Turtle Season

Cloudy and warm.

During early summer you can catch turtles out and about, looking for love.  On a five mile run a couple weeks ago, I spotted (and almost touched!) a snapping turtle that had at least a 10" diameter carapace.  All dark and spiky, the shell looked wet, as if the turtle had climbed right out of the stream a hundred yards away.  (I know I should use metric...)

Here is a picture of some painted turtles I caught sunning themselves on a branch overhanging Perfume Pond in Easthampton, MA. 

Ravenel's Stinkhorn

This is the second summer in a row that I have found these beauties outside of the Bartley Center on the Holyoke Community College campus.  Stinkhorns are named for their shape and have a characteristic odor.  Some say the odor is of rotting flesh, others say it smells like semen.  To me, it's a toss up.  They just reek!

[caption id="attachment_68" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Phallus ravenelii"][/caption]

Here is the emerging stinkhorn.  Caught in the act!!

Keepin' up with the rain

High 75.  Cloudy and rainy.

I don't complain about the weather.  This is because my father, a rugged yet sensitive guy with Canadian heritage, always told me not to complain about things you can't fix.  We all have to live with the weather, and there's nothing we can do to change it, so I might as well just move on with my life.

That said, this has been a rainy June.  So much so that I am starting to get concerned about the tomatoes and basil I am expecting in August.  And what makes me even more concerned is that my farmers are disheartened by the weather.  Farmers!

Nevertheless, between rain drops I went down to the Manhan River trails and saw a lovely belted kingfisher (female)!

Pictures

[caption id="attachment_61" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Columbines"][/caption]

And the visitors...

[caption id="attachment_62" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Racoons!"][/caption]

Revival

High 74 (expected), Cloudy!

Summer is upon us!  This past spring, I taught Zoology for the first time and loved every minute of it.  Well, not the minutes that were filled with the smells of the preserved animals.  Some of those really stunk!  But it was a pleasure to learn and teach about the animal kingdom.  I am currently teaching an Anatomy and Physiology lab (during the first summer session for the college), and I am having a great time with it.  The course is challenging for the students since it is an upper level Biology course, but the students are dedicated and strong.  Their patience, enthusiasm, and dedication never cease to surprise me.  I get to teach some real good people.

Out of doors, I have been coaxing my garden to bloom.  I had an amazing bunch of huge columbines, fragrant lilacs, vibrant tulips and fluffy apple blossoms (in no particular order).  As I look out my office window, I see the salvia, astilbes and feverfew all in bloom at the moment.  The yellow aster-like flowers of lovage are on their way. 

Although I haven't been hiking much this summer due to the rain and other distractions, I have seen some fantastic wildlife!  Cardinals and catbirds are plentiful this spring.  I saw an oriole in Monson, and a few woodpeckers around the house in Easthampton.  On my way to work yesterday, I saw a bear in Holyoke !  Maybe that's what inspired me to get back into writing this blog!  It was a young bear, and it seemed confused that it had found its way out of the woods and onto Jarvis Street.  This morning I was visited by a family of racoons.  Two young racoons pushed their way through my fence gate, followed soon after by their mother.  I got a couple  pictures of the babies, but of course my camera died when the mama came through.  She hissed at me for disturbing her morning stroll.

Pictures will be up shortly!

April Showers

High 60.  Partly sunny.

Holyoke Community College is situated on a ridge of both sedementary and igneous rocks.  On one end of campus, near the main entrance, you can see the layers of shale in which dinosaur fossils can be found.  A professor told me once that there is a large fossil on display in the courtyard, but I have yet to see this (even though I look every time I walk through).  Perhaps they were joking with me.  The other side of campus abuts a natural area with trails throughout.  The introductory Biology labs go there to study community ecology, and I go there to relax between classes.  This time of year, the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), a member of the lily family, is starting to poke up in the moister locations.  The vernal pools are full of blossoming life. 

It is time for priority registration here at HCC, and I am swamped with work.  My days are filled with students who want to get into classes-"Can I have Mondays and Fridays off and still take the 12 credits I need to be full-time?"-and out of classes-"Do I really have to take Anatomy and Physiology to be a nurse?".  I was able to escape for a little while this morning and sit in the sunshine, resisting all the while the temptation to lay down in the grass.

Spring is here

High 60.  Sunny.

What took Oregon State University so long to post the headline that Jane Lubenchenko was going to head NOAA?  That's the question on my mind this morning.  That's old news, OSU!

In Western Massachusetts the air has turned warm.  The snow has completely melted from my shaded backyard, and I am starting to see my herbs poke their green heads out of the mulch.  Spring has arrived, and after the long, hard winter we've had, it had better be here for good.  I will protest an April snow storm!  It's happened before.

I have not posted in a while because it has been a busy semester!  Truth be told, I knew it would be busy, and now that it's almost over I can't tell where the time went.  Teaching General Zoology for the first time has kept me busy day and night-creating new lectures, tests, assignments and grading these and all new lab reports! 

I've been learning so much through this experience.  Of course, I am delving into the Animal kingdom much deeper than I ever have before, and I am building so many new schemas to relate my old knowledge to the new knowledge.  I can practically feel the neurons firing new pathways!  I am also learning more about teaching, and particularly about how to teach the Animal kingdom.  I won't get into the details here, but my students have given me some very useful feedback about how they are learning.  And to top it all off, I've come up with a service-learning project for the course-salmon stocking with Mass Fish and Wildlife.  Busy, busy!

And speaking of Zoology, I have to go teach.  Today we are covering the Phylum Platyhelminthes-the Flatworms.  I'm looking forward to this one!