I will be the gladdest thing under the sun. I will touch a hundred
flowers and not pick one.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
Tag Archives: nature
Seafood Shanty
Most people choose their restaurants for the food and the ambiance. There’s one roadside clam shack that I choose for the wildlife.
Don’t get me wrong the food is delish…the usual seafood fare but I have as much fun with the birds and chipmunks when I’m there as I do enjoying the food. I typically order the fried scallop plate. It comes with plenty of fries to share.
At first I only had the little birds for company but eventually my friend “Chip” showed up.
Chip snatched up a French fry and it was going ….
going….
gone!
Just like a French Fry eating contest!
If you can tear yourself away from the antics of the birds and chipmunks, you can watch the boats cruise up and down the Cape Cod Canal.
The folks who work here during the season are great.
During this visit I saw a cruise ship on the canal that I’d never seen before. Turns out one of the people that works at the Seafood Shanty has a brother that works on the boat so I got all of the inside scoop! Networking is a wonderful thing, 🙂
Butterflies of Cape Cod
As you know I explored the Butterfly place in Westford recently. As a result of that post I was told about another Butterfly house located on Cape Cod. A quick online search turned up an address in Bourne, 26 Herring Pond Rd. I plugged it into my GPS and was off to check it out.
About half way there I realized that I knew where I was going. I’d seen the sign for Butterflies of Cape Cod many times as I headed for the Sagamore Bridge.
I always promised myself I would stop in one day. I didn’t realize it was a butterfly habitat. I thought it was just a gift shop.
Sure enough, my GPS led me right to this spot.
The butterfly house is located behind the gift shop which is in a pretty little house. You enter the front door into the shop and go out the back into a yard. The screened butterfly habitat is right there.
The habitat is smaller than The Butterfly Place in Westford or Magic Wings in Deerfield but that isn’t the only difference. Westford and Deerfield celebrate tropical butterflies. This little habitat features local butterflies and moths. This is nice because you get to see butterflies up close that might only flit quickly away in the open. These are butterflies that could be in anyone’s yard or field.
As you first enter the habitat there are glass enclosures containing caterpillars and chrysalis and pupae. Pass through another screen and you are in the little container garden.
As soon as I entered I spotted a big ole Luna Moth. These are such beautiful creatures. The green shade is “other worldly”. I have seen them before but rarely and it’s always a treat. One of the owners was there and he said it was just sitting there now because it was daytime but that in the evening the Luna Moths get very active floating around on those gorgeous wings.
There were a lot of Monarch butterflies. They seemed to be very social insects gathering in groups on the flowers.
They made great subjects as they paid no attention to the humans wandering around.
Two other butterflies that I’ve often see were also present, one called a Buckeye and another called the Painted Lady.
We had to watch where we stepped because some of those silly butterflies like sunning themselves on the warm, cement path.
There were a couple of local swallow tail butterflies but as is so often in these habitats the tails were damaged or missing.
The challenge was the little white butterfly called a Cabbage Butterfly. They are small and they don’t land long.
Even when they do land they often keep their wings fluttering. I don’t think they are rare. I can remember seeing them everywhere when I was growing up.
I spotted some caterpillars climbing in the greenery, future butterflies on the move.
As I was leaving I stopped in to chat with the proprietors. They can be found on Facebook (who can’t these days) but if you like them you will get updates when a new butterfly hatches in the enclosure.
The little store has lots of nice things from jewelry to books to miniature butterfly enclosures for kids to learn from. Plus they have lots of pictures of their butterflies. I wonder if they would be interested in carrying my cards? I could make a special set of just their butterflies. I think I’ll take a sample next time I go down. Never hurts to ask!
The Butterfly Place
The Butterfly Place in Westford, MA is located at 120 Tyngsboro Rd. It’d been a long, long time since I’d been there. From where I live in Taunton it’s about 70 miles and should take about an hour and 30 minutes to get there, depending on traffic.
I was making good time until an RV and an SUV decided to mix it up at the junction of RT 90 (Mass Pike) I was about 2 miles from the “Pike” when traffic stopped. The WB ‘copter floated overhead so I had an up to the minute report. According to them we weren’t going anywhere soon.
I shut off the car and open the windows and doors. Soon everyone was doing the same. People wandered around at the side of the road or up and down between the cars. Several ambulances and tow trucks went by but I didn’t see any Med flights so that was a good sign.
