Our Weymouth High School drifter has given us quite a show as it has started its fall 2015 journey. It completed four generally oval-shaped rotations east of Hull, ducking into the mouth of Boston Harbor, before deciding to take a run between Little Brewster Island and Shag Rocks. From there it turned eastward for […]
So, maybe we’re reaching here, but numbers are numbers, right? Last year when we did our leaf measurement survey (measuring leaves early and late in the growing season, capturing rate of change, perhaps over the long haul telling the story of global climate change) we found that the average American beech tree leaf was 57 […]
Onto wave 2! This fall, we will be building five more drifters with area school kids thanks to support from Battelle, and as you can see, we’ve already started. During the third week of September, we constructed one in Hull High School with Sheila Blair’s Ecology of Hull class. The class of 2016 outdid themselves […]
Two drifters deployed by the Science Center this year have now come ashore. The first, deployed by Weymouth High School students, lasted all of six days before striking the coast of Marblehead (vertical arrow, on the left). It has since been rebuilt by our summer campers and redeployed (horizontal arrow, on the right). At last […]
Really, it’s leafing out, but who’s counting. In 2014 the Science Center joined the Manomet Center for Conservation Science’s climate change studies by tracking the rate of change in the leafing out of trees on the property. We selected two trees of different species (Beech and Red Maple), chose five branches and measured the width […]
Its the most amazing thing…our chickens have started receiving mail. We walked outside one day and they had a mailbox nailed to the side of their coop. We’re not sure who has the hammering talent – whether it’s Nugget or Mama or Periwinkle – but here we are. Apparently, if you want to send them […]
Our Birds and Breakfast program ran this morning to the tune of 47 species! Spring migration is well underway. Highlights included visuals on singing Ovenbirds (several of them, actually), a close-up view of a Northern Parula, a singing Orchard Oriole on Jacobs Island, a Wood Thrush singing one note at a time and a Winter […]
For about a decade now, Wompatuck State Park has been the place to be to see a Pileated Woodpecker on the South Shore. It was always a matter of simple math as to why they were not here. Big woodpeckers need big trees. For the last 140 years or so, the South Shore has been […]
First graders found these two this morning in their spring embrace, not quite understanding what it was all about, which was fine. That will come later. But for those of you paying attention now, here’s the story. American Toads fertilize externally. What we see here – called amplexus – is the embrace that makes that […]
We took advantage of a beautiful Wednesday morning for our first Birds and Breakfast walk on the trails of the Science Center and Jacobs Pond. And what a day it was! We found that the Mute Swans have returned to Jacobs Pond. We found a Black-capped Chickadee carrying food in and out of a nest […]