to my site on Thursday at about 4:30 pm, the weather was sunny, surprisingly warm with an ever so slight breeze, and the sky was cloudless.

Though I am always reluctant to taste plants I haven’t been expressly told are edible as well as tasty, I did sample a few plants while my courage was up. I chewed on the stem of a sugar maple leaf, hoping for a little bit of sweetness as per the tree’s name. This I did get briefly, but after a few seconds, the taste turned bitter and unpleasant, causing me to spit out the fibrous mass. Again hoping for a pleasant taste, I tried a white pine needle or two, and while they were nice flavor-wise, the texture soon defeated my gag reflex with the small splintery pieces that resulted from my chewing. After this, I tried one last plant, the wild mustard garlic. This tasted halfway between a blade of grass and a blade of chive, but was not pleasant. I considered sampling goutweed, but its name deterred me.

Another tour around the site led to several interesting observations and showed many large changes in the site. First and foremost, the white birches are all completely bare, as are the American beech, silver maple, chestnut and sugar maples. The large oak tree has turned completely brown, but as of yet the leaves have not fallen. The evergreens still look healthy, as does the goldenrod and the goutweed.

There seems to have been a reasonable large amount of animal activity recently. While at the site, I saw many more chipmunks than I had before, though this may have simply been timing. There was also plenty of evidence of the squirrels’ and chipmunks’ feeding. The number of fully eaten and stripped pinecones has increased drastically since last I visited. This most likely means that other sources of food are running low, and that now the pine cones are valuable for their seeds as they were not when other food was available. In the warm weather, the rodents were out in force, and I saw plenty of play going on. I also found, by the base of a white pine tree, a half eaten nut. As the picture below shows, the large chestnut is mostly eaten, and bears the marks of many small teeth, either from one rodent many times or from multiple rodents.

What was curious was that there was so much left. Scattered around the nut were small pieces of white nutmeat, and they almost appeared to have been chewed and spat out. There were not enough of these fragments to complete the nut, so it seemed that some was eaten, and the rest was left. I believe the strewn fragments and remaining half of a nut were the result of a very rapid feeding that was interrupted. But even if the feeding was interrupted, why leave the nut? In any case, an interesting find.

For a few nights recently, I have seen deer from my window in the Mission Park area. Though there weren’t any while I was there, traces were all over the site. Near the center of the grove is a large patch of goutweed, but when I arrived there I found many green shoots that appeared to be new growth. After investigating their tips and stems, I realized that they were simply goutweed (I think) stems that had been chewed off by deer. When deer graze, they usually also leave behind scat, which I also found in the grazed area. Judging by the concentrated organization of the dark pellets, I would guess a female left the scat, as males generally walk as they defecate, leaving a trail of pellets.

On the other side of my site, however, was another small pile of feces. While at first I thought it was again deer, I saw some distinct differences. The second pile had much less distinct boundaries between pellets; it almost seemed that the pellets had been softer and pressed together. They were smooth in texture, and the insides were green. This led me to believe it was a deer with some sort of intestinal issue that prevented full digestion of its meal and full uptake of water.

These signs also show me that deer have a much more active role in my site than I believed.

Jonathan Levinsohn

It took me several trips to the Eastlawn cemetery before I was able to get what I was looking for—a recording—however this was a nice opportunity to see my site at several different times throughout the day in relatively quick succession. My first trip was on Sunday, October 25^th, 2009, at midnight. It was bitterly cold. I did not measure the temperature, I could not only see my breath, it prevented me from seeing much with my headlamp. I stopped at the top of the hill as I decided whether it would be a good decision to walk down to the river and listened. I could hear the river and a slight breeze. I used the digital recorded and could hear nothing. I assumed that I needed to be closer to the sound’s origin to pick it up on the recorded and I decided that I would return when walking down to the river would not be so precarious.

