Birding the Randall Davey National Audubon Center and Sanctuary: A Haiku Adventure

One of the treats of our Mass Audubon excursion to New Mexico was the opportunity to bird the Randall Davey National Audubon Sanctuary in Santa Fe. It was a chilly day with light snow, but we spotted 14 species, including the Juniper Titmouse, which was new to me. (While I only got a quick look and no picture, the Juniper Titmouse is a drab, plain gray bird whose reputation is its attitude, not its flashy looks.)

Better still, I knew nothing about Randall Davey (1887–1964), an American artist and educator known for his contributions to early 20th-century American art, particularly in painting. Davey is celebrated for his work in portraiture, landscapes, and equestrian scenes. He is also celebrated for fostering a vibrant artistic community, which was key in establishing Santa Fe as an essential hub for artists and creatives in the early 20th century. His works are featured in major collections, including those of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Randall Davey's "Great Big Canvas"

Davey was part of the American Modernist movement and studied under influential artists like Robert Henri, a leader of the Ashcan School. He exhibited widely across the United States. In 1919, Davey settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the historic site of a former mill, which became both his home and studio. This location is the one we birded, the Randall Davey Audubon Center and Sanctuary.

One of the amusing features of this beautiful sanctuary is the so-called Haiku Trail, a series of short poems (not all 5-7-5, however) written by (what appear to be somewhat frustrated) birders like me--trying hard to keep pace with the real birders in our group. 

Some images of our day follow.

A Townsend's Solitaire, a member of the thrush family (think American Robin), braving the snow and cold. John Kirk Townsend (1809-1851) was an American naturalist, ornithologist, and collector. He was a member of the famous Wyeth Expedition to the Pacific Northwest in 1834. 

One of the poems that resonated with me

Ironworker and Their Monuments (Not) in New England

My latest local history post went live yesterday on Old Colony History Museum's blog, here. 

It's all about the 90-foot, $100K+ monument to the Leonard family and their ironworks that never got built. 

It was a detective story for me, and I'm not sure I got it right. But I'm close, I hope.

James Leonard lived and worked in Taunton and Raynham, but his brother and other family members launched an ironworks, the Rowley Village Forge Site, in modern-day Boxford, near my home on the North Shore. 

I did a walking tour here.

In 2014, I also did a picture tour of the Saugus Ironworks here. James and Henry worked at "Hammerstimith," its colonial name, before heading south to Raynham and north to Boxford.

Meanwhile, I walked the dry river bed of the Rio Grande yesterday. Pictures to follow.

The Beaver Pond: A Poem About King Philip's War

I was surprised and delighted to receive a note from Benjamin Rozonoyer saying that he had been inspired by King Philip's War: The History and Legacy of America's Forgotten Conflict to write a poem about the war--"Ponder Assawompset"--in his new collection, The Beaver Pond.

Ben grew up in Boston in a family of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. He received a master's in computational linguistics from Brandeis University and is pursuing a PhD in computer science and machine learning at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He lives with his wife and daughter in Colorado, cultivating poems and taking in local landscapes. 

You can purchase a copy of The Beaver Pond from Darkly Bright Press here. 

You may recall that Assawompsett Pond in modern-day Lakeville is where John Sassamon was allegedly murdered in the winter of 1674/5. The trial, a kind of kangaroo court held in Plymouth, was an event that sparked King Philip's War.

Just south of Assawompsett Pond is the Royal Wampanoag Cemetery, a small, beautiful cemetery that is the final resting place for some of Massasoit's descendants.

King Philip's War celebrates its 350th anniversary in 2025. I'll post occasionally about events. A great place to begin is at the Old Colony History Museum, which features an overview and artifacts related to the war, including the Bobet Stone, which commemorates the first England colonist killed in Taunton. . .

The Old Colony Museum is also home to John Thompson's long gun, an important part of the folklore of the war in Middleboro. Gun researchers and collectors visit from near and far to get a glimpse.

These fascinating artifacts are a stone's throw from the Museum's new Military Room, a must see.

Meanwhile, I'm headed out on a birding adventure. If I make my connections and find my group in New Mexico, I'll post from there. 

My 13 Favorite Gravestones and Memorials

After researching local history and genealogy for 50 years, I have traipsed through a fair number of cemeteries. (See "I See Dead Entrepreneurs" about Mount Auburn, and "I See Dead Entrepreneurs: Dr. Augustin Thompson and Moxie.")

As I was death cleaning some of my 1,404 image folders the other day, I decided I had enough odds and ends to assemble a Top 13 Favorite Gravestones list.  

#13 The first chapter of Innovation on Tap featured Eli Whitney, whose beautiful tombstone sits in Yale’s Grove Street Cemetery.

Most people know Whitney for this cotton gin and his firearms factory, but I covered his most remarkable achievement in a 2013 post, “Not for the Squeamish: Eli Whitney’s Greatest Innovation.”

What makes the Grove Street Cemetery fascinating is the number of American innovators buried so closely to Whitney.

Sell Out and Become a Regular Man

I am reposting this May 2012 article about "The Ice King" after visiting with cousins last weekend and being treated to a bird's-eye view of Spy Pond in Arlington, one of Frederic Tudor's "ice factories." (Pictures below.) Tudor was booted from "Innovation on Tap" for length--my bad for writing 600 pages when no publisher wanted to see more than 280--but, author's foibles aside, he remains one of the most fascinating innovators of his time.

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Frederic Tudor was born in Boston on the day the peace treaty ending the American Revolution was signed in 1783. He rode the earliest wave of American entrepreneurial activity, becoming one of the country’s first millionaires.  

Tudor possessed all of the qualities we have come to treasure (for better or worse) in our entrepreneurs, being described as “defiant. . .sometimes reckless in spirit. . .imperious, vain, contemptuous of competitors, and implacable to enemies.  While energetic in competition, he preferred legalized monopoly.”

What really made Tudor successful, however, was his incredible, ungodly persistence. 

At a time when Americans joked that New England had just two crops, ice, and granite, Frederic Turner took the former and turned it into a multimillion-dollar industry, creating a precious luxury item in markets from New Orleans to Havana to Calcutta.  He saw a market that was simply invisible to his fellow merchants, and he built that market by teaching people how to carry, store, and use ice to preserve foods, cool drinks, and make ice cream.  

We know Tudor was an entrepreneur because his fellow Boston merchants--who were happy to speculate in everything from coffee to mahogany to umbrellas--thought he was just plain nuts.  When he invested $10,000 in 1806 and filled the good ship Favorite with huge blocks of ice hacked from Fresh Pond in Cambridge, the Boston Gazette wrote, “No joke.  A vessel with a cargo of 80 tons of Ice has cleared out from this port for Martinique.  We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation.” 

Much to the delight of his skeptics, this first trip turned out to be a financial disaster.  While much of the ice miraculously made it to Martinique, Tudor lacked infrastructure (namely, an ice house) and consumer education (how to use something that had never before been seen), so the ice melted away in six weeks, and he lost $4000.  (The solution to insulation would prove to be sawdust, creating an important aftermarket for New England sawmills.)

Spy Pond, Arlington, 1852

Spy Pond, Arlington, May 2024 (from the bee-keeping meadow :)