October 2022
Each time you go out and make observations for this project, describe your walk by adding a comment to this post. Include the date, distance walked, and categories that you used for this walk.
Suggested format:
Date. Place. Distance walked today. Total distance for this project.
Categories.
Brief description of the area, what you saw, what you learned, who was with you, or any other details you care to share.
Comments
October 1, 2022. Bernardsville, NJ.
Categories: blooming, fruit, fall color
Hi Erika, sorry I have been absent for so long! I had a rough spring with arthritis in my knees and heart palpitations and stomach problems and also kitchen renovation. Then I was intimidated because I could never catch up. So I have decided not to catch up, but just start where I am.
Today I couldn't decide where to walk, so I looked at my map of observations and saw a hole in the middle of Bernardsville, and in the center of the hole was St. John's on the Mountain Episcopal Church. So I drove there. They had just paved their parking lot and had a lot of very young grass around the edges, so I had to stand back a bit for photos. I saw our usual fall flowers: white snakeroot, Canada goldenrod, field thistle, and an aster that was probably calico (I'm still not confident on asters). Also an unusually large patch of wild basil still blooming. Fruiting were purple topped tridens, flowering dogwood, Oriental bittersweet, and Japanese barberry. Leaves are just starting to turn here so we had horsenettle and the dogwood for fall color.
On the way home, I stopped in the parking lot of the Christian Scientist Church (feeling ecumenical). They had a lovely selection of more established weeds including low, pale, and far-eastern smartweeds; some lingering red clover, Queen Anne's lace, and chicory blooms; two goldenrods (including zig-zag); and two asters, neither of which I can name. Fruit-wise were privet, pilewort, and eastern black nightshade. The only fall color here was just the beginnings on privet, hornbeam, blackberry, and elm, plus a common blue aster in full swing (which was also blooming, I forgot). There was also a big, gray weevil on the smartweed.
And then finally I pulled over by the train tracks and was surprised to find both white turtlehead and great blue lobelia blooming here, plus New York ironweed and some Joe Pye both in fruit.
So great to have you back, Sara!
As a kid, my playground was a church parking lot. It was an enormous lot where all the neighborhood kids hung out and played ball and rode sleds. I used to hide out under the hemlock trees on the edge of the lot. So collecting plants from various church parking lots sounds like a nifty idea to me!
October 1, Adamant, VT. 0.4 miles today, 4362.1 miles total.
Categories: arthropods
Today I met up with Eve and Ed for our weekly bug walk, the first walk together in more than a month since my husband and I have been out of town. We met at a mutual friend's house to search her gardens for bugs. We were quite impressed with the variety of flowers still blooming and the variety of bugs about. We found bumblebees and wasps on the flowers, also flower bugs, a twice-stabbed bug, and a white-margined burrowing bug. We also found lots of flies, several grasshoppers, some leaf hoppers, and Eve found a small slimy black thing that might have been a small gastropod or a leech, or....? Our friend's cat came out to greet us and caught a frog to show us, but I didn't get to see it before it was rescued and returned to the pond. It was a delightful warm day for Oct. 1, with plenty of sun.
October 2, Groton, VT. 3.1 miles today, 4365.2 miles total.
Categories: leaves, bingo and fungi
This afternoon my husband and I drove out to Groton so he could ride his unicycle down the rail trail from Marshfield Pond to Ricker Pond. Meanwhile, I found yet another trail that I haven't walked in the last 2 years, the Hosmore Brook trail from Big Deer Campground to Osmore Pond. The foliage is just about at peak right now, and the day was quite sunny, with temperatures in the low 60s. The trail is one of the most scenic in the entire park, which is pretty good, considering the park is so scenic overall. The trail sees very little use, however, judging by the condition of the trail. It is fairly well marked, something I can really appreciate after some of the trails we tried to follow out west. It follows a gentle uphill grade through mixed northern hardwoods. For bingo, I found running pine, bluebead lily, wild sarsaparilla, and calico aster. I also photographed some leaves in fall condition for my upcoming tree course, including black cherry, red maple, sugar maple, mountain maple, striped maple, hazlenut, beech, hobblebush, and surprisingly, mountain holly in the deep woods. There were plenty of fungi around to photograph as well, including some boletes, some gilled mushrooms, turkey tails, and some coral mushrooms.
October 3, Groton, VT. 2.8 miles today, 4368 miles total.
Categories: bingo, 15-minute samples
I happened to note this morning that the most observed species in VT on iNaturalist is the monarch butterfly. Really? An insect that can only be found occasionally, and only for a few months of the year? This much observer bias is annoying. Yes, some great science projects logged monarchs throughout the state this year on iNaturalist, but still...monarch as the most observed species? I decided to do what I can to bring a little balance back but photographing trees more regularly. I decided to sample them every 15 minutes while I am out walking, shooting whichever 5 species are closest to me when my timer goes off. I got started with that this afternoon during my walk south of Noyes Pond in Groton.
I decided to started my walk in a clearing where I had stopped last year. I had actually walked a little beyond the clearing, but decided the road was getting a bit too sketchy for driving. Today I drove up the isolated road, which didn't appear to have seen any vehicular traffic in at least a month. I stopped just before the clearing to move a tree out of the road, briefly considering simply parking in the road if the tree was too heavy to move (it wasn't). I pulled off the "road bed" in the clearing. As I was gathering my camera and jacket for my walk, I heard a rumble, and a white pickup with NH plates and an older couple driving came up the road. I had passed them down on Noyes Pond Rd, but it seems they followed me up the hill. They didn't stop to ask where the road went, but just drove on by. Clunk, smash, bang went their truck, hitting quite a few of the large rocks. Somehow they cleared the bare culverts. The woods along the "road" were northern hardwoods, mostly sugar maple, yellow birch, and beech, with some black cherries, red maples, and striped maples mixed in. No monarchs. But I did find leafminers on goldenrod, yellow birch, blackberry, and avens. I turned around after about an hour and started heading back, guessing that the pickup actually must have made it through to the highway. But no, just before I made it back to the clearing, the truck came up the hill again, with the woman in front hanging on tight to the passenger seat door. They passed me, barely going any faster than I was walking, but again didn't stop to say hi or confirm that the road was indeed completely impassable.
I made it back to Ricker Pond to pick up my husband from his unicycle ride a little early, so I did some bingo hunting there. I found some evening primrose, cat tails, hemlock, swamp aster, meadow rue, and Indian tobacco to add to my bingo card.
You had me checking the most common species in New Jersey (monarch is #11). It's spotted lanternfly. The earliest record in NJ is almost exactly 4 years ago. But everyone is very excited. After that it's squirrels and robins. The most common plant is poison ivy, and I account for about 1/4 of those observations.
October 4, 2022. Billian Legion Park, Bound Brook, NJ.