The next morning, it was much warmer when I arrived at 9:30 (7^O C).  I heard the chatter of a red squirrel, which I have heard before in the site, some cars on nearby route 2, the mew of a catbird and the rushing of the Green River, which was still very full from the recent rainstorm. I was unable to hear any of this, however on the digital recorder. I decided to formally look though the site, anyways. I immediately noticed a family of white tail deer. I could only make out a smaller deer (the size of a faun) and a larger deer. I could only see their white tails. The winged euonymus’ leaves had finally turned bright red, and the Norway maple had a slight yellow tinge in its leaves. There was some sumac fruit on the ground, though most was still on the trees, which had no leaves left. The honeysuckle had its leaves, along with the grape vine; the honeysuckle’s was shriveled. The sugar maple had also lost all of its leaves but still had its brown-ridged helicopter seeds. The buckthorn and the multiflora rose still had all green leaves. The white snakeroot leaves were crispy and most of the fluffy seeds were gone, and the pokeweed was entirely brown save the base of the stem and the tissue that secure the fruit to the plant. Few of the ferns that I had noticed earlier remained in identifiable condition. The area next to the river was flooded. I could see several puddles and the plants were knocked sideways towards down river indicating that excess runoff had pushed the plants into this position. Among the new discoveries was a Japanese Barberry, that still had red leaves and fruit, and several new beer cans near the edge of the area.

I returned that evening with a borrowed camera to take some images of the site. Both how difficult it was to get quality images with reduced light and also how quiet it was astounded me. I could hear nothing other than the river, though I fully expected some animal activity, though I saw and heard none. Not ever squirrels. I have heard that animals are often most active at dusk and dawn, but I have seen the most activity of birds, and rodents in the mid-morning. Thus I decided to return the next morning to make a recording with a functioning digital recorder.

The next morning was windy and it felt cold (though it was only about 4^O C). I would estimate gusts were about 15 kph. They were mowing the grass in the cemetery, but I was unable to pick that up. All I could pick up was the wind, and the chatter of a squirrel, which carried on longer than usual. I heard some birds, but could not figure out where they were and was unable to point the recorder in the correct direction to get a recording. I do not know what species they were, but they did not sound like a catbird; it twittered instead of mewing. I also recorded the river flowing near a particularly swift and rocky portion, though the recording did not come out very well.

Sound from Tuesday morning (10/27/09) pictures from Monday evening (10/26/09)

Eric Outterson

Hank Art

Natural History of the Berkshires

 

A Muted Woods

Thursday October 22, 2009

10:02PM-10:25PM

I came late in the evening with the hope of discovering a new creature in my site and a chance to document its call.  Unfortunately strong storm-like gusts blew cold wind and many leaves.  There were no bird calls tonight.  Using the digital recorder, I was unable to record the noise of anything but many rustling leaves.

I did, however, see a two foot long skunk cross my path.  On the stones of Stetson Wood’s southern hillside I spotted him, and he seemed completely unmindful of my presence.  While I was fairly sure that I blended in well, I was still concerned enough that I continued my examination of the Stetson Parking lot woods around the perimeter, away from the rock under which I saw him disappear.  Unfortunately, the skunk approached closer to the curb where I had been examining the largely maple leaf cover on the ground.

Even though I had not recorded any sounds, I was afraid that I might be able to record a scent, so I left with great haste.

Friday October 23, 2009

4:30PM-4:55PM

Returning again, it was still breezy and cold in mid 40’s.  The wind wasn’t as strong as Thursday but it was still cold.  Beginning my observation anew, I saw and heard at least five different red squirrels running about rustling the thick leaf cover.  Unfortunately, however, there were no birds chirping, and the loudest noise I recorded was leaf rustling.

To record noise, I decided that I would wait on one of the rocks, hunched over.  After about 15 minutes of sitting calmly on one of the large rocks in the middle of the Stetson woods, I saw a chipmunk scurry into a hole 30 feet to my left.  Over the next five minutes I saw his exact location from a bump upward in the leaf cover wherever he tunneled.  I could barely believe it, it was like a cartoon’s rendition of mole tunneling through the earth.

My musings on the matter, however, were interrupted by a startling and gruff “what are you doing down there?”  It was Chuck Roberts, assuming the worst of a boy crouched in the middle of the woods with a mysterious object in his hands.  I naively responded “I’m recording nature.”  Finally, however, I explained myself and he told me he’s seen raccoons down in Stetson woods too.  No audio recordings of any raccoons unfortunately, but given my trust in Chuck Roberts I’ll add them to the list of species in my woods.

