The hooded mergansers are back at Jamaica Pond for their annual fall visit.
Jamaica Pond
The Boston Public Health Commission has lifted its advisory against fishing - mostly ignored - boating and letting your dog splash in Jamaica Pond, because the now annual toxic algal bloom has subsided.
Spontaneous Celebrations announced today it's postponed the annual lantern festival from this weekend to next, in the hopes we won't get more rain then.
However, lantern making - indoors - is still on for this weekend at the group's offices at 45 Danforth St.
Via Jamaica Plain News.
When you think of birds at Jamaica Pond, what normally comes to mind are ducks, geese, maybe cormorants and swans. There's usually a flock of seagulls, too, it's just they rarely get near the shore - let alone come up and stand on it, like this gull did late this afternoon.
One of the signs that went up around Jamaica Pond yesterday after the Boston Public Health Commission confirmed a toxic bloom of blue-green algae that can make people sick and kill dogs.
The Boston Public Health Commission said today it's put Jamaica Pond off limits to people and pets due to what has become an annual explosion of toxic blue-green algae. Read more.
This time of year, the mallards are usually the main duck species at Jamaica Pond, but this June the wood ducks are giving them a run for their money - instead of the normal one mother wood duck and her brood, there are two, maybe three other families paddling around the pond.
The other day a turtle lazed atop the grate that covers the start of the Muddy River: The siphon pipe at the northern end of Jamaica Pond that sends water under Perkins Street to Wards Pond.
This great blue heron in Jamaica Pond was just hanging out, looking for fish to spear, when it suddenly unfurled one of its wings (and then promptly furled it again).
As you can see, most of the turtles at Jamaica Pond have relatively smooth shells. But look at Chunker in the lower right.
A close up: Read more.
There are some flowering trees at Jamaica Pond right now (OK, this is a closeup shot, these flowers are much smaller in real life).
The fatal trunk split on a prominent, unusually shaped tree on the parkway side of Jamaica Pond continues to spread, but the tree is trying so hard to hold on - its branches, seemingly rising from the pond itself, are now sprouting in green.
Meanwhile, written battles have broken out in the pages of the small notebooks somebody keeping tying to the tree - along with a pen - to let its fans say their goodbyes. Read more.
Yesterday afternoon, a bright orange koi lazily did circles in the water off the northern shore of Jamaica Pond, tailed by a couple of drabber koi that more closely matched the color of the water. Read more.
Every winter, the Boston Fire Department cuts a hole or two in the frozen surface of Jamaica Pond so its divers can practice some cold-weather rescuing. The pond never really froze up this winter, except thinly during that brief weekend freeze, but divers were out in the cold water today anyway.
Despite the lack of ice it is important to maintain efficiency .
There are always mallards at Jamaica Pond, sometimes supplemented in the spring and summer by a family or two of wood ducks (and one black Muscovy duck in love with a mallard), but the pond now is home, even if temporarily, to all sorts of other ducks. Read more.
Last November, somebody noticed a problem with the "elbow tree," a distinctive birch tree near the Jamaica Pond boathouse with a prominent limb pointing downward at the water, rather than up - its trunk had begun to split open. That's a sign of impending death and the person attached a couple of small notebooks and a pencil to the tree both so that people could measure the crack as it spread and to say goodbye to the longtime pondside attraction. Read more.
The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council's Public Service Committee says the neighborhood needs more trash receptacle along Centre Street and the north side of Jamaica Pond because of slobs who can't hold onto their trash until they find one or get home, the Jamaica Plain Gazette reports.
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