Found in the Fells – March
By March, plants, animals and human visitors in
the Fells
are all getting antsy for spring,
and
frustrated by
the distinct possibility of more snow at any time in the month. Hope is
on the
way however as spring officially begins this month and early signs of
spring
are everywhere. Starting in 2007 our clocks went onto summer-time
on March 11th, three weeks earlier than before. This will make it
darker in the early morning for a while, for those of you who like to
walk in the Fells then. But now of course there is more light in the
evenings.
Even in February buds on several woody plants were beginning to fill out. By March this is clearly evident, for example on blueberry and huckleberry bushes. And the evergreen ground-plants, if they've had a decent covering of snow during the coldest days of the winter to avoid damage, are now developing their buds. Bearberry, for example, is filling out its flower buds ready for blooming in late April or early May. The conical green shoots of Skunk Cabbage can also be seen at the water's edge of streams or in swampy areas where water is flowing through. If just a little warm weather comes it can produce its strange flowers by late March. Skunk Cabbage is the first non-woody plant to bloom in these parts, but ‘bloom’ hardly seems the right word for a flower that would not win a beauty contest, made worse with the skunk-like smell if the plant is crushed. The flowering-body, called the spadix, looks to me like a Faberge egg sitting in its little housing called the spathe. See photo below. In recent years it has been flowering as early as mid-March. It is related to and has the same structure as an arum lily. The bad smell and look even of rotting meat attracts flies, some of the few pollinators around so early in spring . Later, very large bright green leaves develop.
March 20th or 21st marks the spring
equinox with the sun rising exactly in the east and setting exactly in the
west. The
literal equinox – i.e. when the length of
day and night are
exactly the same – occurs three days earlier in this area when
the sun rises at
But not all activity is during the day. Towards the end of March, on reasonably mild, damp nights, spotted salamanders gather at vernal pools in the Fells to congregate and inseminate. Go to the main Fells website at www.fells.org to sign up for the special guided night observing of this extraordinary phenomenon led by Hue Holley.
Here is Hue's report from 2004: "About 20 of
us welcomed spring by attending the Friends' Salamander Migration
Program. After checking for over a week the spotted salamanders did not
disappoint, appearing at their ancestral pool to mate and provide a new
generation for future amazement.
On March 28, 2005, on a very rainy night, it was my joy to be part of a small group led by Hue Holley to a pool in the Fells. We saw about 20 salamanders. They were bigger than I expected - six to eight inches long - and I was struck by their determination to get to the pool, up over rocks and slithering over ice. Here are a couple who made it.
Spotted Salamander Ambystoma maculatum 3-28-05
And their fellow amphibians, the Spring Peeper frogs and Wood Frogs, the latter sounding like ducks, are also active towards the end of March in the pools and swampy areas in the Fellls. And of course song bids are coming back.
Wild Turkeys are also about in the Fells this time of year - their mating season. The winter of early 2006 was relatively mild and on March 11th, when the temperature rose to 59 degrees, I discovered some skunk cabbage already in flower near Long Pond - the earliest I have seen this 'first native plant to bloom' blooming in the Fells.
