Making Choices

Welcome to Wild Conversations. This forum is about Cornwall’s still-wild areas and its wildlife, things that interest me and hopefully you. Some posts will be about my experiences in my backyard and woods, others will have a wider, community focus about how we can care for our town’s most important natural resources. I hope you will like the posts and perhaps join the discussion.

A little bit about myself. My husband Michael and I moved to Cornwall from Austin, Texas in 1998. What a change! Forest and meadow are now minutes from my door. I study animal tracks in the winter snow with great interest. The spring arrival of phoebes, bluebirds, barn swallows, hummingbirds and chatty wrens returning to fight over and remake their nests gives me much joy. My summer gardens invigorate and exhaust me in quick succession. Come fall, as the woodland colors change, the plaintive honking of geese brings me to marvel at the formations filling the sky. I am in awe at their amazing journey.

But yes, as a committed gardener, I do have battles with nature. One thing is the number of bandits that invade my lovingly-tended flower beds and garden. When a chipmunk steals my strawberries or teases me from the bush while stripping its currants, my thoughts and actions can be unkind. A high fence protects my garden against the deer (though not all invaders) and I have taken to putting winter netting around my favorite rhododendrons. And invasives, like poison parsnip, multiflora rose, buckthorn, and honeysuckle, just to name a few… well I spend many an hour working to keep them under control. We can share notes on these challenges.

For the past two years, I have been monitoring the Cornwall Conservation Commission trail cameras that are being used to collect information about the town’s wildlife. I also have my own camera and was very excited to get my first video of a beaver, one from a family that arrived last fall. They built the most impressive dam in a small stream not far from our house. As is true of many animals, beavers are most active after dark and a trail camera is a really good way to capture their movements. A simple, but adequate trail camera is not that expensive. If you have seen tracks nearby and want to know more about who goes there, I can make suggestions about purchasing and setting out a camera. To see photos from the project, go to https://cornwallvt.com/cornwall-conservation-commission/trail-camera-project/

Please help Wild Conversations started by telling me some things you would like to explore. I invite you to suggest one “wild” topic and also to send a favorite wildlife photo or video for posting on the Blog.