It has been raining for days, and was doing so while I was deciding where to walk. I realized that I have no iNat records from this park, even though I used to go a lot when my kids were little. It has very little shade, so a rainy day was a good choice. But the gravel parking lot was a bit flooded in spots. I was able to walk on the railroad ties that surround it, but that brought me close to a big burdock plant (without realizing it). When I looked down a little later my purse (which made of a sort of tapestry) was covered in big burs. I thought those were all, but at home I leaned back against my desk chair while still wearing my sweater and found four more that had been stuck to the back of my shoulder (and somehow had not come off in the car?) Meanwhile my shoelaces still have a few Desmodium seeds attached from a walk on September 29.
At any rate, they have worked hard at planting a shrub border and even some young shade trees along a walking path that was not here the last time I visited. There was Caryopteris blooming which looked lovely even in the rain. I saw lots of birds: mourning doves, robins, flickers, house sparrows. The plantings were old enough that there were also a large variety of weedy Cyperus species and a Rorippa invading, as well as our usual parking lot weeds. I nice little walk, but I was very glad for my big umbrella.
October 5, 2022. Round Valley Reservoir, Clinton, NJ.
Katie had no school today as it's Yom Kippur, so she and I drove up to Round Valley, a big drinking water reservoir west of me. she loves birds, which is why I chose it, as it's supposed to be something of a hot spot. We got lucky in that the rain has finally stopped but the skies were still overcast. We were so dry this summer that the reservoir was drawn way, way down. We ended up walking probably a quarter mile out on the mud flats almost to the new edge of the water (though we finally gave up a few yards away when we were in danger of losing our shoes to the muck).
We saw our very first kestrel (I think) and also her first savannah sparrow, as well as gold finches, Canada geese, some kind of gull, turkey vultures, great egret, and juvenile double crested cormorants. There were deer as well, and empty freshwater mussel shells, plus at least three kinds of fungi on various stranded drift wood. And a big, fat brown-hooded owlet (I think) caterpillar. There were lots of different flatsedges (most of which I can't ID) and lots of different smartweeds (most of which I can). There was seedbox (a favorite) and a great big, blooming cleome way out in the middle of the mudflats.
But the most exciting finds (other than the kestrel) for me were my second ever spiny Sida and my first toothcup (Rotala ramosior), not only first for me, but first on iNat in NJ, and also in a county never recorded in BONAP. It's a state vulnerable species as well). I photographed two, but there were several more out there on the mudflats.
Uh oh! Attacked by wild burdock! I'm glad you escaped with your sweater mostly intact!
That sounds like a fun outing to Round Valley Reservoir. Congrats on the kestrel! I had never heard of spiny Sida or toothcup. I had to look them up. Great finds!
October 4, North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier, VT. 0.7 miles today, 4368.7 miles total.
Categories: arthropods
This afternoon I met up with Eve and Ed for our weekly bug walk; Ed's wife joined us as well. We met at the nature center and meandered on down to the community gardens in hopes of finding insects. We really had to search high and low for them, though. The temperature was in the low 60s and the sun was shining, but still, there weren't a lot of bugs. We found some flies, of course, and some grasshoppers and leafhoppers. We were checking out some galls on the burr oaks in the tree nursery at the back of the garden when Eve noticed there was a tiny wasp ovipositing into a gall. Very cool!
Oh wow, I've never seen them in the process of ovipositing!
October 5, 2022. Groton State Forest, Groton, VT. 2.7 miles today, 4371.4 miles total.
Categories: 15 minute samples, tracks, bingo
This afternoon my husband and I drove out to Groton. After dropping him and his unicycle off at Marshfield Pond for his unicycle descent to Ricker Pond, I continued on to Noyes Pond. I drove up the side trail near Noyes Pond, the same that I visited last week, but stopped at the trailhead for Moose Track trail. I had walked this trail some time last fall (or was it early spring?), so today I decided to walk some of the side trails. There were several ski trails heading north towards Noyes Pond. I walked down one called "Hermit thrush" and saw a hermit thrush, and another one called "Owl" and heard a barred owl. No loons on the "Loon" trail, though, but I did find my way all the way down to the pond, which was quite scenic in its peak fall foliage. Along the way, I saw a wood frog and caught a green frog, both quite chilled and sluggish. There were some great mud patches along the trail full of tracks, where I found raccoon, and coyote tracks, and the most giant bear tracks I have ever seen, plus plenty of of moose tracks. After seeing the giant bear tracks, I sang as I walked for a while because I definitely didn't want to encounter that particular bear. The forest was mostly northern hardwoods, so my 15 minute sample trees for the day included sugar maple, yellow birch, striped maple, black cherry, red spruce, and hobblebush. I added red osier dogwood to my bingo card.
October 6, 2022. Chickering Bog, Calais, VT. 3.5 miles today, 4374.9 miles total.
Categories: 15 minute samples, bingo, caterpillars
This afternoon I managed a quick jaunt up the road to Chickering Bog. I encountered several people along the trail, including a young woman in a long white crocheted dress with a young man in a suit coat carrying a backpack with a giant bouquet of flowers. The day was delightfully warm and sunny, with peak foliage hanging on. I was relishing perhaps the last day of T-shirt weather for the season. There were loads of woolly bears along the trail, and alas, quite a few dead on the road as well. I also found some American dagger moth caterpillars, plus out on the boardwalk, an autumn meadowhawk dragonfly. Also on the boardwalk were a squished grasshopper and wasp. How? Why? I sat on the end of the boardwalk for quite a while appreciating the warmth and watching the dragonflies still flitting over the pond. If this wasn't the last day for such revelry, such fine days are certainly numbered. As I got up to leave I heard a large rustle on the edge of the bog. Was that a flash of black fir? Indeed it was, as a bear, a medium-sized but fully adult bear started heading right for me. I greeted it with a loud "Hello! How are you?" It stopped, looked at me and squinted, confirming that bears really do have lousy eyesight since it was all of 30' away. I began singing my bear song ("Bear bear, go away, I don't want to see you today!) and it turned around and splashed back off into the woods again. Bingo finds for the day were dyer's polypore, ghost pipes, and black cherry. Fifteen minute samples included sugar maples, red maples, white ash, white cedar, red spruce, balsam fir, yellow birch, striped maple, buckthorn, tamaracks, and white pine.
Well done with the bear! If I am singing while hiking it's always because I'm worried about bear. I love the appropriately named hiking trails as well.
