Keep Calm and Bird On: February 2024
February 1, 2024
“If you don’t look, you don’t see. You have to go and look.”
-Edith Andrews
It might seem strange to look for signs of spring when we have barely had a taste of winter. The dull, dim, damp days of February hardly seem conducive to winter sports. Other than cross-country…slogging, why go out at all? With proper clothing, exercise in any weather is invigorating. So, what do we look for? Signs of spring are subtle, but they are there.
We used to think of the return of Red-winged Blackbirds, always expected on February 22, as the first sign of Spring. But now we see them year-round, particularly scarfing up seed at our feeders. Almost all are young males, with just a few adult males scattered among them. But there are other things to watch for: swelling buds of swamp azalea, leaf bracts on blackberry vines, and perhaps most heart-warming of all, Red-tailed Hawks pairing up.
At first you might see one or the other sitting alone on a branch. As in many raptors, the female is the larger of the two. But soon, another may be seen nearby, checking things out. Established pairs usually remain bonded, and often re-use old nests. Both birds will do an aerial display, often circling in updrafts on a fine day. Both collect sticks and twigs and bring them to the chosen nest site, but the female does more shaping of the interior. It may take as few as three to as many as five weeks before the first eggs are laid. They average two to three eggs, sometimes as many as four. Both parents incubate, but as hatching and nestling stages approach, the male does more food collection and the female more brooding of eggs and young.
Monitoring an active nest is a great way to welcome Spring. And by the time the young hatch and start begging, there are even more signs to watch for.
Photo by Tom Griswold
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I have discussed the process and importance of the proper cleaning and conservation of historic stone monuments – cemetery stones – several times before in this blog. This year’s Mitchell House intern, Talia, was also (happily) last year’s intern and due to her college graduation in early June, she missed the annual workshop I have been running concerning the proper care and cleaning of stone monuments. A stone monument enthusiast, I promised Talia we would clean a stone before she left this season. Happily, we did on September 26. We returned together to clean the stone of Charlotte Burdett, Captain of Barzillai Burdett, one of my favorites. I had come across his stone accidentally when prepping to clean another stone for the workshop in June. (I test stones about a month before I clean them to make sure the cleaner will be okay and there are not any issues with it among other things I check for.) I tested the two Burdett stones and after the workshop was over, I remained in the now fairly hard rain showers to clean his stone. At that point, I was sopping wet and I told Charlotte I would return. I always feel badly when I have to return months, or a year, later to complete the stones in a lot. We made fast work of Charlotte’s stone – a little under an hour but the Burdetts’ stones are relatively small and simple. It was also a beautiful day to complete the work. The remainder of this blog will be a bit long because I wanted to share some information on Captain Burdett. He and Charlotte had no children and I have long loved their simple, small gambrel house on North Liberty (not likely a gambrel when they inhabited it). So here we go. In the history of catboats on the island, the Dauntless is my favorite catboat, likely because the owner/captain is a Nantucket “rockstar” of mine. His small gambrel roofed house still stands along North Liberty – a favorite house of mine before I learned a “rock star” inhabited it! The Dauntless was sometimes referred to as the “star boat” because a large red star was sewn on her sail. Built and captained by boatbuilder, Captain Barzillai Burdett, the Dauntless took visitors from the wharves out to the bathing beaches and on clambakes and fishing excursions, beginning in the early 1870s. Two logs of the Dauntless attest to her being a busy boat, enjoyed not only by the passengers, but by her crew as well. The logs live at the Research Library at the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA). At least one was kept by Benjamin Sharp. When he was young, he served aboard the Dauntless with Captain Burdett. Sharp would become a revered island resident. Born in 1858, Dr. Sharp, a zoologist, was a founder of the Nantucket Cottage Hospital, served as Nantucket’s representative in the state legislature, and was an avid sailor and fisherman. In 1904, with Henry W. Fowler, he wrote T he Fishes of Nantucket . Times spent with Captain Burdett must have greatly influenced Sharp. One of the