Sunday October 25 2009

2:30PM-2:55PM

In another attempt to record sound I came back to try once more on a day with weather Friday’s.  I saw more red squirrels and chipmunks, but again I heard absolutely no birds.  I was again very disappointed and left with only leaves rustling on my recordings.

5:20PM-5:45PM

More leaves rustling…

Monday October 26, 2009

5:15PM-6:00PM

Monday was a little warmer at about 50 degrees with blue skies obscured only by wispy cirrus clouds.  Coming this time I was unable to hear any birds coming from my site.  The only noise I heard from birds came from crows outside the Stetson woods.  The only sounds I heard inside Stetson woods were from red squirrels that rustled the leaves.

Sounds aside, I noticed that over the past five days much of the highest parts of the trees had defoliated, and many more maples in my site gained a yellow hue.  Walking into the middle of my site I spotted several of the winged euonymus that had begun to turn red.  It was very striking, as in the middle of the woods, many of the small maples and white ash (I’m almost certain the trees I tried to identify before are white ash) had remained green.  The whole woods was experiencing fall from top to bottom, from outside to inside.

Leaving the Stetson Woods, I tried to walk quietly but crunched leaves loudly with every step.  I could not step making noise if I wanted to.  If only recording the sounds I wanted were quite as simple.

Tyler Woods Video            On Wednesday, October 21^st, Claudia and I ventured out to Tyler Woods at night. It was around eight o’clock, and the sun had completely set. As we walked up Tyler Road, our path was illuminated by the lights which lined the side walk, and the light glow coming from the windows of Tyler House.

            Our last beacon of light came from the lamppost next to Tyler Path, where we then entered Tyler Woods. Although it was dark within the woods, the light from the parking lot and the surrounding houses made it possible for one to see reasonably well. Still, we took out our flash lights, and I began to look for the first place I wished to start recording.

            I decided to first record not too far from the path. As I pressed record, I noticed that the night was still and quite, which was not what I was expecting. I was expecting to hear the chirping of crickets or the hoot of the barred owl. Instead, for fifteen seconds, I recorded the sound of impenetrable silence.

            Wishing to try another location to see if I could catch any nighttime activity, I headed to my right and down another side path. Here we stopped, as I heard the sound of one of the many domesticated dogs which I have seen on my site. Although I could not see him, the bark was coming from the direction of one of the fenced houses behind Tyler House. I readied the recorder and recorded the repetitive barking which echoed throughout the area.

            Fifteen seconds later, we made our way to the Periwinkle Valley where I recorded my third recording. The dog, which we had left behind us, could still be heard disturbing the night’s silence. Besides the presence of this loud, domestic dog, no other sounds could be heard throughout Tyler Woods. The night was strangely quiet. Even Tyler House was devoid of noise. There were no cars making their way up Tyler Road; there was no music blasting through the windows, and there were no faint whispers of conversation which usually made their way to my ears through the small open windows.

            My last stop, and last fifteen second recording, was in Huckleberry Path. The sound of the dogs warning signal was now faint, and only the silence of the night remained. After I had recorded this last fifteen minutes, Claudia made an interesting observation. The strongest light source in Tyler Woods is a lamp post which stands at the end of Huckleberry Path. She noticed that those leaves closest to the lamp post had turned color and were already beginning to fall, while many of the leaves farther away from the lamp post were still green and had not yet changed color. This was evidence that the presence of artificial light impacts the time individual trees lose their leaves.

            The next night when we arrived in the Hopkins Forest, I noticed that Claudia’s sight had trees that were much older than those in my site. The ground within the sight was covered in freshly fallen leaves, and some of the trees were already bare and looked ready for the winter. My trees, on the other hand, still had some leaves that had not yet changed color. Just as in the Science Quad, I could see that those trees that were older usually lost their leaves first, while the younger trees lost their leaves later. Since my site is younger than Claudia’s site, it makes sense that many of her trees have lost their leaves while mine are still in the process of losing theirs.