October 6, 2022. Hoffhiemer Pond, Warren, NJ
What with one thing and another I had very little time for a walk this afternoon, so I went to the park in the center of town. The pond here has no name that I know of, but the whole park used to be the Hoffheimer estate, so I have decided that's what it's called. We are just getting the beginnings of fall color here, but the Virginia creeper is stunning. There were pretty dogwoods, burning bush, oak, hickory, ash, and Japanese aralia as well. The turtle people tell me I saw both a cooter and several painted turtles (as far as I was concerned it was a little guy and three medium-sized). Then there was an active little warbler-thing in the willow tree. I couldn't see it well, but I kept shooting in its general direction and got enough to ID it: my first northern parula. Exciting.
Oooh! Northern parula! Way to go! That's on the Eastern United States bingo card this month.
October 7, 2022. Bliss Rd, East Montpelier, VT. 2.1 miles today, 4377 miles total.
Categories: 15 minute samples, bingo, invasives
This afternoon I drove out to Bliss Rd in East Montpelier to look for spindle bush for my bingo card. I had seen quite a few specimens growing there a few years ago, and indeed, I found one today. I also found burning bush, Japanese knotweed, and buckthorn. My 15-minute samples today included sugar maple, buck thorn, red maple, honeysuckle, fir, and quaking aspen.
October 8, 2022. Nebraska Notch, Stowe, VT. 5.4 miles today, 4382.4 miles total.
Categories: non-quite-random samples
Today my husband and I drove out to Waterbury and then Stowe for a glacial geology seminar with the Montpelier nature center. There were 6 other students in the group. We hiked up the Nebraska Notch trail, pausing along the way to discuss glacial features like fans and bowls. The temperature was about 20 degrees lower than predicted, and we had snow flurries flying around when we first arrived at the trail head. The trail bounced around through the woods just above the private road to the private trout club, then climbed the mountain, a side trail of Mount Mansfield. The scenery was superb, and there were many other folks on the trail with us. We kept up a very fast pace (at least for me) up the mountain. I tried hard not to stop to photograph anything on my own, but at every discussion stop, I captured the closest 5 woody plants. Samples included: sugar maple, red maple, hemlock, hobblebush, red spruce, white ash, yellow birch, black cherry. After the hike, we got caught in the biggest traffic jam we have ever seen in 26 years of living in VT. It took us 1 hour to drive 4 miles through Waterbury to get back on the highway to go home.
October 9, 2022. North Branch, Montpelier, VT. 1.8 miles today, 4384.2 miles total.
Categories: not-quite-random samples
Today my husband and I drove down to the nature center in Montpelier for the second day of a our geology seminar. It was 40 degrees and raining when we first got there, so we went over slides indoors for several hours. Before lunch we took a jaunt through the nature center property to examine some glacial scrape marks on bedrock and do a core sample on a fan. After lunch, we drove up to the Wrightsville Dam along the North Branch to see some lake sediment and varvs, then toured a private property to puzzle over some sand and glacial till. I overdid on the hike yesterday and was not able to walk today, so I had to scoot along on my electric scooter. Woody plant samples today included: sugar maple, red maple, hemlock, hobblebush, speckled alder, quaking aspen, and white pine.
October 10, 2022. George Rd, Calais, VT. 1.3 miles today, 4385.5 miles total.
Categories: bingo, leafminers, 15-minute samples
I was still moving slowly today, but I managed a short walk down George Rd and to the bottom of Peck Hill. I was searching for Parectopa plantaginisella for my bingo card. I recently realized that this little micro moth is actually a familiar leafminer, the one that makes puffy mines on Erigeron. I was delighted to find a mine, which completed my Calais bingo card. I also found miners on colts foot and balsam poplar. My 15-minute woody plant samples included red maple, hemlock, grape, honeysuckle, yellow birch, and mountain ash. I also found some white scale insects on dogwood. And I ran into a neighbor, who I stopped to chat with.
October 11, 2020. Adamant, VT. 0.8 miles today, 4386.3 miles total.
Categories: bingo, arthropods, galls and leafminers
This afternoon my husband and I drove down to Adamant for an outing. While he rode around Sodom Pond on his unicycle, I strolled around the church and the gardens looking for bugs. I found leafminers on oak, baptisia, lilac, and ironwood, all of whose host plants were cultivated. I also found galls on asters, alder, and willow. Bingo finds were butter-and-eggs and ironwood. Arthropod finds were a bumblebee, some Ceratina bees, honeybees, house flies, cluster flies, Cuerna striata, bog leafhoppers, autumn meadowhawks, paper wasps, lots and lots of Asian ladybugs, and a half black monarch chrysalis. One of my favorite finds of the day was a cucumber spider eating a blue fuzzy butt aphid. I chatted a bit with a friend from Adamant who I haven't seen in a few months.
October 12, 2020. Groton State Park, Groton, VT. 1 miles today, 4387.3 miles total.
Categories: galls, leafminers, bingo
This afternoon my husband and I drove up to Marshfield Pond for an outing. While he rode his unicycle down to Ricker Pond on the rail trail, I walked the section of the trail between Marshfield Pond and Lanesboro. This is the very flat section with beaver ponds on both sides of the road. The weather started off sunny and 60s, but quickly clouded over. I was hoping to find some insects, especially bees, but the only one I found was a darner resting on a tree. I found galls on goldenrod, alder, bush honeysuckle, willow and clematis, and leafminers on clematis, bush honeysuckle, willow, and black cherry. Leafminers are getting harder to find since there are fewer and fewer leaves remaining. I added white ash, elm, bracken fern, Christmas fern, and black-capped chickadee to my bingo card. And as I was stooping to photograph the darner, and horse and rider came up behind me. The horse was quite curious and friendly. I don't know much about horses, but this one seemed much more interested in greeting me than walking down the road. He was a very big horse and needed lots of encouragement to walk down this long stretch of straight road.
October 13, 2022. St. Augustine's Cemetery, Montpelier, VT. 0.4 miles today, 4387.7 miles total.
Categories: arthropods
This afternoon I met up with Eve and Ed for our weekly bug walk. The weather report called for showers starting at 2 pm, but a drizzle had started by noon when we arrived at the cemetery. The temperature was about 60F. We managed to find a few insects, but it took a lot of searching. There were some spiders on the gravestones, including a jumping spider, some crab spiders, and a funnel spider. We found some wasps and bugs on calico aster. Jumping through the grass were some fall crickets and leafhoppers. Ed found a darner resting on a tree stump. Ordinarily darners are very hard to shoot since they never stop flying. But now is the time to hunt for them--they're not warm enough to fly.
October 15, 2022. Emslie Rd, Calais VT and Groton State Park, Groton, VT. 7.3 miles today, 4395 miles total.
Categories: road kill, bingo
This morning I met up with a friend for our Saturday morning hike, the first Saturday morning hike for me in months. We started at the Calais town hall and walked up Emslie Rd. We had a lot of catching up to do, so I tried not to get too distracted shooting photos. Still, I paused to capture any road kill or road crossers that we found, including a toad, a frog, and a tiny salamander. We also found a live red eft and a woolly bear in the road. Bingo finds this morning were white baneberry and Phragmites.
