Beaver Pond Loop

Large brown-and-white owl with dark eyes; classic “Who cooks for you?” call at dawn and dusk. Often perches low along wooded streams.

Year-round resident; most vocal late winter through early spring

📍 Quissett Wildlife Management Area — wooded wetlands along the East Trail, Round Meadow, and Old Quissett corridors.

Male: iridescent green head with bold white face stripes. Female: gray-brown with teardrop eye-ring. Listen for squealing flight calls at dusk.

Spring migration and nesting; broods on Mendon ponds May–July

📍 Inman Pond and associated beaver impoundments in the Meadow Brook Woods complex.

Large vase-shaped clumps; fertile fronds emerge first, turning cinnamon-brown and spore-bearing by early summer. Sterile fronds stay green with a tuft of cinnamon-colored wool at each pinna base — the reliable field mark.

Fronds emerge April; fertile fronds visible May–June; green through October

📍 Meadow Brook Woods — dense clumps line the boardwalk sections and beaver-impounded swamp edges; one of the most visible plants on the Inman Pond loop.

Multi-stemmed shrub to 10 feet; white bell-shaped flowers in May, blue-black fruit July–August, brilliant scarlet fall foliage. The species behind commercial blueberries, but wild fruit is smaller and tangier.

Flowers May; fruit July–August; fall color September–October

📍 Quissett WMA — dense shrub thickets along the East Trail and impoundment edges; fruit ripens in late July when MassWildlife allows incidental foraging.

Deciduous shrub with clusters of white (sometimes pale pink), tubular, intensely fragrant flowers; sticky-hairy tubes are the key field mark separating it from other native azaleas. Blooms after leaves are out — mid-summer, later than Mountain Laurel.

Blooms late June through July along Mendon wetlands

📍 Quissett WMA — lines the shrub-swamp margins of the East Trail corridor; the fragrance carries on warm mornings in July.

Mottled purple-green spathe (hood) emerges directly from mud in late winter — often pushing up through ice. Giant cabbage-like leaves follow in April. Generates heat (thermogenesis) to melt surrounding snow. Unmistakable skunky odor when crushed.

Spathe February–March (earliest wildflower in Mendon); leaves April–July

📍 Meadow Brook Woods — seep hollows and stream-margin flats along the lower Inman Pond corridor; look for spathes rising from standing water in late February.

North America's largest rodent; paddle-shaped tail and large orange incisors. Active at dawn and dusk — look for the V-shaped wake as it swims. Evidence is often easier to find than the animal: gnawed stumps, mud-and-stick lodges, and bark-stripped sticks in water.

Year-round; most visible at dawn and dusk spring through fall

📍 Quissett WMA — beaver activity is responsible for the impoundments along the East Trail and Beaver Pond Loop; active lodges and fresh gnaw-cuts are visible from the trail.

Stout, dark (charcoal to black) body with two rows of bright yellow spots from head to tail. Adults reach 7–9 inches. Lives underground most of the year — emerges explosively on the first warm (above 45°F) rainy nights of late March to reach vernal pools.

Annual spring migration late March; egg masses in pools April–May; adults rarely seen other times

📍 Meadow Brook Woods — the kettle topography and certified vernal pools along the Inman Pond corridor are prime spotted salamander breeding habitat; egg masses visible in pools in April.