            Unfortunately, I was not able to record the barred owl Wednesday night. Although the only concrete sound I got was of the nearby dog, I am sure that with multiple visits to Tyler I would be able to capture the sound of dear walking through the leaves, the hoot of an owl, squirrels out late hiding away food for the winter, and the sound of people coming to and from Tyler House. With time and patience, I am sure we would find that Tyler Woods is as alive and active at night as it is during the day.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/23/09

Field Journal #5

I entered my site at around 8:45 pm on Wednesday, by which time the sky was fully dark. Unfortunately, due to the location of my site relative to buildings and frequently used pathways, a fully dark sky does not mean a fully dark site because of the ambient light cast by the Mission dormitory as well as the lamps lining the pathways on either side of the site. While I still required a flashlight to maneuver around the site and see anything other than large tree shapes when I was in the center of my site, the edges were illuminated to some extent.

I sat for a while at the base of a large white pine, hoping to hear something worthy of recording, but the longer I sat the more I realized that the only sounds that I would record were human sounds, and that the site itself would remain unheard. There were plenty of cars passing on Mission park road, Park Street and Route 2; plenty of doors opening and closing; numerous people talking as they walked past; and in the background the whirring of a large generator coming from Mission.

The recording I made contained only very few noises above the rustle of leaves in the breeze other than the shifting of my feet in the leaves below and the movement of my hand on the recorder. These were people talking, and church bells tolling faintly, and a door closing, which seems to have been swallowed by electrical crackles. There were no birdcalls of any kind to be heard, no chattering of squirrels or the crackle of leaves as they scampered around, and no chirp of insects of any kind. Of course, this could be explained away by the fact that the birds and squirrels are sleeping and that the loud insects are long gone after the first frost, but still I expected at least some natural noise.

I did, however, see a few small insects in my search. First was a caterpillar that was bright translucent green. It was similar to the caterpillar I described in my fourth site observation (Field Blog 3), except it was slightly larger and green in color. It was residing in a pinecone, and judging by the white silky mat it was resting on, it was in the process of creating a cocoon for itself. It was also very inactive: it did not move as I picked up the pinecone nor did it budge when I poked it with my pencil. At this point I left it to its rest as I had seen a small spider by my foot. It was small (about 7 millimeters long in my estimation), brown, with very thin legs. Its back had an almost stripped pattern with lighter circles in the center of darker stripes. What I soon found interesting about it was that it did not move when I shone my headlamp at it. When I covered the light for a few seconds, it would begin to move again, but would stop about a second after the light was uncovered.

A third critter I encountered was a daddy long-legs, but of a kind I had not before seen. It was brown and had six thin brown legs. The front leg on the right was about twice as long as the others, and seemed to be used almost as a feeler to probe ahead of the insect. On either side of its tiny mandibles it also had two much smaller tan appendages that retracted into the insects body most of the time, but came out to poke the page of my journal as it walked. A fascinating thing about the daddy long-legs was that when I tilted my journal, its legs curved around the lips of the book to hold it in place. It almost seemed like the limbs were prehensile, the way they curved and flexed as the creature required.

The site at night seemed almost the same as it is during the day except for the stillness. During a tour of the site, however, I did notice that the white wood asters have changed from a flowering state to a seed dispersing state with puffy seed dispersing clusters in place of petals.