In the afternoon I met up with another friend for a hike in Groton. We started at Big Deer Campground and hiked up the Hosmore Brook trail that I hiked a week ago. After pausing at Osmore Pond to watch the dragonflies and fish, we returned down the Coldwater Brook Trail. The weather was great for this time of year, low 60s and sunny. It's definitely past peak foliage, though, with lots of leaves on the ground making the trail a bit treacherous since we couldn't see the rocks in the trail. At the lake we noted that most of the trees had lost their leaves. Nevertheless, it was still quite scenic. We found several dagger moth caterpillars in the trail, and I picked up a goldthread for my bingo card. I also found a pair of mating Bibionidae flies on a hobblebush leaf.
An hour-long traffic jam in Waterbury? Although if you told me it happened sometime I would have guessed a Saturday afternoon in early October...
Your geology class sounded really neat. Molly is taking geology at college this semester (but couldn't tell me what a varv was). And Parectopa on Erigeron? I'll have to look closer. I've only seen the one on black locust. I've also never seen either a cucumber spider or a blue fuzzy butt aphid.
I love the curious horse. We are just beginning to get fall color here but it looks like it might be a pretty year.
October 8, 2022, Long Branch and Freehold, NJ and Susquehanna State Park, MD.
This morning I had a funeral in Long Branch (the brother of a coworker on the rescue squad) and then drove to join my family at my husband's aunt's horse farm in Maryland.
At the church I found several dead spotted lanterflies outside the bathroom at the base of the basement stairs. They must have flown in the open door at some point.
I stopped several times on the way across the state to the Turnpike. First was an open field with a row of small planted trees. This is the coastal plain so has many species I don't see at home, my favorite of which was Maryland golden aster. And then there were birds: tons of yellow-rumped warblers, blue jays, a catbird, and a rare one for me: ruby crowned kinglet.
Next was a park with water fountains for children that I'd not been to in 20 years. I did not linger long but walked through a maintained meadow (that was mostly mugwort) and found to my surprise, lots of Viola tricolor blooming. By my car there were a pair of meadow mushrooms as well. After that was a pond I'd not been to before, where they were about to have some kind of festival. The bank of the pond is very worn down, but I still saw three species of smartweed, both spatterdocks (standard and variegated), a Ludwigia, and purplestemmed beggarticks. I also stopped at Monmouth Battlefield for the restrooms, but did not find much of interest, just common lawn weeds.
In Maryland I stopped along the bank of the Susquehanna River where there is an old mill. Here I found wingstem, willow oak, and floating marsh pennywort.
October 9, 2022, Near Baltimore, MD.
Early this morning Katie and I drove to the lower dam on the Loch Raven Reservoir to look for birds. At first all we saw were geese, mallards, and a cormorant. But then there was a bald eagle sitting at the top of a dead snag! and then an osprey (her favorite bird) flew by. Further down the river there was a meadow with small trees and we found tons of phoebes, our first white throated sparrow of the year, yellow rumped warblers, a ruby crowned kinglet, robin, titmouse, and as we were leaving a red tailed hawk. Plus the porcelainberry was fruiting and very pretty and there was nodding beggarticks in the middle of the river, escaped Chinese pennisetum, rough horsetail, osage orange trees, and some lingering milkweed bugs as well.
In the afternoon I drove down to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, stopping at Lake Roland on the way (hackberry nipple galls, beechdrops, linden viburnum). At the museum I rode a trolley (streetcar) and then walked around and found two stray cats, paper mulberry, cocklebur, and then below the train bridge both blunt woodsia and purplestem cliffbrake.
On the way home I took a detour to a serpentine barren at Soldier's Delight (I assume the delight was the lack of woody plants to march through) where I saw blackjack oak, Virginia pine, lyreleaf rock cress, slender knotweed, probably serpentine aster, and blazing star.
Glad you documented the spotted lanternflies that came to the funeral! And 3 species of smartweed on the edge of a single pond requires sharp eyes. I love the ruby-crowned kinglets with their "Ranger Rick, Ranger Rick, Ranger Rick" calls in the spring. They're harder to find this time of year when they aren't singing. Your trip to the streetcar museum sounds like a lot of fun. Well done on the fern finds!
October 16, 2022. Ricker Campgound, Groton, VT. 3.9 miles today, 4398.9 miles total.
Categories: bingo, 15 minute samples
It was sunny this afternoon, so my husband and I drove to Groton for an outing. Hunting season is bearing down on us, so we are determined to get out in the woods every day we can. I dropped him off at Marshfield Pond for his unicycle ride down to Ricker Pond. Then I drove down to Ricker to walk the campground. I still feel pretty limited to flat walks only and I've been meaning to explore the Ricker campsites, so today was a good day for it. It never ceases to amaze me how the campsites in our state parks seem to be laid out without care for privacy. Having spent the summers of my formative years in a campground in NH where all of the sites had complete privacy, and most had waterfront access I guess I have very high standards. When a campsite is right beside the road so you have to put your tent behind your vehicle for privacy, or when one site looks directly at another, it makes my skin crawl. Maybe such proximity makes city people more comfortable. In any case, out of the 50 or so sites in Ricker, only about 3 ranked 5 stars out of 5 by my standards. So much potential there, yet so many sites are simply angled wrong so they that look directly into someone else's site. And then there is the line of tent sites right beside the highway. I also finally found and walked the Ricker Pond foot trail, which connects the handful of private cabins to the campground. The trail goes right through the yards of the cabins, just steps away from the doors, so mid-October was a good time to check out the trail--all the cabins were shut for the season. On the map, the trail goes out to a small peninsula, but on the ground, there was a big beaver dam with no way to continue walking out to the last 2 cabins, at least, not that I could find. I found galls on red maple and blackberry, leafminers on bunchberry, blackberry, and chokecherry. I also found a ladybug, a red velvet mite, a dagger caterpillar, and a garter snake. My 15-minute samples included sugar maple, red maple, fir, white pine, striped maple, bush honeysuckle, white cedar, beech, hazelnut, and speckled alder. I added bittersweet nightshade and heart-leaved aster to my bingo card.
October 17, 2022. Peacham Bog, Groton, VT. 3.6 miles today, 4402.5 miles total.
