In case of insect bites, almost any mild alkaline substance helps to relieve the pain, since the toxic agent is acid. We use household ammonia applied to the bite. A paste of sodium bicarbonate, common cooking soda, often helps. As a boy I used a dab of mud on a bee or wasp sting and sometimes still do. For years, oil of citronella was believed to be the best repellent, but now there are others that seem to be more effective. For a time we used several of them that came in stick form, like camphor ice, but now prefer the spray-on type. But even among those we find some to be of little use, even though they work for other people. I suspect that the individual chemistry has something to do with this. I know that when I am sweaty I seem to be the special target of deer flies and mosquitoes, and at such times none of the repellents does much good.
There still remains the matter of fish and turtles. Any fish of the bass family can inflict minor wounds with the spines on the dorsal fins if you handle them carelessly. I have never known these punctures to be more than momentarily painful. All the catfishes have viciously sharp spines on the pectoral and dorsal fins. They can cause painful punctures in the careless hand, and sometimes these wounds become inflamed and fester. I doubt that there is any poison on the spines, but they can and probably do carry mud and muck into the wound. Ordinary care in handling catfish will avoid such sometimes painful but really minor injuries.
The only dangerous turtle is the snapper, and only an idiot would give a snapping turtle a chance to grab a finger. A big snapper could sever a man’s finger in one bite. I have known a ten-pound snapper to bite a fishhook in two. On the few occasions when I have caught a snapper on my line while fishing I have cut the line above the hook and let it go, a procedure I recommend to anyone who isn’t interested in eating turtle—or being wounded by one. If you want the turtle to eat, shoot it in the head or kill it somehow and certainly before you get your hand close enough for the snapper to reach with those steel-trap jaws.
One final entry and we have finished with the hazards. Under certain conditions, be wary of birds. Birds with young in their nests, particularly. Catbirds, robins, blue jays, even barn swallows, sometimes become boldly truculent in their zeal as parents. Usually they do nothing more than scream repeated warnings when a person approaches the nest where the fledglings are almost ready to fly, but now and then they will attack. Such attacks can be frightening. A bird swooping at a person’s face with angry beak and claws is nothing to be laughed at, and if both parents attack at once it is wise to retreat with an arm up protecting one’s eyes.
Last Summer a pair of barn swallows nesting in my garage took offense at my wife and me even when we went to our rural mailbox fifty yards from the garage. They dive-bombed us angrily and one day attacked my wife so vigorously that, blinded by their swooping at her face, she fell and was painfully hurt. When I went to her rescue they attacked me the same way. I later went out with an umbrella, and when they returned to the attack I zoomed it open in their faces. That defense eventually was effective. The next afternoon the fledglings were out and flying and the parents’ truculence ended. I recommend the umbrella treatment for any such unfriendly birds.
Adventurous ornithologists who have tried to examine or photograph the nests of hawks and eagles, especially when they have eggs or young, tell of vigorous attacks by the sharp-taloned parents. Such attacks, however, were invited by the intruders themselves. Most of us never get into such a position, and I have never known of hawks or eagles attacking anyone who left their nests alone.
Screech owls and great horned owls have been known to attack a person in the woods at dusk. They do it only on rare occasions. The screech owl is no bigger than the blue jay and can do little damage, but the great horned owl is a big bird and can inflict painful scratches. I suspect that owl attacks are mistakes, that the owls mistake the person for an animal that they can frighten off. But as I said, such attacks are rare; and they usually result in nothing worse than a few scratches.
So there are the hazards, all that I can think of. None of them is critical except snakebite and ivy poisoning. And for every person who even sees a poisonous snake, I will guess that 10,000 get ivy poisoning. Learn to recognize and avoid poison ivy and you will be as safe in the country as in any city apartment.
Chapter 14
Month by Month: What to Look for and When
Everything has its season, but no season is without color and life, wonder and surprise. He who would know the world of which he is a part must know the way the January wind shapes a snowdrift as well as the ecstasy with which an oriole greets the June dawn.
THE MARCH OF THE seasons is fairly constant, not day by day but almost week by week. Winter may be what we call late or Spring may be early, but it is my experience that the seasons themselves tend to even out. I have kept a daily journal for twenty years, and when I go back and compare dates I usually find that two years out of three the first anemones, say, are in bloom the first week in April. Occasionally they appear a week or ten days earlier than that or a week later, but those years are exceptions. And the height of color in the trees comes, in my part of New England, four years out of five, some time during the week of October 12—though I admit it is hard to pick one particular day when the color is more magnificent than it was two days earlier or two days later; it depends on the sky as well as the trees. And, regardless of the actual date, there are certain seasonal matters that can be timed by each other. For instance, when the first migrant red-wing blackbirds appear I can begin to look for pussy willows, and when the pussy willows are in sight I watch for the returning robins. When the robins are here I listen for the call of the Spring peepers.
Such relationships, and the whole sequence of events outdoors, hold true almost everywhere. Therefore, a timetable for my own valley should be valid, within reasonable limits, for most of the Northeast if one makes a simple correction for latitude and elevation.
