Wildlife in the Greystone

This little bird is a Carolina Wren. You may not have seen this sparrow-sized bird, but you probably have heard its very loud "teakettle, teakettle, teakettle" call. Carolina wrens are poster children for global warming. These little guys don't migrate, don't come to bird feeers and are susceptible to cold weather yet they have been expanding their range north through New England for more than a century. Scouts reached Connecticut in 1878 and these wrens first nested there in 1895. Carolinas are almost exclusively insect eaters and thrive in low, brushy undergrowth (aka my backyard). I've had a nesting pair in my yard for several years. All the guides note massive die offs of Carolinas in severe winters. You may have noticed a little snow on the roof this past winter so I did not hold out much hope for my little residents until I heard the familar teakettle call a few days ago. Is this one lucky bird or despite the snow is the world warming up? Republicans will be telling you, now that the ink is dry on the President's birth certificate, that my yard is just particularly buggy and if you just pretend hard enough global warming will just go away. They may be right about the bugs in my yard-another Climategate may be in the works!

By the way, Mr. Trump the constitution says "natural born citizen." That thing on your head seems to point to "unnatural" origins in my book.

What do Carolina wrens have to do with Greystone Way As we saw the other day,  trees and bushes have grown in around this subdivision since its start in the 1980s. Carolina wrens are the kind of birds who probably have benefited from this process. Backyard shrubbery is a boon for them, and they are not shy around people and our stuff. Carolina wrens have also developed strategies to survive on the edge-the line between forest and field. The problem of edges is the biggest problem for suburban subdivisions. An edge is any place a piece of forest touches an open space-a road, a trail with open canopy, a backyard. Theoretically, one acre lots create lots of edges. Take a look again at Greystone Way.

Compare 1855.

Not so different actually, but the laws of geometry suggest that one big open space has fewer edges than a convoluted squiggly shape (Rhode Island has a gigantic coast line for instance). For a Carolina Wren, the area surrounded by Greystone Way, Allen and Bay Roads would like paradise-like all wrens they have delusions of grandeur, and each pair defends a territory of about 10 acres from other wrens. What about other animals however? And would a smart growth development do any better?

We could look at raccoons, but they are they are the typical suburban predator easily adapted to living close to humans and actually enjoying the patches of woods and open space typical of subdivisions. Let's look instead at the fisher, Massachusetts largest member of the weasel family.

You may remember that during the height of the "big cat" scare back in 1996 or 1997, a fisher got into the nearly completed Olmted/Richardson school and couldn't find its way out. Being one big weasel with a nasty disposition, it then proceeded to tear through walls to make its escape. Back then no one had heard about fishers, but just as Carolina Wrens were moving up from the south Fishers were moving down from the north following the increasing acres of forest. Fishers, it was thought, require extensive acres of forest with relatively mature trees and continuous canopy. Think of canopy as the edge of the third dimension-if it is continuous arboreal animals like fishers can travel extensively from tree to tree.

This all fit in nicely with initial observations-fishers were first known to den at Wheaton Farm, our largest conservation area, but we should have known something was up when that fisher decided to go to school. Today, fishers have been reported in backyards off Spooner Street, one of the more densely populated areas in town, and at Sheep Pasture where they killed two ducks in 2010.  Unlike raccoons, fishers also have a large hunting territory ranging up to 7 square miles. Since fishers are known to den in conservation areas around Greystone Way, its highly likely this subdivision is part of the hunting ground of one or more fishers. Looking again at the map, one can see that any ambitious fisher who wants to go to school can cross Greystone Way without a foot touching the ground except to cross streets. Once across Bay Road, it's through the Town Forest and Kippy Grant Conservation area all the way to the school complex. However, for fishers roads are a real problem and the "typical" subdivision (outside Easton?) is full of roads. Even in northern Maine getting hit by a car was the third leading cause of death for radio collared fishers in a study, and I've seen at least one fisher as road kill in Easton. Still, I think we can conclude that for a town with a population density approaching 1,000 per square mile the mix of conservation land and "suburban sprawl" has proven attractive to fishers, once a symbol of the New England wilderness.

Very soon, I'd like to take a look at a cluster development and compare it to Greystone Way and also analyze the proposed 40R development along the Queset to see if "smart growth" offers the same wildlife benefits as developments of the past generation. To be fair, we'll also need to look at a large scale map of Easton to examine the overall pattern of development.

Tomorrow, however, some lighter fare including a restaurant and cookbook review.