I’m not sure what I’ve been doing right but it has been yet another astonishingly beautiful visit to Wall’s Pond. I arrived at the site today a little before 3pm under perfectly clear, blue skies. It was a perfect 60 degrees with a mild northeast breeze that sprang up to a maximum of 2 or 3 mph, barely enough to knock the remaining leaves off the trees.
The last week has not been so idyllic, though, and since my last visit the wind and rain have totally defoliated the big red maple at the north of the pond and the two smaller trees right on the northeastern edge. The sugar maples at the entrance are bare on top now and only the leaves on the bottom quarter of the tree are left, yellow and dry, waiting to flutter the few feet to the ground at any moment. The vegetation around the pond’s edge looks similarly gaunt and desiccated today. Where there had been a late summer bloom of mugwort and sedge on my first and second visit is now a dry and graying strip of woody plant life, a shadow of its former glory. As I made my way around the pond I noticed several flooded areas at the boundary of the mowed grass and the strip of vegetation, an indication that last week’s rain still hasn’t drained or evaporated.
I haven’t seen the mallards in a few weeks, but I did witness a rather dramatic show of wildlife today, the excitement of which greatly surpasses the ducks’ relatively sedate afternoon feeding. In a huge red spruce across the meadow from the pond, on the Fort Hoosac property, a lone crow abdicated its perch overlooking the house for a moment, only to be usurped by a opportunistic raptor (my closest guess, from the shape of its tail and the white breast plumage, is that I saw a northern goshawk. The beak, however, seemed a bit too big for a goshawk, and from the Audobon guide I could not identify this bird with certainty. I seriously regret not bringing a camera along so as to exact a better identification.). The crow circled around and, discovering the treachery, began “cawing” incessantly. The crow gained some altitude and dived on the invading bird repeatedly, “cawing” with fervor, but to no avail. After a few minutes of this, the crow swooped off to the west, circling around a tree at the extreme northwest corner of the meadow and came back to the spruce with two more crows in tow. The three crows flew up over Fort Hoosac and, screeching all the way, dive-bombed the raptor who finally relented. The crows chased their quarry low over the meadow where I stood watching and didn’t let up until all four birds were well into the cover of the Clark West Woods.
After this drama played out I turned my focus to a tactile analysis of the pond and its environs. I knelt and ran my hand through the grass at my feet. It was supple and warm from the sun, with just a touch of lingering dew where the blades met the ground. Moving into the thick of the sedge and mugwort, careful not to sink in the soft puddles thereabouts, I felt the crackle of dead leaves and brittle stalks that had, only a few weeks ago, been so flexible that it was hard to pull off a stem to take with me. I continued around the south end, crunching through the masses of dead leaves, stopping now and then to grab handfuls and crush them even more, exposing the occasional wet spot or bed of soft pine needles. I swung around past the entrance again to test the water temperature under the big sugar maple where the shoreline is firmest. Without a thermometer I would guess that the water was in the mid to upper 50s – my benchmark being 20 summers of swimming in cold Atlantic water on Cape Cod.
Eager to get the crow vs. raptor episode down on paper, I took one more quick turn around the pond, stopping to take some audio recordings. On my way past the eastern meadow where I watched the crows drive off their competition I spotted an incredible sight: a lone Monarch butterfly alighting on the few remaining dandelions in the field.

Hopkins At Night By: Claudia Corona        10/26/09

Being in the forest at night is an experience from another world. Not because we were scared or anything preposterous like that, but because it’s a different sight, a different feeling, a different atmosphere than what we are used to.

I say “we” because I brought a peer along who also wanted to see what the forest was like at night. And how was it like at night? Like nothing we’ve ever seen, literally.

It was a little after 8:30pm when we made it to the entrance of the Ford Glen Brook trail, and by that time, everything was pitch black. We could dimly see lights coming from a lone house across the brook, but the lights were only bright enough to illuminate inside the house, certainly not anything outside. Trees that normally blocked the sun out of the forest were now being were covered in layer upon layer of night. The wilting white snakeroots were no longer discernible and it was too dark for the ferns to openly boast their evergreen color to the surrounding dull brown vegetation. The dark atmosphere demanded quiet and we adhered, especially since I wanted to know what other creatures were up and about at this time and place.

Our first stop for audio recording was 100 feet from the beginning of the trail, and right before we had to get off the trail to go to the brook. Here we stopped and listened for sounds. In the distance, the audio recorder caught the sounds of the artificial owl call  by the Rosenberg Center, which we had visited the week before during our owl trip. The artificial owl call sounded like a siren, constant and repeating, and one used to draw attention. But the siren wasn’t one of alarm, just of seeking. The rushing water traveling along in the brook was much more audible here than it had been some yards back. But hearing it wasn’t enough, I wanted to get closer to the brook.

