Migrating Alewives Reach Belmont's Little Pond
Sunday June 15
By Ellen Mass
published in the Belmont Citizen Herald on June 19

Having my appetite whetted by Stew Sanders' information reminding the Friends there is possible spawning 'goings on' at Belmont's Little Pond, weather creating later migration patterns. I went over around 7 am Sunday to the Brighton St. MDC easement to look at the large old head wall culvert at Winn Brook. I had cruelly interrupted. Alewives were there, but hard to detect by eyesight in the fast bubbly stream. Then in rapid succession, out flew a Black Crowned Night heron and two Great Blues, and possible a little Great Blue flying with small very shiny fish. At Oliver Rd (north east side of pond just west of forest floodplain), where lies the culvert leading from Spy Pond, my binoculars picked up a significant line of Black Crowns and Great Blues, equal distant from one another, standing on rocks like sentries awaiting breakfast. A great shiny Alewife was in the mouth of a Great Blue. Eating and sharing were beautfiul sights, with cormorants dipping and stiff scouting Blues. There was one quickly solved dispute with Night Crowns in mid air. Canadas were uninterested in them, and swam undisturbed in and out of the tense hunting party. One thing was sure, we were all appreciating the sunshine, especially the cormorants with wide wingspreads for drying feathers. After a while, it struck that I must quickly evacuate Winn Brook to make room for the previous food line. Hope the herring already know that when they continue the long migration route westward into the long dark culvert into Belmont proper, that open waters are not close by, and it is not a pleasant voyage.

Knowing the anadromous Alewife reached Little Pond is always a great feeling, as these freshwater fish, ecologically vital to the ocean bass and other fish, will return as fingerling to the great Atlantic in the fall. Our subwatershed river and ponds have such terrible water quality as revealed by the Mystic River watershed Assoc., many individuals and the municipalities. Their shiny shaking and shimmering appearance is slightly less than a miracle to some of us. Alewives are very sensitive to pollution according to Karsten Hartel in his definitive atlas, "Inland Fishes of Massachusetts", a handsome volume available from Audubon. If they can make it past the huge carp, warm, shallow fecal waters and pathogens, they can spawn and return to mother ocean as well, I feebly reason. The rains have brought some clean water into the watershed, and now there is room to bring a little more balance into the ecology of the region.