Spring moves northward at approximately sixteen miles a day or, roughly, a hundred miles a week. This applies, however, only on level ground. When one begins to climb, the northward pace slackens, since Spring moves uphill only about one hundred feet a day. To take an example, I live approximately a hundred miles north of New York City. If forsythia begins to bloom along Riverside Drive in New York City on April 1, it would bloom here on April 7 or 8—if there were no difference in altitude. But New York is at sea level, and my valley has an altitude of almost 800 feet. That adds another eight days to the lag, so if forsythia blooms in New York City on April 1, it probably won’t bloom here until around April 15.
A friend of mine in the Philadelphia area reports that his records of Spring events outdoors show about three weeks’ head start over my records here. That is about right, by the formula—200 miles, north to south, and about 800 feet difference in altitude. Washington, D.C., would be another week ahead of Philadelphia. Northward, another friend in central Vermont, just about a hundred miles from here, reports that Spring is normally a week behind its schedule here. Again, that conforms to the formula, since his area is about the same altitude as mine. There are variations because of local conditions, of course. Places near the seashore are somewhat warmer than those inland, hence somewhat earlier; and places on major lakes are also somewhat warmer than their latitude might imply. But that hundred miles a week, hundred feet of altitude a day, can be taken as a reasonably accurate guide.
In the Fall, of course, the whole process is reversed, since Autumn moves southward. However, Autumn moves south at just about the same rate that Spring moves north.
The timetable in this chapter, then, is set down in terms of my own valley’s natural happenings. If a reader lives 300 miles south of here—calculate from the northern boundary of Connecticut, which is only a mile or so from my house-then what is happening here in the Spring probably will be happening in the reader’s area at least three weeks earlier. If the reader lives at or near sea level, another week must be added to account for the 800 feet difference in altitude, making almo
st a month’s difference. If I find anemones in bloom here the first week in April, that reader probably will find them the first week in March. And the reverse will be true in the Autumn; what happens here in September will happen there in October. Midsummer and Midwinter dates, however, will be approximately the same.
The events mentioned in the timetable are only a sampling of what one may expect, month by month. They are highlights, drawn from my own journals, and those I have included are here because they seem to be typical and I have experienced them year after year. There are many exceptions even to these typical incidents. It is the exceptions that make the outdoors everlastingly interesting. My friend in Pennsylvania, for example, once found trailing arbutus in bloom on February 22, though the usual date is more than a month later. And one year I saw migrant bluebirds here in the valley on February 24, though March 25 is early for them normally.
I have begun the timetable with March, which long ago was considered the year’s first month because it marked the turn from Winter toward Spring. To me it is the beginning of the natural year.
March
Maple syrup time. Some years the sap begins to rise in February, but more often it waits for March. It flows best when days are mild, in the 40’s and 50’s, and nights are still frosty. It may start in a warm spell, stop if the days turn cold, then start again. Old-time sugarmen think snow on the ground helps. I know when the sap flow starts by watching the squirrels. They seem to know instinctively, go into the maples, nip off a few twigs, and lap the sap as it oozes. Chickadees also watch the squirrels and drink at the “taps” when the squirrels are away.
Geese sometimes fly north now. They fly high and their gabble is like the distant barking of small dogs. If they fly in fairly regular V’s they usually are Canada geese; if in loose, wavery Vs or long, wavy lines they more likely are snow geese. Snow geese gather by the thousands and are a famous sight, Spring and Fall, at Fortescue, New Jersey, and Cap Tourments, Quebec.
Mergansers appear on my river, both the American and the hooded mergansers. The males, with lots of snowy white on them, are eye-catching; their heads are green, their beaks orange-red. The females are drab in grays and browns with only a little white on their sides. Soon after the mergansers come the ducks, black ducks first, then wood ducks, occasionally mallards.
Skunk cabbage blooms in the bogs; the flower has a carrion odor. Now and then someone finds hepatica in bloom, but I never find them till April. In a very early Spring, anemones may bloom in March; I look for them in damp, leafmoldy places at the edge of the woods.
Birch catkins fatten around the time of the Equinox. And pussy willows, the male catkins on the willow, appear. Catkins on the aspens and poplars burst bud and begin to grow. The tiny catkins on alders perk up, show new life.
Red-osier dogwood stems glow blood-red. Willow stems and withes turn lively amber. Grass shows new, fresh green on south slopes and beside the brooks. In sun and shelter near my house the dandelions send up tentative new leaves.
The lively green of celandine leaves appears at the roadside, sometimes at the edge of melting snow. Giant mullein shows new life. I have seen new green in these mulleins during a mild spell in February. But new growth waits for April.
In the vegetable garden our chives begin to show new shoots. We dig parsnips now, as soon as the ground thaws enough. In the flower garden we watch for crocuses, daffodils, squills, hyacinths. In favored years the crocuses bloom in March. Lilac buds often look as though they would pop into leaf next week, but they won’t for another month.
Woodchucks emerge from hibernation. Gray squirrels bear their young. Sometimes the first migrant robins and red-wing blackbirds arrive.
