Western Mass Gets $13M in Federal Funding

• $1,110,661 for the renovation and expansion of the Jones Library in Amherst.
• $465,000 for Springfield Museum's "Biomes Around the World" to upgrade the wildlife exhibits.
• $150,000 for Red Gate Farm in Ashfield to complete the construction of a new student housing facility and dining hall.
• $2,854,800 to bring Chicopee's wastewater plant in compliance with new nitrogen removal standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state.
• $975,000 for the town of Montague and Turners Falls Avenue to restore an ADA compliant, pedestrian-oriented streetscape to the state-designated Cultural District, a major hub for retail, dining, and entertainment. 
• $450,000 for the Franklin Regional Council of Governments in Franklin County to replace the region's aging analog public safety radio system and another $165,000 to research methods on retaining and recruiting police offers.
• $1,280,000 for Agawam to replace the White Brook culvert under North Street.
• $2,000,000 for Holyoke's River Terrace sewer and stormwater project.
• $640,000 for the Gándara Center in Springfield to increase access to behavioral health services for individuals experiencing substance use disorders and serious mental illness.
• $1 million for Girls Inc. of the Valley in Holyoke to purchase and renovate a new permanent headquarters to ensure more than 1,000 girls from marginalized communities in Holyoke, Springfield, and Chicopee have access to educational resources. 

Amphibious Toads Procreate in Perplexing Amplexus

By Tor HanseniBerkshires columnist
08:09PM / Sunday, May 05, 2024

 

Toads lay their eggs in the spring along the edges of waterways. Photos by Tor Hansen.

My first impressions of toads came about when my father Len Hansen rented a seaside house high on a sand dune in North Truro, Cape Cod back in 1954. 

 

With Cape Cod Bay stretching out to the west, and Twinefield so abundant in wildflowers to the east, North Truro became a naturalist's dream, where I could search for sea shells at the seashore, or chase beetles and butterflies with my trusty green butterfly net. 

 

Twinefield was a treasure trove for wildlife — a vast glacial rolling sandplain shaped by successive glaciers, its sandy soil rich in silicon, thus able to stimulate growth for a diverse biota. A place where in successive years I would expand my insect collection to fill cigar boxes with every order of insects abounding in beach plum, ox-eye daisy and milkweed. During our brief summer vacation there, we boys would exclaim in our excitement, "Oh here is another hoppy toad," one of many Fowler's toads (Bufo woodhousei fowleri ) that inhabited the moist surroundings, at home in the Ammophyla beach grass, thickets of beach plum, bayberry, and black cherry bushes. 

 

They sparkled in rich colors of green amber on beige and reddish tinted warts. Most anurans have those glistening eyes, gold on black irises so beguiling around the dark pupils. Today I reflect on a favorite analogy, the riveting eye suggests a solar eclipse in pictorial aura.

 

In the distinct toad majority in the Outer Cape, Fowler's toads turned up in the most unusual of places. When we Hansens first moved in to rent Riding Lights, we would wash the sand and salt from our feet in the outdoor shower where toads would be drinking and basking in the moisture near my feet. As dusk fades into darkness, the happy surprise would gather under the night lights where moths were fluttering about the front door and the toads would snatch bugs with outstretched tongue.

 

In later years, mother Eleanor added much needed color and variety to Grace's original garden. Our smallest and perhaps most acrobatic butterflies are the skippers, flitting and somersaulting to alight and drink heartily the nectar abounding at yellow sickle-leaved coreopsis and succulent pink live forever sedums of autumn. These hearty late bloomers signaled oases for many fall migrants including painted ladies, red admirals and of course monarchs on there odyssey to over-winter in Mexico. 

 

Our newly found next-door neighbors, the Bergmarks, added a lot to share our zeal for this undiscovered country, and while still in our teens, Billy Atwood, who today is a nuclear physicist in California, suggested we should include the Baltimore checkerspot in our survey, as he too had a keen interest in insects. Still unfamiliar to me then, in later years I would come across a thriving colony in Twinefield, that yielded a rare phenotype checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton p. superba) that I wrote about featured in The Cape Naturalist ( Museum of Natural History, Brewster Cape Cod 1991).