In My Element

I just got back from a hike at Ames Nowell State Park. It is a little too suburbanized to be a great wildlife place, but it’s not all that bad either. As I was walking down the boardwalk, I was asked by a mother of a couple of kids if there were any poisonous snakes in the area. I seem to get those kinds of questions because I am often wearing a dumb-looking hat, have binoculars, and I tend to walk slowly while looking around. Anyway, there are two poisonous species of snake in Massachusetts but I have only actually seen the copperhead and that was five years ago at the South River Sate forest. He was not attacking me. They are timid snakes and I told the woman that. I think they may be an endangered species in the state. I’ll bet the kids would love to see a hognose snake. They’re around in decent numbers. They are pretty scary-looking with a thick body and neck, but they are non-poisonous and relatively docile.     

I spotted a pileated woodpecker, which are pretty cool birds. They seem almost too big to be woodpeckers. I’ve always thought that they look kind of prehistoric. They may be the best flyers under the forest canopy of any native bird. On the wing, they speedily and expertly weave between the trees. I saw a belted kingfisher in the park also. That’s not an everyday sighting. He was flying over Cleveland Pond.

A few years ago I was at Ames Nowell walking along, watching what I thought was an osprey flying overhead. I apparently forgot that I was on an elevated boardwalk because I walked right off of it and fell pretty much face-first into the mud about a foot or so below the boardwalk. I was uninjured (except for my dignity) but my binoculars were knocked out of whack and I ended up buying a new pair. Every time I walked by that place on the boardwalk I shake my head at the klutziness of it. On a positive note; I have not walked off a boardwalk since; accidentally, that is.           

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