By adamg - 3/3/25 - 2:32 pm

A Brookline town spokesperson reports that what a UHub correspondent saw last week on Leverett Pond was not a new oil spill at all - just regular pond flotsom collected by booms put in place after the oil spill in December. Read more.

Oil on the surface of Leverett Pond
By adamg - 2/26/25 - 11:17 am

Update: Brookline says that's not oil and officials were there to check the booms put down after December's spill.

A correspondent reports from the banks of Leverett Pond this morning:
Read more.

By adamg - 1/3/25 - 4:11 pm

The New England Wildlife Center brought a gaggle of de-oiled waterfowl back to the Muddy River to live out their best bird lives again. It can be hard to hear the people (they didn't want to use speakers that might annoy the birds), so if you just want to see those birds flapping their way back to the water, skip ahead to 6:00. Read more.

By adamg - 12/30/24 - 9:34 am

Brookline.news reports that while the oil that coated birds in the Muddy River came from a pipe near the Brook House, and while that condo complex had been responsible for past oil spills, officials are not sure it was the source, in part because it had earlier removed heating-oil tanks.

EPA emergency-response SUV at Leverett Pond in front of Brook House
By adamg - 12/13/24 - 2:33 pm

Goldman Sackler went for a walk along Leverett Pond early yesterday afternoon and noticed this EPA Emergency Response SUV parked in the lot between the pond and the Brook House condo complex. Read more.

By adamg - 12/11/24 - 11:00 pm

The New England Wildlife Center reports its workers captured four more birds along the oil-besotted Muddy River in need of cleaning and rehab today, bringing the total number of birds it now has under care to 43. Read more.

Oil sheen on the Muddy River near the Gardner Museum
By adamg - 12/10/24 - 8:02 pm

Ryan Hatcher went for a walk along the Fenway and Park Drive stretch of the Muddy River between 1 and 1:30 p.m. today, took some photos and reports on the headache-inducing smell: Read more.

Bald eagle perched on tree along the Muddy River
By adamg - 12/9/24 - 10:57 pm

Along with all the ducks and geese, a bald eagle perched up in a tree along the Muddy River today, surveying the geese paddling down below in the oil-infused water, near the pedestrian bridge over the Green Line to Carlton Street.

By adamg - 12/9/24 - 8:49 pm

The Brookline Select Board said tonight that state environmental experts have taken the lead in figuring out where the oil that coated birds in the Muddy River downstream from Leverett Pond and that the source has yet to be identified. Read more.

A wood duck covered in oil
By adamg - 12/9/24 - 6:03 pm

The New England Wildlife Center reports it's now removed about 30 ducks and geese from the Muddy River downstream of Leverett Pond to be driven down to its Weymouth clinic to clean and treat them. Read more.

Old coated goose near Longwood
By adamg - 12/8/24 - 3:04 pm

Brookline and Boston firefighters responded to the Muddy River and Leverett Pond this afternoon on reports of oil - and a heavy petroleum odor, spreading from Leverett Pond at the rear of the Brook House at 33 Pond Ave. in Brookline and at least as far north as the Longwood Green Line stop. Read more.

By adamg - 9/25/24 - 12:55 pm

A concerned resident filed a 311 complaint about a woman who is apparently not just feeding but hugging geese in the Fenway: Read more.

Sunset over the Fens
By adamg - 11/10/23 - 9:06 pm

Ryan took some awesome photos of this evening's sunset in the Fens.

Mango Matt, meanwhile, got a great shot of the sun going down over the Back Bay, the Common and downtown: Read more.

Proposed route of new steam pipe
By adamg - 10/16/23 - 10:02 am

Vicinity Energy is planning a half-mile pipe from the Back Bay to the Fenway Park area to provide steam heat to all the new buildings going up or planned on and near Brookline Avenue. Read more.

Geese on the Muddy River
By adamg - 10/7/23 - 1:14 pm

Brooks Payne captured some geese in the Muddy River along the Riverway section of the Emerald Necklace.

Turtle atop grate covering the Muddy River supply pipe in Jamaica Pond
By adamg - 6/10/23 - 11:35 am

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.

By adamg - 11/22/22 - 1:15 pm

State officials announced today they now have the money in hand for what could be a ten-year project to replace the current decrepit hulk of an overpass that connects Storrow Drive and the Fenway over part of the Emerald Necklace with more graceful roads - and new paths and parkland aimed at reconnecting the Emerald Necklace and the Esplanade, which were severed when the overpass went up over Charlesgate in the 1960s. Read more.

By adamg - 9/15/22 - 1:13 pm

Scott gives us an aerial view of the Army Corps of Engineer's work to remove the reeds 'n' other weeds along the Muddy River on the Boston/Brookline line. Read more.

Threespine stickleback
By adamg - 3/9/22 - 2:19 pm

Jovielle Gers's mural on a traffic-signal box at 3201 Washington St. in Jamaica Plain has depictions of four rare species in Massachusetts: A piping plover, a red-bellied cooter turtle, gerardia flowering plants and a tiny fish, known as the threespine stickleback, which has its only Massachusetts freshwater population in a small pond that feeds into the Muddy River in Jamaica Plain. Read more.

Juvenile yellow-crowned night heron
By adamg - 8/9/21 - 9:34 am

Mary Ellen spotted this juvenile yellow-crowned night heron in the Back Bay Fens, amazingly serene given what's going on right behind it: Read more.