Parker River National Wildlife Refuge at sunset, October 2021
Plum Island, Massachusetts is a barrier island on Massachusetts’ northeast coast. Like other barrier islands, it provides shelter to people, land, and a vast array of birds and wildlife. It’s home to a national wildlife refuge, and part of an ecologically precious system of marshland between Cape Ann and the Merrimack River, the largest such system north of Long Island Sound. Along with Cape Ann, it’s one of my favorite places on earth. I’m not from this area originally (I grew up in western Mass.), but I’ve been lucky to get to know it better for about eight years now.
The island (not to be confused with Plum Island in NY) is eleven miles long, including a two-mile residential area. It protects four towns on Massachusetts’ North Shore. It was named after wild beach plums which grace the island with multitudes of white flowers in spring and yellow-to-purple fruits in summer, and is also (according to wiki) “famous for the purple sands at high tide, which get their color from small crystals of pink pyrope garnet.” Cape Ann (Essex, Gloucester, Rockport, and Manchester-by-the-Sea) lies at the other end of the arc of Ipswich Bay, and from some vantage points you can see one from the other.
Ipswich Bay and the Great Marsh, Massachusetts...Plum Island is on the left, Cape Ann on the right
(photo taken by my mother from a plane, used with permission)
This video (not mine) made in November 2020 gives a glimpse of a lot of the North Shore--including Plum Island—in just 13 minutes. (To skip her intro, start at 2:45)
Most of Plum Island is managed by the USFWS as Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1942. A partially paved road runs down the length of the island. On the eastern side of the road, several boardwalks lead through dunes (and scrub/forest, in some places) to the ocean. At the end of the road, there is a state park, Sandy Point State Reservation. On the western side of the road, there are areas of river, meadow, two freshwater pools (diked off in the 50’s to help waterfowl), salt marsh and salt pannes. There are several trails, including Hellcat Trail, a recently reconstructed (to be more accessible) boardwalk which loops through dunes, woods, vernal pools and marsh.
Great Egret, Parker River NWR, autumn 2021
Plum Island beach shelters Plum Island Sound, Plum Island River, and the mouths of Parker and several other rivers. Between the beach and mainland, there is an area of marsh grasses, interspersed with the rivers and tidal creeks. This area is historically known as the “Great Marsh,” which includes expanses of marshland outside of Plum Island.
“At high tide the grassland is entirely submerged, in some places by only a few inches of water. At all other times the extensive stretches of grass appear. The creeks either dry up completely or are small channels within mud flats where shellfish proliferate. The lower stretches of the rivers and Plum Island Sound are thus tidal estuaries receiving the fresh-water flows of the rivers. …
Great Marsh has been the focus of a coalition of environmental groups and agencies to protect the marshes between Cape Ann and the Merrimack River from degradation.”
The dunes on Plum Island “provide unique habitat for nearly 50 Species of Greater Conservation Concern” (according to this PDF), and shelter the lowlands, where trees and bushes provide habitat for many other species of birds and animals. The trees include pines and Juniper (Pines Trail has lots of both), Red Cedar, oaks, locusts, Red Maple, Black Cherry, Chokecherry, and apple. In the 1950’s thousands of Black (Austrian) Pines were planted to help stabilize the sand.
Pines Trail...it has an overlook with a view of one of the Osprey platforms
Some of the sights you might encounter if you visit here: wild beach plums, bayberry, and other trees and bushes that blanket the island with white blossoms in spring; pink wild roses in summer and fall; Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets; Snowy Owls in winter; a meadow which I call in different seasons the “Harrier Meadow,” “Willet Meadow” or “Bobolink Meadow,” for self-explanatory reasons; lush forest and flowers (honeysuckle, starry false Solomon’s seal, Canada mayflower...) along Hellcat Trail; vast rolling dunes with various kinds of vegetation with ever-changing colors (sometimes vastly different from one year to the next); cobalt blue skies and blazing goldenrod on the dunes in autumn; lovely stands of birches; tangled trees along the Refuge road which remind me of Dutch oil paintings; the dark sand beach with waves which aren’t as dramatic as Pacific ones, but can be impressive; and spectacular sunsets, often with pastel “Belt of Venus” on the ocean side at twilight.
In June, Refuge management puts up signs warning visitors to be careful of Killdeer chicks in the road (they’re almost invisible!), and in August/September, Tree Swallows in the road (because that’s when tens—sometimes hundreds!—of thousands of Tree Swallows stage on the island). From April to late summer, most of the beaches on the Refuge part of the island are closed to the public, in order to protect nesting Piping Plovers and Least Terns.
Plum Island refuge beach from Boardwalk #1, November 2021
Mute Swans on the Salt Pannes, October 2021
Parker River National Wildlife Refuge at sunset, October 2021
Great Egret at sunset, Parker River NWR, October 2021
Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, October 2021
Meadow near the entrance of the Refuge, October 2021
Meadow and storage barn in the Refuge maintenance area, October 2021
Barn Swallows nest every year under the eaves of the barn
Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, October 2021
tiny Crabapples (I think), Plum Island, November 2021…Crabapples and Winterberry are abundant on the island right now
Boardwalk #2 to the ocean, October 2021
Winterberry, Plum Island, November 2021
Greater Yellowlegs, Parker River NWR, November 2021
Some of the 108 (update this morning: 116! :) species of birds seen in the past week on the island: Canada Geese, Mute Swans, Gadwalls, Mallards, American Black Ducks, Black-bellied Plovers, Sanderlings, Dunlins, Greater Yellowlegs, Herring Gulls, Great Black-backed Gulls, Northern Harriers, Great Egrets, Great Blue Herons, and Double-crested Cormorants (DC Cormorants are constant sentinels on the wires near the island’s entrance, and also flock on a mudflat in the refuge, until they leave in autumn—we once witnessed the incredible sight of thousands of them migrating, on just one day— to be replaced by Great Cormorants, which over-winter here); as well as large numbers of Northern Pintails, Green-winged Teal, Common Eiders, White-winged Scoters, Black Scoters, and European Starlings. Common and Red-throated Loons have arrived and will stay for the winter.
Stage Island area, Plum Island, November 3, 2021
An American Avocet has been seen there the past few days. I went out to look for it and didn’t see it, but I saw another of my favorite birds…Snow Buntings!
Snow Buntings, Parker River NWR, November 3, 2021
Plum Island and the Great Marsh are under threat due to climate change. This page lists some of the impacts on the marsh. This six-minute video from 2017 discusses the beach erosion occurring on the island, and how the building of rigid structures like groins and jetties has made it worse:
A video I took of the beach at twilight on November 1st (with speeding Sanderlings :)
It’s sunny, clear and chilly here (40’s) on the North Shore of MA today. We had our first hard frost about a week ago, and the leaves have really started to fall.
YOUR TURN: WHAT’S UP IN NATURE IN YOUR AREA?
