Urban Nature Walk: Waltham Massachusetts, October 16th 2005.

[urbpan]

Yesterday, after 9 straight days of rain, it cleared up for our Urban Nature Walk. We went to the Charles River Reservation in Waltham. It’s easy to get to on the commuter rail, or on the roads—simply look for the intersection of Moody Street and the river. The Charles was a site for industry in Waltham’s heyday.

(All of these photographs are by cottonmanifesto, and appeared first at her journal.)



When I visited the area a few weeks ago, the Moody Street Dam was a slick ramp with a few small splashes of water flowing by the mallards and black-crowned night-herons. After more than a week of rain (the last day of which was the heaviest in Eastern Massachusetts), the river was swollen. The dam’s water-regulating system was adjusted to wide open, to allow as much water as possible to move on through. No birds on the dam this day.



Alongside the dam is a ramp, which allows those fish that use the Charles to get to and from their spawning waters to pass. This ramp seems to be specifically for the alewife, an anadromous (living in salt water and spawning in fresh, like salmon) member of the herring family.



The first part of the pathway is paved and landscaped, not very natural looking.



But it soon gives way to more sheltered, wooded area.



Numerous footbridges cross the river in the Reservation.



In several places we found Coprinus mushrooms—often called “inky caps” because the top part turns into black liquid as the mushroom releases its spores.



Abandoned industrial structures added interesting texture to the river. This ridge marks where there was a dam to power the Waltham bleachery.



This was a railroad bridge. I found raccoon droppings on it.



[Bad username or site: ”cottonmanifesto” @ livejournal.com]’s new camera, with excellent close up ability, allowed her to capture some remarkable wildlife, which some observers might have overlooked.

A lichen, bristling with fruiting bodies:



A late-blooming chicory flower:



An iridescent beetle, perhaps a leaf beetle in the family Chrysomelidae:



The dried seed-top of a wild carrot:



The beautiful but disastrously invasive berries of the bittersweet vine:



The splendor of the changing seasons, rendered in the pigments in a maple leaf:



A woodsy path that I bicycled on a few weeks ago was flooded.



What was industry is now a park.