Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau's Woods by Richard B. Primack

Author:Richard B. Primack [Primack, Richard B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Chicago Press

A Farm Diary

Concurrent with our work in Concord and at Manomet, we tried to locate other useful data sets, especially the diaries of bird arrival dates kept by individuals. A personal journal kept by an individual has the advantages of a consistent set of techniques for observing and recording data.

Aside from Rosie Corey in Concord, the best diary that we have found is one kept by Betty Anderson, a dedicated naturalist who has lived on the hundred-acre Wolf Trap farm in Middleborough, Massachusetts, since 1950. Anderson is a committed conservationist who has been active in wildlife protection at the local, state, and national levels her whole life. From 1969 to 1983, she was the director of the fledgling Manomet Bird Observatory. Since the 1960s, Anderson has kept a diary of the birds and other wildlife that she has seen on her daily walks around the woods, swamps, ponds, and fields of her property. She made many of these observations while sitting at her kitchen table, where she had a clear view across her fields to a pond.

I first heard about Anderson in 2003 from Trevor Lloyd-Evans, who thought she might have made some systematic observations of birds on her farm. When I telephoned her, she was initially quite hesitant about whether her diaries had any scientific value. However, we agreed that it was at least worth a look. A few days later, I headed south with two undergrads, Anna Ledneva and Carolyn Imbres, to spend a day at the Anderson farm.

When we arrived, Anderson graciously welcomed us into her home, a comfortable farmhouse from a bygone era. On her living-room table, she had piled up some of her yearly diaries for us to look at. In these diaries she had recorded the dates of first arrival of birds in the spring, the time of first calling of various frog species, the first appearance of butterflies, and the first flowering of many common trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. Intermixed with these records of spring events were descriptions of vacations and field trips, and notes about visits with family and friends. After looking at the diaries, it was clear they had considerable scientific value. With Anderson’s permission, we decided that we should make a list of plant and animal species that she had observed in most years and start entering dates into a spreadsheet. This was a substantial project that would require many visits to her farm.

A pattern began to emerge; once a week Anna, Carolyn, and sometimes Abe and I would sit down in the Anderson living room. Betty Anderson would give us a large plate of homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and while munching away, we would carefully turn the pages of the diaries, recording the first appearance dates of the common species. There were sixteen bird species that were common enough through the years, many of which could be seen readily from her kitchen window, such as the ruby-throated hummingbird visiting her nectar feeders, barn swallows and tree swallows flying over the

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