Categories: bingo, 15 minute samples
This afternoon my husband and I defied the weather reports and drove up to Groton. I dropped him off at Marshfield Pond with his unicycle for a ride down to Ricker Pond. Then I drove on to Boulder Beach Rd and up the trail towards Coldwater Brook. I parked across from the shooting range and walked to the Peacham Bog trailhead. It had started to mist as I dropped my husband off, and by the time I parked there was light rain. I headed up into the woods, though, and the rain was hardly noticeable under the trees. I haven't walked this trail in about 15 years, and I think I only made it to the top once because I always started before at the Nature Center. Parking along Coldwater Brook cuts off perhaps a mile, making it much easier to get up to the Bog and back in under 3 hours. The first part of the trail is gently uphill, but quite, quite rocky. It was treacherous today with the leaves down, but quite scenic. I had to follow the trail blazes carefully because otherwise it was hard to detect the trail at all. Once up at the bog I remembered that rhodora was on my bingo card for Groton, and this would be the only place to see it. I remembered that last year when I visited the bog from the other side, I managed to find a rhodora plant, but I couldn't remember what it looked like in fall, just that it lost all its leaves. I searched and searched for a naked or different looking rhododendron, but couldn't find anything but sheep laurel. Still, I did find some Labrador tea for the bingo card, and I also added sugar maple and Paraclemensia acerifoliella to the card. Fifteen minute samples today included sugar maple, red maple, white pine, red spruce, black spruce, fuzzy blueberry, hobblebush, yellow birch, sheep laurel, Labrador tea, bog rosemary, and striped maple.
October 19, 2022. Elm St and Dover Rd, Montpelier VT. 0.4 miles today, 4402.9 miles total.
Categories: bingo and arthropods
Today I had lunch at the back of the Elm St cemetery along the banks of the North Branch River in between a morning errand and our weekly bug walk. Someone had left a white plastic chair in the Vinca minor and weeds, which I enjoyed sitting in while I dined. As I ate, I noticed a strand of bittersweet in the branches over my head. Bittersweet is not very common in this part of Vermont, but with the tree leaves mostly down, it stood out since it is still holding its leaves. Before leaving the cemetery I also collected highbush cranberry and selfheal for my bingo card.
Then I drove up to Dover St to meet Ed and Eve for our bug walk. We wandered around Ed's yard, starting with the compost bin and through the gardens, then we crossed the street to a friend's house to search her yard for bugs. The temperature was about 50F and mostly cloudy, so we had to search very hard. We managed to find fruit flies in the compost, including a mating pair, plus some leafhoppers, an Asian ladybug, a twice-stabbed bug, and a few Tachinid flies. We found some isopods under a piece of wood and centipede that was quite camera-shy. Across the street we found more fruit flies, another bug, some more Tachinids, and a lone paper wasp trying to feed at an aster. I also found jewelweed and dandelion for my bingo card.
I grew up with campgrounds with only a little privacy, but at least in woods and with some space around you. 30 years ago, though, my husband and I drove up the coast from North Carolina and camped at Delaware Seashores State Park. There was no internet back then, and the books we had simply listed campgrounds. It turned out to be (and apparently still is) a sandy acre with a paved loop road and not a single woody plant. Each spot is simply a space for one car and a space behind it to pitch a tent. You were as close to one another as if you'd parked in every-other space in a large parking lot. So weird.
Labrador tea, bog rosemary, hobblebush, striped maple, all four thrill me when I find them, I so rarely see them. And I can't tell black from red spruce. We have plenty of fruit flies here, though, flying around the kitchen. We've been catching them with vinegar-dish soap-sugar but they seem endless.
October 10, 2022. from Fallston, MD to Warren, NJ
Today Katie and I drove home. We stopped first at the Conowingo Dam to see if we could see the eagles. Only one today, but dozens upon dozens of black vultures, even more cormorants, and uncountable numbers of gulls were there. I found pawpaw and purple morning glory, and photographed a fisherman's catch of a striped bass and a walleye.
Next was the Goat Hill serpentine barren, just over the border in Pennsylvania. we walked down through a powerline cut and back up through some lovely woods. There were mimosas in the parking lot, then Scribner's panic grass, serpentine aster, New Jersey tea, bear oak, giant sunflower, lyre-leaved rock cress, Virginia pine, slender knotweed, low St. John's wort, and maidenhair fern in the barrens (and woods). I also saw a big patch of honey mushrooms, and there were a ton of butterflies: variegated fritillaries, pearl crescent, clouded and orange sulfurs, cabbage white, and a sachem plus a green stripped grasshopper, a thread waisted wasp, and more black vultures.
We contemplated stopping at Longwood Gardens but neither of us really felt up to it. Too cultivated for me. Instead we drove extensively through Jockey Hollow National Park, stopping at an overlook to take some photos. This is pretty heavily disturbed with not many surprises, but there was mile a minute weed and some redbud. From there it was just a stop for dinner and a stretch.
Thanks for the warning about Delaware Seashores. Yikes! I've spent a lot of time contemplating this summer about the concept of camping compared to homelessness. That is, how is one acceptable and the other not? In Montpelier the city council recently passed an ordinance about where in the city "camping" will be legal. I think they decided anywhere is legal, so long as it is on public property, not in a school yard, and not obstructing traffic or sidewalks. I haven't tried "camping" in town yet, though.
October 20, 2022. Moose Track trail, Groton, VT. 3.5 miles today, 4406.4 miles total.
Categories: bingo and 15 minute samples
This afternoon I dropped my husband off at Marshfield Pond for his unicycle ride down the rail trail, then continued on to Will Goodwin Rd (Rd? Ha!) just east of Noyes Pond. I drove Will Goodwin to Signal Mt "Rd", then continued on in the car to where Signal Mt headed uphill to Moose Track trail. The surface of the trails were filled with leaves, which made driving a bit treacherous. I'm not even sure if motorized vehicles are allowed on these trails, at least in summer, but I didn't see any signs saying they were forbidden. With the leaves down it was quite difficult to guess where the rocks might be. And the Signal Mt was in much worse shape than last time I was here a few weeks ago. The spots that were dry mud holes then were now filled with several inches of water today. Fortunately, I was in the Rav4 and got through OK, until the last 30' when I hit bottom at a good clip (I was going fast so as not to get stuck in a mud hole). But the car is OK...I think.
The trail headed uphill for about 1/4 mile, then opened up to a clearing with signs for a ski trail loop towards the wetland I visited last spring, and another pointing to a trail towards Spruce Mt. Who knew? I guess some of my friends knew since there are a few observations along the spruce mountain trail, but not enough to really guess that a trail goes through the woods. There were lots of Bibioniid flies near the bottom of the trail, landing on every surface, some copulating on leaves. I also found a few leafhoppers, some galls on goldenrods, and leafminers on goldenrods, coltsfoot, and jewelweed. I found beech midget and Nemorimyza posticata (leafminer) for my bingo card. 15 minute samples today included sugar maple, beech, hobblebush, red maple, raspberry, red spruce, fir, and red elder.
October 21, 2022. Cross Vermont Trail, Groton, VT. 5.5 miles today, 4411.9 miles total.
