Good Morning Readers!
Here is some tunes for reading
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2ZlXaFmIBuD2jiTcxClWzbY8KH-Jf9Vo
Today we are looking at another region for today. In my home of Attleboro, MA. Specifically at Anthony Lawrence Wildlife Preserve. The Sevenmile River passes directly through here leading to two distinct areas of the land. The forest stand and the marsh. These are split up by the river. Most of my obseservations are made on the forested side but I did a small trek to the marsh.
I’ve been here over the summer and wanted to showcase the season changes in a photo sphere.
Before we continue on I want to showcase the plants and animals here. For plants there was white oak, Northern Red Oak (by far the most common species the whole ground was covered in their leaves), Paper Birch (although all were fallen trees), Unknown Bracket fungi, Eastern White pines (all in the understory), Flat-Branched Tree-club Moss (a small pine species and are so adorable), American Beech, Common Buckthorn, Round Leave Greenbrier, Bayberry, unknown grass (a true sedge which is on the edge of the marsh), Cattails (in the marsh). For animals there was, squirrel, robins, bluejays, white-tailed deer, wild turkeys, and an aligator (I’ll explain in a bit). Overall these were amazing species I felt super connected to the land. Now I want to showcase my photos I took!
So you are probably wondering why I saw an Aligator huh? Well while I was here I decided to Geocache. If you don’t know what that is, its basically little puzzles hidden around areas such as a tube in a fake electrical socket. Here I did two of them. The first was called gone fishin’. The objective was to find this hidden fishing rod and pull up a rock. After a bit of bushwacking and gps shenanigans I found the pole attached to the bck of a tree off the trail.
From here, I made my way back to the river and began searching. After about 30 minutes and meeting some people on the trail I gave up with no nibbles at all. Then I began to head to another cache. Here I was to find a hidden aligator in a tree. He was on another trail and oh my god it was the most gorgeous area ever. After crossing under some branches I was greeted by a clearing with birds singing everywhere. I stood in the area and heard a russel to the right. I look and see a deer scampering away. I go walk over to where the deer was and then make my way further out. How im in a giant tree, and I bushwack my way out to the other side of the river. On the other side of the river is a deer hiding from me. Realizing I went to far for the gator I head back to the clearing. Once in the clearing I immediatly see the Aligator. He was sitting on a tree I walked right past when following the first deer. Inside of his stomach was my prize!
This trip home was amazing. I had so much fun here exploring the woods and spending time here. I had a major adventure. However I still have some questions for the land. While walking I noticed many signs of old growth but also many human cut logs. I wonder what the use of the land was? This is a completely urban wild basically in the back of some neighborhood. I know some other areas near me have weird things. For example, Oak Knoll has a hotel in the marsh. I wonder what is in this preserve.