A list of animals and vegetation in and around the Pond

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January 15, 2022: The wee hours of a frigid moonlit morning presented a scene straight out of a Nat Geo wildlife documentary, as coyotes took down an adult deer on the ice between the Channel and Rock Island. After gorging themselves, they left the carcass to a succession of scavengers, including this bald eagle. Photo by Roberta Dell'Anno.

Wildlife

backyard_deerDeer, raccoon, beaver, mink, otter, muskrat, and red fox can be found around the Pond, in addition to the ubiquitous chipmunk and gray and red squirrels. Coyotes and "fishercats" have been observed. For the first time in living memory, a black bear spent several days ambling through yards and woodlands around the Pond in September, 2022. Reptiles include milk and garter snakes, water snakes, newts, salamanders, and several turtle species.

Among the most common birds (many of which nest in the area) are wood duck, goldfinch, purple finch, phoebe, robins, juncos, blue jays, grackles, mockingbirds, catbirds, Carolina and house wrens, cedar waxwing, red-winged blackbirds, rough-winged swallows, cardinals, Baltimore orioles, great blue herons, crows, chickadees, tufted titmice, white and red breasted nuthatches, brown creepers, hairy and downy woodpeckers, pileated woodpeckers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, cowbirds, and catbirds, along with yellow shafted flickers, song, fox, chipping, and white-throated sparrows, mallard ducks, Canada geese, belted kingfisher, red-tailed hawks, broad-wing hawks, Coopers hawk, barred owls, great-horned owls, and the occasional bald eagle.heron

Other visitors include scarlet tanagers, ospreys, indigo buntings, green herons, night herons, solitary sandpipers, black duck, cormorants, ring-necked ducks, common goldeneyes, buffleheads, snowy egret, great egret, pied-billed grebes, American mergansers, hooded mergansers, and wild turkeys.

Vegetation

American beech, northern red oak, sugar maple, Norway maple, red maple, scarlet oak, white oak, striped maple, ash, larch, eastern hop hornbeam, shagbark hickory, sycamore, and white, yellow, and gray birch are among the hardwoods that grow in the area. Evergreens include white pine, red cedar, Norway spruce, and eastern hemlock.

In upland areas shrubs such as low-bush blueberry, wintergreen, club moss, mountain laurel, elderberry, sassafras, maple leaf viburnum, glossy buckthorn, chokecherry and witch hazel are common. In the wetlands winterberry, sweet pepper bush, speckled alder, silky and red osier dogwood, swamp azalea, spicebush, tussock sedge, soft rush, reed canary grass, arrow arum, water arum, blue flag, yellow flag, high-bush blueberry, barberry, greenbrier, skunk cabbage, arrow wood, buttonbush, sensitive, ostrich, royal and a variety of other ferns are among the many plants that thrive.

Wildflowers include Jack-in-the-pulpit, ginseng, whorled loosestrife, Canadian Mayflower, teaberry, meadow rue, yarrow, wild mint, early meadow rue, wild sarsaparilla, pokeweed, jewelweed, false Solomon's seal, speedwell, smooth Solomon's seal, Indian pipe, pink lady's-slipper, partridge berry, spotted wintergreen, pipsissewa, St. John's wort, starflower, trillium, bunchberry, rue anemone, wood anemone, swamp dewberry, bluets, and wild geranium.