The hour we waited actually passed pretty quickly and I arrived at The Butterfly Place at 2:30 instead of 1:30.
The rules are simple, No Touch, No Talk, No Eye Contact..no wait, that’ the Dog Whisperer but it was similar. To protect the fragile inmates there was a no touch policy. If you are caught trying to attract a butterfly to your hands you are asked to leave.
It’s smaller than the Magic Wings venue in Deerfield but the principle is the same. There’s a coi pond, paths through greenery and little benches. Butterflies are everywhere. This is a family owned business so I don’t know if the staff was family or “hired help” but they were very nice and quite knowledgeable. They laughed when I told them I wanted to take pictures (Turns out so did everyone else) and challenged me to get a picture of one of the blue butterflies showing the blue. When they land they close their wings and look like a drab , brown butterfly.
They were the challenge, for sure. When they lit on the ground they did spread their wings…for a second and in spite of trying forever I couldn’t time it right so imagine my surprise when one landed right next to me and spread its wings as if to say “take it now, you only have one chance.”
Although we finally had a pleasant day outside, it was 80+ and humid inside. Just the temps the butterflies love.
You’ve already seen my favorite pictures on Wordless Wednesday.
Like Magic Wings, there were little Quail running every where. You had to be careful not to step on the tiny birds. The attendant called them Chinese Painted Quail.
Don’t let the small size fool you. They are fully mature. More than one pair were intent on making little quail. I got a chuckle when I heard a small voice ask his mother “What’s Mating?”.
I also spotted a pretty little bird. I couldn’t place it but something was tugging at the corner of my mind so I asked. It’s a Zebra Finch. I must have seen them at a pet store as they are domestic birds. She said there are 3 but the most I saw at once were 2 and I couldn’t tell them apart.
Butterfly wings closes at 5pm so about 4:30 I picked up the camera and headed home. The timing would put me right in rush hour traffic but it was worth it. It was a great way to spend an afternoon.
Perishing Puffins
Ah Puffins, those cute, colorful and comical sea birds , full of character and playfully known as “sea parrots” or even “clowns of the sea”.
I chased them last year in Maine on 2 different occasions. It was an educational experience. Before Maine my exposure to these funny little birds had been National Geographic photos, close ups of the colorful beaks loaded with herring or eels.
With their bright colored beak, white breast and black back, these birds look like a cross between a parrot and a penguin. They are a major tourist attraction since being brought back to the northern Maine Islands about 40 years ago.
I was surprised about how small they are. It makes getting an iconic photo like Nat Geo’s almost impossible. You need access to the islands, not a rolling deck on a tour boat. You need a large telephoto lens and a tripod but I don’t think you need a lot of luck. I saw many puffins and many had the fish hanging from their beaks but they were tiny and distance made capturing that “money shot” a long shot.
Fast forward to this year and a cruise to Alaska. On the maps showing our cruise route were places marked with Puffins. I was hoping that I’d get to see some of the little birds here, maybe sitting on an iceberg or two but if any were in the area they got by without fanfare and I missed them.
Puffins have been on my mind lately. I still want to find a way to get that special photo. The Mass Audubon Society (of which I am a member) had an overnight excursion with special access to the Puffin Colony but the cost was too rich for me at the moment so I let the idea pass so it was with some concern that I watched a news clip today on the state of the Puffins in Maine.
According to the release young puffins died at an alarming rate last season because of a shortage of herring, leaving adults to try to feed them another type of fish that was too big to swallow. Some chicks died surrounded by piles of uneaten fish.
I didn’t hear any of this last year. Maybe it wasn’t shared with the tourists as we tried to line up the perfect shot.
This summer, the chicks are getting plenty of hake and herring, said Steve Kress, director of the National Audubon Society’s seabird restoration program and professor at Cornell University but the report went on to say that researchers are still concerned because occupancy rates in the nest burrows are down this year. Puffins were nearly wiped out in Maine about a century ago. Reintroduction was begun only about 40 years ago.
Puffins raise only 1 chick, known as a Puffling, in an underground burrow. Puffins are less adaptable than many other seabirds so the health of a puffin colony is a good indication of the health of the sea and certain fish stocks.
I hope the colonies recover fully and continue to grow. After all, like so many tourists to Maine, I haven’t got my perfect photo yet!
(The wonderful close ups came from the web. I can’t offer credit for them as the photographer wasn’t Identified nor were the photos watermarked. But these are exactly what I want to take!)