Categories: bingo and 15 minute samples
This afternoon I dropped my husband off at Marshfield Pond for his unicycle ride down to Ricker Pond, then I drove down to Ricker Pond myself to explore the bike path from Ricker Pond down to Rt. 302. This is a continuation of the rail trail, but hardly anyone ever rides it or even knows about it. They simply begin and end their rides at the parking lot at Ricker Pond. The trail continues several hundred feet down Rt 232 and across the highway from the Ricker Pond parking lot. There were no iNaturalist observations along the trail. The weather was sunny and clear with temperatures in the mid-50s, and the beginning of the trail was quite scenic with all the leaves down. The trail runs parallel to the highway, but about 50-100' above it. And it runs through the bottoms of people's yards, which is probably why it doesn't get used much. The issue is dogs, which are never a problem in the park. About 1/2 mile down the road I heard dogs barking ahead and someone screaming. A woman rode by on a bike and it didn't look like she was screaming. I guessed that the screamer must have been the dogs' owner yelling at her dogs. Sure enough, a few more steps down the path I saw the dogs coming at me. One was a roly-poly beagle mix, the other a nervous pit bull. The beagle came right up to me wagging its tail. It immediately got between me and the pit bull, keeping the pit bull at bay while the owner continued to scream at them from her porch 70' away. Both dogs took off down the path in front of me. The owner called out to me saying that the dogs would probably take the side path and return to the house. I wasn't so sure. As we got out of view of the house, it became clear that the dogs were quite happy to have a chance to go on a walk. They stayed with me, more or less, the entire rest of the way down the trail to the highway, where they ran out into the road and also went sniffing along in other people's yards. When I turned around to head back to Ricker, they turned around with me. The pit bull gradually became a little more comfortable with me. When I thought it would almost approach to sniff, it looked at me, then started biting the beagle's ears, which seemed to be a clear transference of aggression. The beagle wasn't happy about the ear biting. How could these people let such a mean dog beat up on their sweet beagle, I wondered. When we got back to their house, the dogs continued on in front of me, not yet ready to end their walk. A new dog appeared in front of us, a german shephard mix wearing a fluorescent don't shoot coat. It barked aggressively at me and started to approach. I looked at the beagle for reassurance, but it looked away. This time, the pit bull intervened and chased off the shepherd each time it tried to approach me, giving me an entirely new perspective on the pit bull. Maybe not such an evil creature after all...The shepherd eventual left off, and the 3 of us continued down the path towards Ricker. As the end of the path approached, I wondered how I was ever going to persuade the dogs to return home. Then, just 20' before the end, both dogs took off into the woods at a run. The beagle began baying. They were out of sight up the hill, on someone else's private property. Not my dogs, not my land, I decided to wish them well and continue my own walk without them. I continued past the Ricker Pond parking lot and up the pond towards the campground. I could still hear the beagle baying from 1/2 mile away. I'm assuming they eventually got home OK. It was just so hard to understand how owners could let their dogs run loose when they live so close to the highway--don't they love their dogs? Or perhaps they let their dogs run loose precisely to deter anyone who might like to use the bike path that runs through their yards.
Once in the campground I continued over to the boat launch and beyond in order to pick up some trailing arbutus for my bingo card. Other bingo finds for the day were white pine, balsam fir, speckled alder, and rabbit foot clover. I also found several Bibionid flies, some syprhids, and an autumn meadowhawk. Fifteen minute samples today included sugar maple, red maple, striped maple, beech, white pine, white cedar, red spruce, balsam fir, quaking aspen, blackberry, raspberry, and bush honeysuckle.
Wow, I'm very glad you're not particularly nervous about dogs. I run into loose dogs in parks often, but they are always followed by someone "walking" them illegally off leash, who makes an effort to call them back and apologizes. Essentially all the dogs are either friendly or uninterested in me. If someone saw a dog with no owner here they would either catch it, check the collar and call the owner, or call the police. You simply do not see loose dogs here. Cats, yes, but not dogs. Then again, there are often aggressive, barky dogs with invisible fences who come rushing at me across their yards when I am walking and give me a scare before they hit the edge of the invisible fence and stop.
October 12, 2022 Washington Valley Park, Martinsville, NJ
A quick stroll at the local park today. The fall color is getting lovely. Queen Anne's lace; clearweed; false nettle; low and dotted smartweeds; waterpepper; Canada, bluestem and zigzag goldenrods; white wood and common blue asters were all blooming, as well as a surprise: a Cleome in the middle of the floodplain of the stream here.
October 15, 2022 Doylestown, PA
I drove down and picked Becca up from college today. She's a freshman at Delaware Valley University, and I took a few moments first to check out two little parks nearby. The first was on the edge of a stream and the grass there was wet, so I didn't wander far. Some asters and low smartweed were blooming and I saw a clotbur, which is not common for me. There was a very pretty ash all covered in yellow as well.
The second park has an absolutely enormous wooden play structure for children that I had always meant to take my kids to when they were little, but it's an hour from home and I never got around to it. Everything here was very well-used, and I was more focused on finding the bathrooms, so all I photographed here was common lawn weeds.
October 17, 2022 Washington Valley Park, Martinsville, NJ.
I was back in the local park, but at the farther parking lot today, looking at the shallow end of the reservoir here. I shot lots of fall colors. I also found wooly beech aphids (which I just found out are also called boogie-woogie aphids, what a great name!) even before knowing that, I stopped to poke at them and make them do their little dance. There were birds here, as I'd hoped: a ruby crowned kinglet (this seems to be the year for them for me), a jay, but then a female purple finch and a myrtle warbler, both very uncommon for me. And then I found an interesting fungus that turned out to be coral-pink Merulius. Very pretty.
October 18, 2022 Dead River Wetlands, Lyons, NJ
There is a power-line cut here through wetlands that have some unusual plants. They are replacing the high-tension powerlines with bigger ones on bigger poles and have laid down a wood-decked road all along the cut to do so. But I could see they were working about 2 miles away by the next road west, with no vehicles parked here, so I figured I could use the road deck to get to a section that's very wet and I usually can only peer at. It worked, though some of the most interesting stuff was covered by the decking. Luckily, I was only a little way from the real road, though, as all of a sudden a huge flatbed tractor trailer came rumbling down the road from the east, carrying a section of one of the new poles. I hurried off the deck while he stopped at the road crossing, whew! But I didn't stay much longer as I knew I'd been trespassing and was feeling a little guilty.
In then end I didn't see much I don't usually. There are New England asters here, which are always nice to find, plus at least two other kinds I can't ID. Chicory was still blooming and an Alsike clover, plus some smartweeds. I thought I hadn't seen any insects at all but when I got home found I'd accidentally shot both and ant and a fly on various flowers.
