Looking Up to Flowers

Sassafras tree

Trees, shrubs, and some vines display blossoms in lofty canopies to carry on the business of all flowers, making more plants.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird and apple blossoms

Flowers that rely on visiting pollinators to accomplish fertilization are likely to develop showy petals. Bright inflorescences also catch the attention of people, for whom the relationship is more aesthetic than functional‒which shifts but does not diminish its value.

Big-toothed aspen flowering

The flowers of wind-pollinated plants while not so showy are nevertheless interesting and beautiful to anyone who contemplates natural form and purpose.

American elm flowering

American elms also rely on the wind to achieve fertilization of their seeds.

Alder-leaved buckthorn

Some plants bear tiny flowers that produce fragrance or sugars to attract insect pollinators without offering ostentatious visual guides.

Black locust

The peas family is represented with fabulous diversity at Halibut Point, from beach peas at the shoreline to locust trees in the uplands. They all bear racemes of flowers with legumaceous similarities.

Grape

Not surprisingly grape flowers cluster in the same pendulous configuration as the fruit that will emerge at maturity.

Virginia creeper

Like the grape, the Virginia creeper vine produces just enough wood in its stems to clamber aloft toward sunlight over more heavily structured shrubs and trees.

European barberry

In looking up at flowers, is it important to distinguish between a shrub and a tree? Most people, and experts, think of shrubs as multi-stemmed woody plants growing up to sixteen feet tall, and trees as more likely single-stemmed reaching high in the sky. But these categories will be found to mix on an arbitrary spectrum.

Red maple

Regardless of botanical templates woody plants exhibit flowers as fascinating as herbaceous ones do.

Grey birch

The male flowers of birch trees produce pollen in long petal-less clusters called catkins that develop in summer, remain tightly closed all winter, then expand and blossom in early spring to fertilize the much smaller female catkins.

Flowering dogwood

Numerical increase of our native dogwood must be attributed more to its visually stunning flowers than to its ability to set seed.

Consider the Sparrow

My first sparrow story goes back nearly forty years, when I had a mild interest in birds, and accompanied C on a tour he was leading in mid-May at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. While everyone's binoculars were scanning the treetops for a Cerulean Warbler C called our attention to a dusky movement in the shadows under a hedge. "There's a pretty good look at a Lincoln's Sparrow," he said. It was a lesson in full-spectrum alertness and the ability to distinguish among LBJs, the "little brown jobs" of the bird world that for a novice can be hard to identify even in hand.

More recently C and a birding companion caught a fleeting glimpse of a sparrow oddity along the edge of the Halibut Point moors. "Lincoln's," called C. His companion asked half-humorously whether C had had a good enough look that she could count it herself . A Lincoln's Sparrow looks very much like the prevalent Song Sparrow.

Song Sparrow

Sparrows may get more attention from housewives scattering breadcrumbs in the dooryard than from newcomers to the world of natural splendors. Sparrows bring to mind "the least of these" parable from the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus pointed to the Creator's delight in all creatures, down to the most unpretentious of birds, or persons.

Besides a Song Sparrow I could definitely recognize a White-throated Sparrow at my home bird feeder and in the thickets of Halibut Point, by its crisp white head stripes and bib. Yellow touches above the eyes further ornament individuals seen at close range.

White-throated Sparrow

A few years ago when I encountered S at the Park she asked if I had seen the White-crowned Sparrows in the Back 40. It's similar but a little different from the White-throats, she said, and is just now passing through in migration. I missed it then but her excitement stayed with me in an obscure memory capsule until this spring when I made my first sighting of this bright-headed LBJ beside the path leading up from Folly Cove.

White-crowned Sparrow

It was one of those breakthrough moments when a clan of look-alikes begins to take on special interest, and initiate a new challenge.

Chipping Sparrow

In past excursions I had noted rufous-capped sparrows that stood out perkily from others, like the Chipping Sparrow pictured above and the Swamp Sparrow below.

Swamp Sparrow

This does not mean that they were easy for me to distinguish from each other in the field. Other factors like location and peculiar habits help experienced birders make quick discernments.

Tree Sparrow

Vocalizations can also facilitate on-the-spot identification. This Tree Sparrow, though you can't see its rufous cap from the photo angle, commends itself with a singularly beautiful melodic warble.

Field Sparrow

The pocket-sized Field Sparrow has a distinctive pinkish aspect that, with the white eye ring, set it apart from the rest of the clan.

House Sparrows

At the other end of the comportment spectrum come the burly House Sparrow mobsters that proliferate close to human habitation and muscle swallows from their nesting box. They're the ones that hit you up for potato chip handouts at the Park entrance.

House Sparrows differ from the rest of these birds in that they are of another taxonomic family despite superficial resemblance to our native species. They were imported experimentally from Europe to America in the nineteenth century and have become an invasive pest.

Fox Sparrow

The Song Sparrow's middling features and year-round presence make it a convenient standard for identifying some of the other species. In comparison, the Fox Sparrow is larger with a redder aspect, more broadly striped, and lacking the central black spot on its chest. It passes through our area on a limited spring schedule. The one pictured here appeared beneath my home feeder.

