“It was one of those fabulously clear, cold, mid-January days in 1964 when a Massachusetts painted turtle—Chrysemys picta—first intruded into my life. … the class was on a midwinter field trip to Beaver Pond in Lincoln. I was dutifully sweeping the snow off the ice with a big pushbroom; the students were all gathered around, rigging plankton nets and bottom samplers for our assay of the pond’s life. Then, just below the crystal-clear ice, a painted turtle swam by.”

So begins one of many fascinating and illuminating anecdotes in This Broken Archipelago, an engaging natural history of the reptiles and amphibians of the Cape and islands—and hereabouts—by James D. Lazell and former Lincoln resident Martin C. Michener. (Out of print; an updated digital edition including sound recordings is available from EnjoyBirds.com.) The author explains the benign thermoclining of wintry ponds: ice atop and heaviest 39°F water on the bottom; between, a less-dense layer just warm enough for turtles to become active. So even when Farrar Pond looks like this,

there is plenty going on beneath. Other swimmers, as evidenced by the flagged holes and blanketed tents of ice-fishermen, -women and children, are also about and feeding through the chill season. With them, prey (like plankton and various arthropods), parasites (leeches) and predators (bigger fish) keep the circus turning. Torpid frogs, which unlike turtles cannot shift to an anaerobic metabolism to bury deep in isolating mud, lie on the bottom, perhaps moving about occasionally. And frogs-to-be that have not metamorphosed before lock-down remain active under the ice.

Frogs and turtles are not literally “cold-blooded”; rather, poikilothermic: able to regulate internal temperature, hence level of activity (and protection from both freezing and overheating) mainly by moving between warmer and cooler locations. While not thermostatted via metabolism and muscle (shivering) like mammals and birds, larger aquatic creatures, with insulating fat and a greater volume-to-surface-area ratio, can maintain a high body temperature even in freezing water. Tuna and sharks are examples; Lazell also provides an engaging description of the countercurrent blood-warming system used by large sea turtles and aquatic birds to conserve warmth.

This past winter was remarkable in several ways, including exceptionally high and persistent snow cover that gave voles exceptionally high and persistent access to the trunks of all sorts of woody plants. Many a treasured shrub met the spring show denuded; some resprout from rootstock; others are lost.

For the phenologically inclined, early March (sometime between Texas Independence and St. Patrick’s Days) usually brings first movement of amphibians from pond to vernal pool or other breeding haven. Most years, this occurs on the first rainy night above about 40ºF when there is open water. But when mid-February looks like this,

it is a good bet that events will be delayed. By month-end, high groundwater flowing from the banks has opened minimal windows at a few shoreline spots;

And the lily pond? Immured beneath a foot of glacially consolidated snowpack:

Even as the rising sun of early April clears ever-greater areas of open water,

the stairways to mating heaven remain in part chill and slippery (or perhaps adhesive, like licking metal in a Lake Wobegon winter):

Sunlight and scudding winds melt a hand’s-breadth portal into the higher pool;

a door that snaps shut each night:

At last pond and banks are reasonable clear,

revealing one of the rewards for winter-active turtles of the vegetarian persuasion:

While photosynthesis is slowed by ice-limited light (and perhaps CO₂) levels as well as cold, respiration metabolism (that burns through stored sugars) is slowed even more. So algae may grow freely beneath the ice.

With evening temperatures mostly above freezing—and days in the 60s—migrations are still hampered, now by drought. Though the snow came in feet and yards, it fell cold and light, and melted away to not much water. AWOL showers left banks dry, and animals that breathe through their skins do not enjoy rubbing up against dusty leaves. Only on April 8^th, a month late, do a few hardy or impatient migrants begin the long upward trek, joined within days by multitudes. unimpeded

and in some cases supported by an ice-staked leaf net, from which they telegraph presence and intentions:

In most years, frogs collect quietly from a few days to a fortnight, perhaps awaiting some signal of collective biochemistry, day length or temperature. In this belated season, as soon as net and ice roll back to clear a few square feet of open water, a wild and noisy lek begins,

enthusiastic multi-body collisions apparently undamped by the ghosts of collateral relatives haunting the bedchamber, victims more likely of deficient oxygen supply than of actual freezing:

The chaotic multitude condenses into discrete (if indiscreet) pairs

and less discriminate larger groups wherever some kind of footing is to be found:

As this exchange of vital information reaches its natural conclusion,

activity tapers down over a couple of days; most instigators head back downhill, leaving a few to watch gardens grow on the exhalations of their successful labors:

And as these soon emerge into open water, various cousins arrive to reiterate the process according to their own timetables

until again the pool is, on the surface at least

(largely) still:

 

 

 

גם זה יעבור

No thing lives forever. A joy and tragedy of human existence is that most of us will outlive most other life-forms we encounter, from bacteria to birches to bison. So even under the most placid of circumstances, we witness death—often, and too often of things we treasure.

In these parts, family and pets excepted, some of the most treasured creatures are birds. And of these, most are short-lived at best: according to our time-scale, if not their own. They may meet their ends huddled high in a frosted tree-hollow, on the ground in the jaws of a fox or claws of a cat, or blasted in mid-flight by a stooping hawk. Or in many other ways.

Beyond the feral cats and poisoned mice we loose, not to mention the effects of habitat loss and outdoor chemical over-use, a leading human-sponsored cause of bird destruction is our desire to enjoy the beauty, peace and dynamism of nature without having to step out into it: in blizzard of snow or mosquitoes, under fire from rain or hail or in twilight gloom. The problem is that bird cognition does not include cues to distinguish glazed window from cave, and the resulting collision is very often fatal, as for the late red-bellied woodpecker above, or this unfortunate bluebird:

Especially so in cooler weather, when a stunned finch can freeze before reviving:

Though rarer, attacks by birds on their own reflections can occasionally have similar consequences for both. And sometimes—as during the recent unpleasantness, when gale-force winds and heavy snowfall make larders inaccessible in sub-zero chill—it is the black horse that stalks prey like the wren posed above and (more revealingly) here:

And the mortal remains? Day or night, they rarely persist for more than a few hours. Fox, skunk, coyote, raccoon and opossum all favor dead birds, showing varying degrees of nicety in removing feathers. From above, owls and eagles accept these gifts. And while they may not see each sparrow fall, our high-hovering vulture can, at least on warm days, smell one from afar, and follow the carrion-reek upwind for a mile or more. As here, to a squirrel that apparently aspired to a sky burial:

Assessed,

with difficulty recovered,

and lunched upon at leisure:

Gruesome, but hardly egregious. More disturbing is when animals of the “Bambi” genre display carnivory, entirely normal for them, but somehow jarring to human sensibilities. Organic kitchen and table waste attracts all that hunger, without (at least when cooked and disjointed to anonymity) regard for source. Composted remains of fricasseed Gallus gallus domesticus have been seen hereabouts carried forth, to be eaten entire or more thoroughly gleaned, by not only the above-named mammals but also deer, squirrel and chipmunk. And by clade-cousins Poecile atricapillus

Passerella iliaca,

and Baeolophus bicolor:

So do do all things pass away, in this case to be reincarnated life-on-life. Sad? Perhaps, but ineluctable and entirely natural. And like all things natural, in its own way graceful and even elegant.