October 19. 2022. Watchung Lake, Watchung, NJ
I drove my father-in-law to get his first cataract repaired today. The surgery center is across from this lake, so after I ran an errand I came and waited here. Didn't have long to wait in the end; they were very efficient.
Here I found geese and mallards, but the usual gulls and vultures were entirely missing. Smartweeds and asters were blooming and porcelainberry was in fruit, very pretty (shame it's such an aggressive weed). Here they also have shortleaved spikesedge, and kidney leaved mud plantain. Otherwise I just enjoyed another beautiful, blue-skied fall day.
It's so much fun to find unexpected plants, like the cleome and clotbur. I've never poked any boogie-woogie aphids. Now I'm going to have to do it because I didn't know that they danced. Your experience at Dead River sounds a bit harrowing. It's just so tempting to go in and check a place out when all looks quiet and you know it's going to be open for business soon.
October 22, 2022. Marshfield Pond, Marshfield, VT and Montpelier Bike Path, Montpelier, VT. 4.4 miles today, 4416.3 miles total.
Categories: bingo and 15 minute samples
This morning I met up with 2 friends on the rail trail by Marshfield Pond. We had discussed meeting right at the boat put-in for the pond, but one of the others got confused and stopped at Bailey Pond, which is the small pond below Marshfield, right where I usually drop off my husband for his unicycle ride. And then the other friend parked there as well when she saw the car, so I walked down the trail to meet them, then turned around and we walked together past Marshfield Pond all the way to the beginning of the beaver ponds. We met a trapper down by the beaver ponds, setting his traps for beaver and river otter on state lands on this, the first day of trapping season. The thought of trapping beaver and otter makes my skin crawl, but we had a civil conversation with him, and he was full of all sorts of arguments on why it's good to trap beaver. My bingo finds along the trail included an aster leafminer, greater celandine, burdock leafminer, and virgin's bower leafminer. Fifteen minute samples included sugar maple, beech, balsam fir, blackberry, yellow birch, white birch, and red maple.
In the afternoon I met up with Eve and Ed to do some scootering on the bike path in Montpelier. Ed started off on roller skates, but then decided to try a scooter as well. We scooted all the way to the water treatment plant and back, pausing to watch some of the girls' soccer game at the highschool field along the way. During the ride, I managed to find some ragweed for my bingo card, and a wild burr oak (a volunteer since we don't have anything other than red oaks here naturally), as well as a few bees in some fall dandelion.
October 23, 2022. Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, Morrisville, VT. 2 miles today, 4418.3 miles total.
Categories: bingo, 15 minute samples, invasives, birds
This afternoon my husband and I celebrated the warm but not so sunny weather by driving up to Morrisville to check out the rail trail there. The state has taken on the project of finishing a rail trail across the entire stretch of northern Vermont from Swanton to St. Johnsbury. We have the Swanton section and the St. Johnsbury section. But this was my first time on this middle section from Morrisville to Cambridge. With luck, all the connecting pieces will be completed by early next year, so then we will have a huge stretch of trail to explore. Today I walked the section from Oxbow Park in Morrisville 1.7 miles east to the end of the current trail. I also walked the margins of the park, where I was surprised to find a butternut grove, silver maples, and sycamores. There was a sign at the back of the park that explained that the original name for this area was Butternut Island, and that it was a sacred place for the Native Americans who lived here once. I found leafminers today on coltsfoot, thimbleberry, black cherry, sumac, honeysuckle, and soapwort and galls on goldenrod, dogwood, and red maple. Purple loosestrife, Japanese knotweed, phragmites, Japanese Lilac, burning bush, and crown vetch were all prominent. Fifteen minute samples today included black locust, American elm, Norway maple, red maple, quaking aspen, honeysuckle, gray birch, apple, sugar maple, hawthorn, balsam fir, red maple, yellow birch ,white pine, sumac, Virginia creeper, grape, box elder, and pin oak (cultivated). I picked up quite a few items for my bingo card, including herb robert, gray birch, English plantain, giant goldenrod gall, sumac apple gall, apple leaf skeletonizer, and euthamia spot.
October 25, 2022. Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, Hyde Park, VT. 5.5 miles today, 4423.8 miles total.
Categories: galls, leafminers, 15-minute samples, birds, bingo
This afternoon my husband and I drove up to Hyde Park to continue our exploration of the rail trail. We both set off west on the trail. He made it as far as Johnson on his unicycle, but I only managed about 2.5 miles out. The trail started off through some interesting woods and along the Lamoille River, then had a very long stretch between some industrial corn fields. Just when I thought the corn fields were getting a bit dull, I discovered a northern short-tailed shrew dead on the trail for my bingo card. I found leafminers on raspberry and blackberry today and galls on goldenrod, honeysuckle, sumac and possibly wild cucumber. Invasive plants today included Japanese barberry, burning bush, Norway maple, bishop's weed, Scotch pine and Lamium. I managed to shoot some birds before the battery in my larger camera died, including juncos, robins, mergansers, mourning doves, and a red-winged blackbird. Fifteen minute samples today featured sumacs, also white pine, white cedar, black raspberry, blackberry, beech, gray birch, butternut, white ash, honeysuckle, American elm, sugar maple, grape, hawthorn, box elder, apple, alder, hemlock, and yellow birch. And I found a few slippery elms by the river. I found some woolly alder aphids and poked at them, but they didn't dance. What do you have to do to make them dance? They were being eaten by a yellow jacket and some ladybugs.
October 27, 2022. Chapin Rd, Calais, VT. 4.5 miles today, 4427.8 miles total.
Categories: galls and leafminers, 15-minute samples, surprises
This afternoon I headed out through the woods behind our property. I used to explore these woods at least several times a week, especially when my husband and I only had one car, which left me at home without a vehicle. But in the past 10 years or so, I've been walking in other places. When we first moved here 25 years ago, there was a big open field above ours. The field began to grow in, and now all traces of it are gone. I tried to make my way across where the field used to be, navigating by topology rather than familiar views, which are gone now. I managed to get somewhat turned around, but recognized where I was when I saw one of our neighbor's posted signs along what used to be an old logging road between his property and the property behind our house. Except, the logging road is gone now, too, and just his line of posted signs remains. Once having found his property line, I followed it along to the town path (which used to have a wooden sign at the end that said "Town Highway", but now that sign has rotted away). I followed the path south to the new town forest, the section that Charlie and I had discussed exploring last spring, but we never quite got together. There was a semblance of a path blazed through it, or perhaps the blazes were logging blazes. In any case, they didn't go very far off the trail. I went back to the trail and continued on up to where it meets Chapin Rd. When I first used to walk this trail, it was a straight continuation of Chapin Rd, after the last house on the road. Now the trail comes out to a very well maintained new road, Blackberry Hill Rd, which is a seamless continuation of Chapin Rd. What is now Blackberry Hill Rd was once the short tractor trail to a brush pile past the last house. And the pond in front of the last house on Chapin is gone, the space now occupied by a fancy new sugar house. Chapin Rd now feels like a "regular" dirt road that goes somewhere, rather than a remote, isolated dead end. It's still scenic, nevertheless.
