57° / 41°Mostly sunnySunset 4:27 PM
Mostly sunny, light wind, and near 57 for Veterans Day, with the bay at its lowest mid-afternoon.
New video
For about 150 years, Massachusetts had no beavers at all. A few wandered in from New York in 1928, three more were set free in Lenox in 1932, and the state's last estimate is about 70,000. Right now they're sinking branches into the mud at the bottom of the pond: a pantry they'll swim out to under the ice all winter.
Right outside
When a thin, milky veil of high cloud slides over the sun, its ice crystals can bend sunlight into a huge pale ring, or bright spots on either side. Block the sun with your fist and look beside it.
Right outside
Yellow-rumped warblers can digest the wax coating on bayberry fruit, which helps them stay into the cold after most warblers have flown south. Find a berry-loaded bayberry or redcedar and watch for a flash of yellow on a rump.
Go see
NOAA predicts high water of 4.7 feet at 9:02am and low water of 0.3 feet at 2:25pm, so rocks, pilings, and mud that sat underwater at breakfast are out in the air by mid-afternoon. Go see what the water left behind.
Look closer
Queen Anne's lace, mullein, and thistle wait out the cold as flat circles of leaves pressed to the soil, where some soak up enough sun to sit warmer than the air. Crouch at a lawn edge and count the leaves on one.
Look up
Two days past new Moon, the crescent is only about 5% lit and sits low in the bright glow after the 4:27 sunset. Find it before it sinks, then look for a faint gray glow filling in the dark part.
Look up
Dazzling Jupiter and a small red spark of Mars draw within about two full-Moon widths of each other in the east. Two mornings later the Leonid meteors stream from right beside the pair.
Go see
Most harbor seals tagged on Cape Cod spent summer off Maine, and in a Narragansett Bay study next door, seals were present from November to April. Scan the low rocks with binoculars on Sunday's sunny shore.
Right outside
Small tan moths fly from mid-November into January, long after other moths are gone, while their nearly wingless females crawl up tree trunks. Next door in western Rhode Island, traps caught thousands in a true outbreak last season.
Coming soon
On Tuesday, November 24, the Buzzards Bay Coalition leads a 1.3-mile walk to watch the full Moon rise over the Buzzards Bay horizon from the Horseneck Point Life-Saving Station. It is the first of three supermoons in a row.
Coming soon
The Brookline Bird Club spends three hours on Sconticut Neck and West Island looking for the winter ducks, loons, grebes, and shorebirds that settle on the Fairhaven shore for the cold months. Put it on the calendar now.
That's what's worth noticing.Go have a look.