Savannah Sparrow

When I made my sparrow quest known to A this spring, she said a friend of hers had just seen Savannah Sparrows in the scruffy grass traffic island at the entrance to Folly Cove pier. The next day J and I were walking right by that spot, where a couple of inconspicuous Song Sparrow lookalikes were searching for weed seeds. J said, There's your prize. After close examination of the photograph I have more appreciation for honing in on fine feature distinctions.

Lincoln's Sparrow

My apex sparrow moment this season came when I happened on a Lincoln's Sparrow, guided by a tip from two experts canvassing Halibut Point in the annual Birdathon. True to type this bird tried at all times to keep itself screened from sight by foliage or shrubbery. I look at the photo and wonder if readers are thinking, What's all the fuss? All I can say is that I feel lucky to pursue mild obsessions in such a pleasant place.

Song Sparrow singing

Out on the heath you're likely to hear a Song Sparrow before you see it. The bird begins its spritely concert with a rising-falling pair of notes, followed by a series of chrrr-ing phrases. The effect is like "Attention, please" and "glory, glory, glory."

In considering the sparrow I imagine a Chinese scroll painting with an apricot tree blooming in a courtyard, a boy sweeping petals from the walkway, and a cluster of sparrows gleaning kernels of grain by the well. The delicate elements of the composition interlock with a serenity that promises endurance through the ebbs and flows of circumstance. Other scrolls are festooned with cranes or peacocks, but this one mellows the viewer with an attainable peace.

The Reliable Shad

Blooming shad, daybreak

Unconcerned by this year's social confinements the shad trees are maintaining the congenial rhythm of the natural world in May.

Great Blue Heron

Their blossoming assures us of spring's progress as reliably as any calendar or thermometer.

Two species of shad

At least five native species of shad have made their way back to various niches at Halibut Point State Park since the disruptive periods of agriculture and industry. They are pioneering vegetative restoration over the granite grout piles.

Gulls feeding on little fish in the brook at Folly Cove

Shad trees take their name from the shad fish, or alewives that leave the salty ocean to spawn far upstream in fresh water rivers and brooks, at just the time when shad flowers appear. Fisheries ecologist Eric Hutchins of Rockport assures me that the Folly Cove brook and hinterlands are too small to support alewives, so the fingerlings that appeared here are likely a type of tiny smelt with a similar migration pattern.

One of the Herring Gulls devouring a "bait fish"

For several days in the first week of May loons and cormorants as well as gulls congregated for a feast at the head of the Cove.

Brown Thrasher

Shad trees provide convenient roosting for birds returning from southern wintering grounds.

Common Grackle

Their pure white flowers lend dazzling clarity to some birds' otherwise unremarkable plumage.

Fallen petals

Early in the month our region experienced a polar vortex. As temperatures plunged into the thirties under dismal skies I received a message, "Can you believe it's snowing?" A relentless wind was blowing flakes of shad blossoms past the window.

Northern Parula warbler

The season righted itself. Trees held some of their blossoms, insects emerged to feed on tender leaves, and spring migrants arrived on shad cue.

Shad beside the quarry

Fortunately I have no more to do with this than opening my eyes.

Singing in High Places

Eastern Towhee

What could I associate with renewal more than birdsong? Shedding my seasonally introverted nature coincides with the procreative surge of birds in springtime melody.

Common Yellowthroat

I look upward to trace the source of song, to a bird tilted upward in full-throated projection.

Tufted Titmouse

A male is advertising his suitability as a mate, or proclaiming the bounds of his realm.

Red-winged Blackbird

Carolina Wren

Scarlet Tanager

Appreciation of melodic sound and vibrant color are among my strongest aesthetic delights. For the creatures of origin these expressions are tied to practical functions.

Gray Catbird

Nevertheless, when our local mimics extend their musical exuberance with endless borrowings and inventions I have to wonder if their pragmatic sounds are laced with joy.

Northern Mockingbird

The three mimid species of Halibut Point, the catbird, mockingbird, and thrasher, benefit from a relatively large endowment of vocal cords. Songsters vibrate these muscles within the syrinx organs paired where the two bronchial tubes meet the trachea. Some birds can sing through their syringes separately and simultaneously to produce complex repertoires of pitch and harmony.

Brown Thrasher

The Brown Thrasher devises over a thousand different musical phrases in long, boisterous recitations.

Black-capped Chickadee

The sing-song notes from chickadees have endeared them to Massachusetts citizens as our State Bird. Whistles and twitters help the birds stay together as they gambol through woodlands or search out suitable liaisons.

Orchard Oriole

The blackbird family of icterids counts among its relatives some notable vocalists whose intonations range from the pure clarity of orioles to the raspy whistles of grackles.

Common Grackles

While not all these songs are received with equal appreciation by the human ear their musicality serves its owners' social purposes fittingly.

Blue Jay

Jays and crows communicate extensively with sounds that are often more informative or questioning than melodic.

American Crow

Members of the corvid family are among the most intelligent and social of songbirds, and the most raucous.

Song Sparrow

Pronouncements from high places set the tune for each species' most fundamental endeavors.

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With thanks to Chris Leahy's informative essay on "Song" in The Birdwatcher's Comnpanion.