I found plenty of leatherwood in the new town forest, as well as some sizeable daphne bushes. Along Lightening Ridge Rd on my way home I found an autumn olive bush, which was surprising since we don't see much of that here--I don't recall having seen any in Calais before. I found leafminers today on coltsfoot, balsam poplar and perhaps bishop's weed (if that truly was a leafminer) and galls on goldenrod and coltsfoot. Fifteen minute samples today included white pine, fir, spruce, elm, buckthorn, beech, hemlock, hop hornbeam, yellow birch, willow, white pine, trembling aspen, white cedar, black raspberry, basswood, paper birch, red oak,big toothed aspen, honeysuckle, apple, alder, and red maple.
October 28, 2022. Dover Rd, Montpelier, VT. 1.8 miles today, 4429.6 miles total.
Categories: arthropods
This afternoon I met up with Eve and Ed for our weekly bug walk. Last week we had intended to walk up to the water tower above Dover Rd but never made it past Ed's neighbor's garden. This week we headed straight up the hill towards the water tower. Although we had bright sun, the temperature was in the low 50s F and bugs were hard to find. We had hoped that the water tower, a giant round cement tank on the ground, would serve as a heat sink and that there would be some bugs on it. At first, we hardly saw anything on the tower, but gradually we realized that if we looked very closely, there were indeed a few bugs on the tower. We managed to find a grasshopper, a small caterpillar, 4-5 monarch chrysalises, a brown lacewing, several flies, several small spiders, and an assassin bug.
October 29, 2022. Railroad Bed West, Marshfield, VT and Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, Hyde Park, VT. 11.4 miles today, 4441 miles total.
Categories: 15 minute samples, road kill
This morning I met up with 2 friends for our Saturday morning hike. We met along the rail trail in Marshfield, right where I usually drop off my husband for his unicycle rides. We headed west along the trail and walked down to the next intersection and a little beyond before looping back to Bailey Pond. I tried to stay focused on the walk and not get too distracted with photos. Still, I did stop for my 15 minute samples, which included yellow birch, hemlock, fir big toothed aspen, raspberry, red maple, honeysuckle, elm, daphne, sugar maple, sumac, trembling aspen, hazelnut. And I brought my friends over to admire the young (5" dba) American chestnut I had discovered along the road a few years back. I also photographed some dead snakes in the road, a garter snake and 3 red-bellied snakes.
In the afternoon, my husband and I returned to Hyde Park to continue exploring the rail trail there. This time, while my husband rode his unicycle, I rode my electric scooter so that I could reach some territory beyond the 2.5 miles out that I walked the other day. Since I was moving fast, I took samples every 5 minutes instead of every 15 minutes. The samples included hemlock, white pine, sugar maple, grape, honeysuckle, sumac, elm, alder, willow, blackberry, elderberry, box elder, apple, basswood, cottonwood, yellow birch, hawthorn, and pin cherry.
interesting that the water tower was an effective heat sink and bug attractor. I tend to think of those things more in spring than fall. And so many dead snakes, wow!
10/30/22. Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, Cambridge, VT. 4.4 miles today, 4445.4 miles total.
Categories: 15-minute samples, galls and leafminers, invasives, birds
This afternoon my husband and I drove all the way to Cambridge to explore the western end of the currently completed middle section of the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. While he rode his unicycle on the trail, I set out walking east to see what I could find along the trail. To my surprise, the trail went through quite a few sections of silver maple swamp. Wherever there was land enough between the trail and the river, there were industrial cornfields, but since the river meandered to and fro but the trail went straight, there were often sections where cornfields couldn't fit, and those sections were filled with silver maple swamps. I found galls today on goldenrod, alternate-leaved dogwood, which ash, and silver maple, and a leafminer on black raspberry. I managed to catch some birds, including a chickadee, a junco, a titmouse, a hairy woodpecker, and a flock of grackles. Invasives along the trail included knotweed, Japanese barberry, purple loosestrife, burning bush, wild chervil. Fifteen minute samples included white ash, silver maple, hawthorn, alder, elm, apple, honeysuckle, sugar maple, silver maple, basswood, box elder, grape, gray birch, trembling aspen, highbush cranberry, meadowsweet, hemlock, and willow.
10/31/22. Chickering Bog, Calais, VT. 2.9 miles today, 4448.3 miles total.
Categories: 15 minute samples
This afternoon I decided to go for a local walk since yesterday's 1 hour drive to Cambridge was a bit too much. Fortunately, the trail head to Chickering Bog is barely 1 mile away, so that's where I went today. The weather was warm, 60F, and breezy. I decided to take the back way into the bog, through Julie Henderson's land and past the Spur Trail. I had the entire place to myself, not seeing anyone else the entire afternoon. Fifteen minute samples today included basswood, white ash, beech, hop hornbeam red spruce, white pine, paper birch, red maple, rose, white cedar, fir, hemlock, checkerberry, bunchberry, snowberry, alternate leaved dogwood, yellow birch, and sugar maple.
10-25-22 Washington Valley Park, Bridgewater, NJ
Every time I get back on track something seems to come up and mess me up again. Once again it's my knees. At any rate today I was able to walk the quarter mile or so to the hawk watch overlook here. I was focused on flowers (aster, snakeroot, silverrod, smartweed) and fall color (catalpa, blackberry, rose, oak, ash, cherry, bushclover, blackhaw, hornbeam, maple, burning bush, hickory, tupelo, greenbriar, sassafras, birch, dogwood, creeper and Aralia) here.
10-29-22 Peter's Brook, Bridgewater, NJ.
Chuck and Katie and I went shopping for Halloween costumes. It was a beautiful day, so they walked the mile loop trail behind the shopping center, while I puttered about at the entrance to it. Tree of heaven, red oak, and maple (sugar I think) were spectacular here, and I found a big cranefly on some still-blooming goldenrod.
10-30-22. Top of the World Park, Green Brook, NJ.
I figured even if I can't walk far at all, I can photograph the weeds at the edges of a parking lot. So I chose this one. I was surprised to find a blooming chicory, bog yellowcress, and then a fly and the highlight: a widefooted treehopper (Enchenopa latipes)
10-31-22. Martinsville Rescue Squad, Martinsville, NJ
Halloween was busy, but I took a moment after dropping stuff off at the squad to photograph the edge of the parking lot. The black locust, blackberry, mulberry, and bittersweet were all very pretty.
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