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December 15th, 2020 Framingham, MA
Finally! a sunny day, nevertheless, it is still 31 degrees Fahrenheit outside and the soil is soaking wet, but at least it looks like that might change. Yesterday's downpour eliminated the very last of the snow and I need something from the woods to plant in my new flower pots I got as an early Christmas gift. I am trying to decide what I am going to plant. a few candidates include low bush blueberry, an oak or alder buck thorn tree, and my last idea is jewel weed.
Lowland Blueberries Are great because they are hardy, native, and very common. All the red leaves and bushes in the picture are them. Picture taken at assabet river wildlife refuge.
I want a native plant that does not wilt during the winter and is small enough to pot. All of the above plants meet these requirements except for jewel weed as it curls and becomes dormant during the winter.
-Aidan Garrity
December 14th, 2020 Framingham, MA
about a week ago, I watched a documentary on Netflix "My Octopus Teacher" and it was a great film. It is about a diver who finds an octopus and becomes an expert and photographer with just one species of octopus. this inspired me to write an in-depth, focused, overkill document that is going to have EVERYTHING that i know about eastern newts and everything i learn about eastern newts. i will add a link when it is complete. as a warning, the document is going to have a lot of information so do not feel obligated to read it, as it is more boring and excessively detailed than my actual blog.
-Aidan Garrity
December 13th, 2020 Framingham, MA
Today, I went for an early morning hike at Callahan State Park.
The above photo is probably the best landscape photo that I have ever taken, from the field next to Beebe pond. The field has piles of Oriental Bittersweet vines as seen above, smothering any trees that try to grow. They are an invasive species.
Beebe pond, as shown below, is a large pond, home to fish, frogs, beavers and turtles. Beaver chews are found all around the pond.
I also found a lot of mosses, fungi, and lichen on the walk. Below are some examples. I think it is pretty cool that while the animals hibernate, and the trees wilt, lichens, mosses and mushrooms stay in the same condition.
Turkey tail decaying on oak tree, grows with bits of foliose lichen and moss.
Different types of lichen including foliose lichen on tree trunk with moss. It looks like a scene from an alien world
"Crowded Parchment" fungus growing on a sawed down tree. the fungus only grows on the inside of the bark, and not the hard wood.
Overall, it was an amazing hike, and I got some great photographs to show for it.
-Aidan Garrity
December 12th, 2020 Framingham, MA
Earlier today, I realized that my Eastern White Pine sapling is becoming the host to a few species of parasitic insects. Trees in the wild are in a constant evolutionary battle with insects. The first one that I am going to show you is the Pine Bark Adelgid or Pine Aphid (Pineus strobi) . The needles, base, stem, and branches of the tree all have a few of these organisms. They look like they each have a little piece of cotton on them. You can see what I am talking about below. Look closely...
In more extreme cases, they can completely kill a pine. When you see a pine tree where the trunk branches into two trunks halfway up, that is because the tree needed to replace the original trunk at one point with side-branches. Below is another example.
Brown Marmorated Stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys)
Brown Marmorated Stinkbug (Halyomorpha halys)
Introduced from china to the US. in the 1900s, this invasive species was found on my White pine tree, probably feeding from the softer, younger parts of the wood. I am going to leave him be for now.
These two insects are both going to harm the tree but I am going to let them linger a little bit just long enough so that I can learn more about them. I might do a more in depth post about each of them at some point.
-Aidan Garrity
December 11th, 2020 Framingham, MA
My Eastern Newts have been in the aquarium for a long time, now. After being in the warmer setup that is supposed to simulate an early spring, they simply wont spawn. I definitely have been seeing them mating and going into very strange courtship positions but again...
One of my male newts flipping me off while courting
No eggs.
I got exited when i saw the courting at first, months ago because my logic was that after mating comes egg laying, but not in this case. Its almost like they are doing it just for pleasure. I really hope that they lay eggs though, so that I can raise newt larva.
Thats my end goal i guess. Maybe they can somehow sense that it is not really spring and it is instead mid December, but people on forums have had far less of a winter cooling period than 2 months and they had massive egg clusters in their aquariums.
I feel frustrated because im doing everything right as far as I know, maybe even going overkill but I do not see a SINGLE EGG and it has been weeks since fake spring began.
Maybe they have a biological mental timer in their brains so they know it is not really spring because of how long ago summer ended.
Im afraid that I might just need to put them back in the freezing garage and wait until march.
-Aidan Garrity
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