With hopes of hearing a frog or two that maybe hadn’t yet migrated away, we went down to Ford Glen Brook. As we trekked down to the brook, the sound of rushing water became clearer and clearer, so clear, that even though we were about 15 diagonal feet from the brook (because it was too dark and dangerous to climb down the rocky slope), the resonance made us feel as if we were standing right next to the brook. The sound of the rushing water was a very constant one, and although it was calm and soothing, it lacked ribbits and chirps, so after a while, we decided to go back onto the path.

We voyaged back onto the trail and stopped. For some time we stood in complete darkness listening for sounds that might be out of the ordinary, not caused by wind, water, or artificial owls. After some time had passed, I decided to call it a day and so we marched back to our bikes. We still kept our ears open for hopes of hearing a bird screech or a bear roar, but our steps were too noisy. It hadn’t rained in a while, and so the leaves were still crunchy and loud when we stepped on them, which explains why a part of my audio recording is leaf stepping. We were trying to hear animals and got rambunctious leaves instead!

We were getting ready to hop back up on our bikes when suddenly, a cry coming from somewhere above in the trees, touched our ear drums. This sound was very different from the constant artificial owl call. Not having been prepared to record this sound, I took out the audio recorder, and hoped that this bird, most likely an owl, would call out once more. “Peo!”, we heard it again, now caught on tape; but we coudln’t pinpoint where the bird was! It was definitely a bird cry, but the sound wasn’t fast and loud like a shriek would be in a time of urgency. And it also wasn’t low and slow like a hum. It reminded me of a bird call. I understood it as the bird saying, “I’m here, where’s everyone else?”. After a few more calls, the bird stopped; satisfied with our finds we biked back home. Although I didn’t see the bird that called, the sounds I got on tape were worth it, because they show that there’s always an active world out there, even at night.

Stephen Maier

22 October 2009

Tonight I visited the West Clark Woods with a classmate at 6:45 p.m. It was about 60°F and the wind was soft and cooling. The weather created the perfect atmosphere for a night visit. As we approached the entrance to my site, I imagined nocturnal birds sitting in the treetops spying on small rodents scurrying in the brush on the ground. Only equipped with a small flashlight and a cell phone for protection, I envisioned us creeping around the forest until we were startled by some large animal. We would freeze in a moment of role reversal between man and nature. We were the “deer in headlights” stopped in front of a giant buck. The scenes I pictured were fantastic, but unfortunately they remained a fantasy.

As we were about to enter the woods, I stopped dead in my tracks. I was startled and even grew timid. I asked Nathaniel to shine his flashlight into the tree about fifteen yards from us. Something caught my eye, something that had not been there last week or in the weeks prior. Nathaniel moved the light to where I was pointing and we both gasped. Perched on a branch protruding from the tree line was an eerie bird. It reminded me of the vultures from The Jungle Book, however, far more malevolent than the oblivious birds in the children’s movie. It appeared to be approximately 18 inches tall with a long beak that extended about 4-6 inches away from its face. The bird exhibited a gray color, which may have been skewed since we were viewing it in the darkness. It was resting on one long, slender leg looking off into the distance towards the Clark Art Institute. It looked like a relative of the crane, stork, or heron.

Earlier in the semester, when the class gathered to watch birds, we were fortunate enough to spot a great blue heron on the far edge of Eph’s pond. The bird we saw this evening was very similar in silhouette, but slightly smaller to the heron. Clearly they were different colors, but they were also different in demeanor. The heron appeared harmless relaxing in the water enjoying the sunrise; but this bird seemed ominous. It appeared to be on the prowl waiting to attack its next victim. I didn’t move and I didn’t hear Nathaniel move either. I was contemplating my next move, not sure of where to go. If this bird was terrifying me, what would I do if I were to see coyotes or bears or moose? This thought helped me to muster up some courage and enter the woods. However, the image of that bird in the tree didn’t escape my mind.

We found our way to the zero point of my site and briefly surveyed the area around us. The darkness hindered our vision and disabled us from making any observations. So we decided to move to a convenient resting location where we could record the sounds of the woods. Last week, the most action I encountered was in a small hemlock grove that I reached via a barely noticeable path overgrown with thickets and thorns. Therefore, I thought the forest sounds would be represented and amplified best in this location tonight.