April
Spring peepers emerge and begin to make late afternoon and evening ring with their calls. I expect to hear them when daytime temperature reaches 50° and stays there for a few days. Before the month is out the bog water will be full of frog eggs and toad eggs.
By April’s second week I watch for the first flickers. And for kingfishers over the river. Barn swallows usually arrive the week of April 20 and start repairing their nest in my garage. Towhees are very busy, very eye-catching, in the dead leaves in the flower garden. Woodpeckers signal each other in the woods, tapping out messages on dead limbs. The big pileated woodpeckers yawk and hammer at dead trees and telephone poles. They are big as crows.
Warblers begin to arrive by the third week. They are busy in the trees, twittering rather than singing. The big warbler migration here comes at the end of the month and laps over into May. Mornings now are loud with the songs of robins, Baltimore orioles, scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks. Song sparrows and whitethroats are specially vocal now.
Maples bloom, swamp maples first with their crimson flowers, sugar maples soon after with their yellow-green. By the end of the month the birches show tiny leaves, make the woods look green-misty. For a few weeks the woods and woodlands will be rich with pastel shades of young leaves, many shades of green, yellow, and pink.
First violets bloom. Jack-in-the-pulpit shoots up, opens its spathe and leaves. Bloodroot opens big, white, waxen petals beside old walls and in the edge of the woodland. Trilliums and dogtooth violets bloom nearby. Wild ginger sends up its leaves, will bloom next month.
We go to the damp places for marsh marigolds and have to hurry before they are in bloom. We also pick wild cresses, spring cress, bitter cress, yellow rocket, for cooked Spring greens.
Early saxifrage is in bloom. Sometimes I find wild strawberries in bloom in the pasture now, but more often in May. Trailing arbutus often blooms in April. I look for first leaves of wild columbine in rocky places. First fern fiddleheads pop up. Sometimes, but not often, I find baneberry in bloom now. A few bluets come to flower in April, millions of them in May. Both rue and wood anemone come to blossom now. I always find hepatica in bloom in April, on rocky ledges. In the woods I sometimes find partridgeberry’s small twin white blossoms. I have found partridgeberry in bloom as late as the last week in June.
Bees are out and hungrily busy.
Baby chipmunks are born now, in the dens, but won’t be out for another month. By then they will be almost as big as their parents. That’s why I never see what looks like a baby chipmunk. Young muskrats are born in April but won’t be weaned and out till late May. Gray squirrels are born now, stay in the nest till June. Red squirrels mate now. Deer drop fawns. Young does have only one fawn, older does two, rarely three. Young skunks are born now but stay in the den till late May. Raccoon kits are born now or in early May but don’t forage with their mothers till late June.
Lilies of the valley open leaf, show buds. Peonies send up crimson shoots. Shirley poppies, self-sown, are up. Lupines and delphinium send up leaves. Daffodils bloom, and early tulips.
First cattail shoots appear in the bog, looking like iris. Wild iris shoots appear, looking like dark cattail leaves. Water snakes are out but still sluggish. First turtles appear, also sluggish. Toads sing the shrill, high-pitched mating trill, and pickerel frogs trill in the twilight. Peepers have finished their nightly choruses by the end of April, except a few loners who always are late waking up from the Winter sleep.
Fishing is good on lake and river, and worms are plentiful in the garden soil. It’s still too early to plant anything in the garden except peas, onions maybe, some early lettuce if one is impatient, and radishes.
May
A green world. Pasture grass is tall enough for grazing. First buttercups are in bloom. Maples are in leaf and there is shade again. Poplars and aspens and birches begin to whisper, their leaves full size. Catkins on the big cottonwood are like long, reddish-brown caterpillars, millions of them. Willows shed catkins, turn green with leaf. All in May’s first week.
Lilacs open bud, leaves purple-tipped as though stained by the color of the tight cluster of pinhead-size flower buds. Tulips in full flower. Grape hyacinths out and host to swarming bees. Daffodils in the flower garden are through by mid-May but kee
p blooming where naturalized on the riverbank, probably because they were planted deeper there.
In the woods, Canada Mayflower blooms with elusive sweetness. Moccasin flowers are out in damp, woodsy places, and a few yellow lady-slippers in a secret place. Showy lady-slipper won’t be out till early June. May apples, at the edge of the woods, hide their white blossoms under their big leaves. Foamflowers are proud in fluffs of white. Cranes-bill (wild geranium) is in full flower beside the brook. Wild columbines in bloom on sunny ledges. Mountain laurel and pinkster flower, New England’s wild azalea, will be in bloom before May’s end.
Solomon’s-seal and false spikenard are in bloom. So are Dutchman’s-breeches and their modest cousins, squirrel corn. Wood sorrel (oxalis) opens its tiny yellow flowers, looking something like yellow strawberry flowers. Wild strawberries, real ones, begin to drop first white petals and set fruit to ripen the first week in June. Robin’s plantain, looking something like low, pinkish-white asters, blooms at the roadside. So does red clover and white. Blue-eyed grass opens tiny yellow-eyed blue stars in the tall grass. Milkweed shoots up, a particularly clean-looking yellow-green.