A UVM blog Old Town Line Bridge Middleborough/Lakeville

On June 20th of 2024 at 12:46, I sat down on the old bridge over the Nemasket river that separates the towns on Middleboro (where I live) and Lakeville Massachusetts. I sat with my back facing the new bridge used and faced down river with the Ocean Spray warehouse to my right and only visible through breaks in the tree line. It was super hot today, with it being around 91 degrees fahrenheit. The was sparsely any clouds in the sky and the sun was so hot, I had to take my shift off and put on sunglasses.

I was on the edge of the bridge with my feet hanging over, and noticing the cracking ashplat with weeds growing through it. You can hear a bunch off distinct bird calls as they call and swoop in the trees. Dragonflies where buzzi n around the top of the slow moving water as it dragged rooted underwater grass and some tree debris down. I couldn’t really smell much of anything as my nose has been clogged up from working in dusty Jordan furniture trucks, but I could smell the “freshness” of the air if that makes sense. I usually always have fishing rods in my car and curious to see if there were any fish here I cast out a few times to investigate. During spawning season these rivers are flooded with river herring, rushing to Assawompsett pond to breed. The herring run is a popular event in Middleboro when you can witness this mass migration. But here, only solitary snapping turtles basked in the sun below the stones of the bridge on the mud underneath. As I sat there I kept on noticing the different colors of the Dragonflies buzzing around as you could hear them as they got close to you and one landed on a branch near me, where I noticed a dead Dragonfly caught and wrapped in the web of a spider. This was about halfway from my height to the water on the “leg” of the bridge to my left. As I continued to watch the dragonflies buzz about and seeing little water bugs hop across the surface, it was hard to not see the sizable difference in reed height from my left side of the river, to the towering reeds on the right. Birds swooped from side to side and landed on the reeds and some small shrubs alongside the river. As I stayed there I noticed a little guy looking at me from a small, muddy opening near the bottom of the bridge “leg” to my right. At first I thought it was a beaver, but then recognized this critter to be a groundhog watching me. Having seen them before, as a family used to live in my backyard when I was younger…until my aunts old dog got loose :(. He blended into the dirt at first but was clearly visible once I saw him. He was there for about 2-3 minutes before turning and walking down the length of that path he was on. After wondering about why Dragonflies are an array of colors for a bit, I decided to walk down the old road that is completely overgrown expect for small tracks of a path some go down. I couldn’t help myself but from looking at some sweeping vines that covered the understory of trees and shot up in a variety of ways. I also saw massive furns with super wide “wingspans” I guess you could say. As I walked to the edge of the warehouse and passing signs of the previous use of this area, I saw how the ground was spilt into sections of ivy and ferns, as they grew only around groups of each other.

1. When was the Nemasket river created?
2. What Birds call this area home?
3. How was this landscape (on a larger than location scale) created?
4. When was the bridge made/then abandoned?
5. How long have Dragonflies been here?
6. How do they get their different colors?
7. How do plants root in moving water?
8. When have plants started taking  over the bridge and its cracks.
9. Why is it that the reeds tower on one side of the river, yet are significantly shorted on the other side?
10. Where did that Groundhog come from/does he live in this area?
11. Why are their no fish here now (that i’ve witnessed)
12. How many different species of birds live here?
13. Have spiders always lived here (and then this area, and how did they get here if not)
14. Why does this tree to my left bend and jut out the way it does?
15. Do spiders eat dragonflies?
16. What types of plants can live under the water?
17. What is the soil like at the bottom of the river? (clay? muddy? sandy?)
18. Where does this river deposit?
19. How long has this landscape looked like this and been this climate?
20. What allows for bone growth? And what type is this?
21. How big can ferns grow to?
22. Why are ferns only growing in sections, with other ferns?
23. How do birds partition their niche here?
24. Do plants also partition niches?
25. How does pollen sticking to water affect above and below water organisms?