The noises there did not prove to be as promising as I had hoped. I closed my eyes allowing my sense of hearing to compensate for my lack of vision, but the animals I assumed to be in nature were inaudible. I heard cars and trucks traveling through the Route 2/Route 7 rotary, leaves rustling on the ground, arbitrary leaves, needles, seeds, and nuts falling from the trees above, and some human voices, which I assume were emanating from the Williamstown Public Library based on from where the sound was resonating. I heard some scampering of small animals through the leaves and a ten second segment of steady calling which sounded like a frog. This was the only evidence of the animals I had assumed were omnipresent in the West Clark Woods.

These sounds were incredibly difficult to locate, for the wind was gusting with high intensity in the woods. I would estimate the wind speed to have been about 8-10 mph at times, highly obstructing our listening capabilities. In the sound recording,nothing is audible save the wind. I intend to return another evening to try my luck again with the animals at night for tonight was relatively unimpressive.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:00 PM/ Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:00 AM- Syndicate Road Woods

To hear my recording, click here

It is amazing how much we take sound for granted.  Just walking out to my site at the Syndicate Road woods I noticed so many more sounds than I had before; the sound the leaves make when they fall to rest on the ground, the hum of the electrical and heating units of nearby buildings, and the rustle of squirrels scampering up tree trunks.  I first visited my site on Wednesday night, hoping to see and hear some things that were not present in the daytime.  The moon was a thin waxing crescent and gave no light to my journey.  I did not see many stars, but I figured the night was cloudy because it was warm.  On the road, the sound of crickets filled the air in a slow, melodic chorus, but once I stepped under the canopy of the woods I could barely hear their chirping.  The woods were quiet and eerie at this time of night.  There were a few gray squirrels scurrying about, but I did not see or hear any deer, frogs or other nocturnal animals.  The stillness was interrupted at multiple points by not only cars whizzing past on Syndicate Road, but by trains as well.  It turns out that there is an active railroad quite close to campus that runs westward just north of the Hoosac River and then north, parallel with Route 7.  From what I heard, it sounded like the train was used mostly for freight and the sound of its wheels on the tracks lasted for at least five minutes.  Wishing to get a recording of this chorus of stream, cars and trains, I turned on the recording device, only to find it was out of battery.  I decided to come back the next day to make a recording.

On Thursday morning, after charging the recorder, I headed out to the Syndicate Road woods at about 10:00 A.M.  It was an oddly warm day for late October, about 55 degrees, and there were few clouds in the sky.  At this time there were more human noises to take into account; the scuffle of feet through fallen leaves as people headed out for class, the chatter of the dining staff during their break, and the thud of the rubber ball against the floor of the paddle ball court.  The difference between my visit this morning and my visit the night before was the presence of boisterous birds.  Their chirping noises were even more easily heard when I walked further away from campus and closer to the woods.  I could identify the calls of crows, finches, and chickadees, but there were many more I could only analyze and record.  A few squirrels greeted me as I entered the woods and I even saw and heard a few chipmunks scamper about.  I heard a continuous, loud rustling of leaves, and attributed them the small creatures, but after the noise continued I turned to look and realized that it was the result of a deer.  I only saw one, which appeared to be a doe, and as soon as I tried to get a closer look she ran off towards the Poker Flats fields.  This has been my second sighting of deer at the site during broad daylight, and I wonder why the deer are active at this time. 

Another sound that I was able to record was the sound of the stream.  Although the stream seemed to trickle very loudly out of the culvert, the water was mostly stagnant so the sound must have been amplified by the shape and material of the cement culvert.  Otherwise, the Syndicate Road woods were mostly silent, but it makes me wonder what the definition of silent is.  In fact, if you listen closely, the woods are far from silent; the leaves crackle in the wind, small crickets chirp, branches snap.  We humans have formulated a new definition of “silence”.  To us, if the sounds that surround us do not reach the volume of a car or a motorcycle, we consider our atmosphere to be quiet, maybe even silent.  We take for granted the whistling of the wind and the sound of two blades of grass brushing together.  At my site today however, I realized that if you spend a while in the woods even the chirping of a song sparrow can seem quite loud.