logs dates from July 2 through August 28, 1873, and is a daily record of fishing parties and clambakes the Dauntless provided. The log also includes the names of passengers and where they came from, as well as messages they left for Captain Burdett. Included in the log is this poem: When you go to a clambake, Plenty of chickens you should take, As then you have a second dish For those who do not like shell-fish, For all should indulge, as best they might, “The keen demands of appetite.” The log also has lots of wonderful, comical illustrations − largely drawn by Sharp. Burdett also built whaleboats during the heyday of whaling on the island. Fishing was also his economic mainstay. When summer was over, he would use the Dauntless to fish as many other catboat owners did. The tourist trade had come second to fishing and whaling on the island but, in many cases, may have made fishing secondary in income once tourism took off on island and became much more lucrative. In 1893, artist Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin (a distant cousin of Maria Mitchell’s and one of her students at Vassar), painted a lovely double portrait of Burdett and Benjamin Pease in Burdett’s shack on Old North Wharf called “A Tale of the Sea (Captain Burdett In His Boathouse).” Today, it is in the collection of the NHA. PLEASE NOTE: ONE SHOULD NEVER CLEAN THE STONES IN A CEMETERY, WHETHER THEY ARE YOUR FAMILY’S OR NOT, WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE CEMETERY SEXTANT AND HAVING BEEN TRAINED TO PROPERLY CLEAN A STONE. There are quite a few TikToks and other social media posts and people are doing the work incorrectly and damaging and further eroding the stones. JNLF
1854, Oct. 23. Yesterday I was again reminded of the remark which Mrs. Stowe makes about the variety of occupations which an American woman pursues. She says it is this, added to the cares and anxieties which keep them so much behind the daughters of England in personal beauty. And today, I was amused at reading that one of her party objected to the introduction of wood floors in American housekeeping, because she could seem to see herself down on her knees, doing the waxing. Throughout Mrs. Stowe’s book there is an openness which I like, no pretense in affectation, religious cant but it is honest habit and not affectation. While this was written many years before, Maria Mitchell and Harriet Beecher Stowe must certainly have been at least acquaintances as they shared things in common. While Beecher Stowe was not a member of the Association for the Advancement of Women, as Maria was (a founder and a term as president), her sister was actively engaged in several of the organizations that Maria was a part of and there must have been some cross-pollination there. Harriet Beecher Stowe, while working towards women’s rights, focused on slaves’ rights and was not an active member of many of the women’s organizations that her sister was a part of. Maria and Harriet shared friends and acquaintances in common and Mitchell made sure that Uncle Tom’s Cabin quickly appeared on the shelf of the Nantucket Atheneum when it was first published. JNLF
It used to be that whatever the deer or bunnies ate at my home garden, I could plant with relief in Town in the Mitchell House garden. But, over the years, it has become more difficult as we have a plethora of bunnies – multiple complaints made here in this blog – and deer that are now coming into Town year round. They have resorted, in winter, to eating ivy and while ivy is considered invasive, it has been a long-time, reliable ground cover in Town – as in a hundred or more years. Now, we have voles – which do have cycles where their population booms for a year – or two – but we have not had them in the MMA gardens at least in my memory. Now, we do and I worry about them devastating the garden in front of the Observatory which is a large, native species garden we have worked on for many years. I know climate change is definitely playing a role – it’s affecting the birth cycles of voles and allowing them to have potentially more broods. Its also potentially affecting some of their predators that may not be as prevalent and thus fewer voles are being eaten. In any case, we have tunnels galore, which is why I was happy to have ONE blossom on the heirloom morning glories I plant for Mitchell House every spring. Out of 500 or more seeds – I got one lonely blossom! The voles are attacking my own personal garden – the last two summers – and I have lost many of the mainstay lilies and perennials that have been there for forty years – or they have shrunken due to their root systems being undermined and eaten. Roses are failing too. So if anyone has better ideas then solar hummers, live trap, kill trap, or Juicy Fruit gum – let me know – poisons not allowed! JNLF Update: Got four more blossoms - but still!