November 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
November 1, 2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 4 miles today, 4452.3 miles total.
Categories: bingo, 15 minute samples
This afternoon when I went out for my walk I still wasn't in the mood for driving anywhere so I took a walk up Peck Hill, my first in quite a while. I walked all the way up to the end of Fifer's Run today. The only person that I saw was our neighbor, the farmer, who has decided not to let the old shed collapse in a heap on the ground. He's got it up on new support posts and has even straightened it out. He was working on it when I walked past. I also walked past his pumpkin field up on Peck Hill. There were hundreds of reject pumpkins left on the field, which the birds were making good use of. Since it was the first of the month, I had lots of items on my bingo list, including red spruce, red maple, white pine, tamarack, hemlock, box elder, self heal, Queen Anne's lace, colts foot, pine tube worm moth, colts foot leafminer, helleborine, evening primrose, strawberry, daphne, hop hornbeam, greater plantain, milkweed, calico aster, bracken fern, European barberry, deer, trembling aspen, speckled tar spot, marginal wood fern, intermediate wood fern, beech, black knot, white cedar, zigzag goldenrod, and vinca minor. Fifteen minute samples today included basswood, red maple, sugar maple, meadowsweet, red spruce, fir, white pine, tamarack, honeysuckle, black cherry, alternate-leaved dogwood.
11/2/2022. North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier, VT. 1.8 miles today, 4454.1 miles total.
Categories: arthropods, bingo
This afternoon I met up with Eve and Ed for our weekly bug walk. At this point in the year, any walk that has even a few bugs is a bonus. The weather was warm (60s) and sunny, but we had to try very, very hard to find any bugs, making last week's hunt seem easy by comparison. We did find a few grasshoppers, and 3-4 species of leafhoppers. We also found some flies, including march flies, Pollenia flies, house flies, bot flies, and Sepsidae flies, plus a few itsy bitsy spiders. There were a few johnny-jump-ups blooming, but we found no pollinators at all.
11/3/2022. Causeway bike trail, Colchester, VT. 10.5 miles today, 4464.6 miles total.
Categories: late bloomers, 15 minute samples, arthropods
This afternoon my husband and I drove up to the Causeway in Colchester. While he rode his unicycle, I zoomed around on my electric scooter. The weather was sunny and supposedly 62F but it felt more like 52F. There was a very strong wind that became a headwind on our way back from the end of the causeway. I began with 5-minute samples but soon switched to 7 minute samples since 5-minutes seemed too close together. Samples for the day included sumac, choke cherry, white ash, American bittersweet, poison ivy, cottonwood, red maple, raspberry , slippery elm, red osier dogwood, grape, European buckthorn, paper birch, green ash, Virginia creeper, gray dogwood , silver maple, multiflora rose, white cedar , white pine, red oak, common buckthorn, autumn olive, witch hazel, and a mystery shrub with compound leaves. I don't think it was poison sumac, but I'll need to spend some time with my books to figure out what it was. It was quite common along the causeway. Flowering today were yellow sweetclover, Echium, white sweetclover, sow thistle, heart leaved aster, dandelion, daisy fleabane, white clover, purple clover, selfheal, and autumn dandelion. I also managed to catch a few bugs, including some common drone flies, a ladybug, crab spider, weevil, and a common eastern bumblebee,
11/4/2022. Marshfield Pond, Marshfield VT. 4.8 miles today, 4469.4 miles total.
Categories: late bloomers, 15 minute samples, arthropods
This afternoon my husband and I headed up towards Groton for perhaps our last trip of the season. While he rode down to Ricker Pond on his unicycle, I explored some of the trails through the industrial sugar woods above Marshfield Pond. I had noticed on the map that there is a trail marked between Bailey Pond and the sugar woods road, so I followed that trail to the sugar wood, and actually met someone hiking down the trail! I took the sugar woods road up to the top of the hill, where I hoped to find the intersection with Jerusalem Rd. Indeed, it was there, hidden behind some enormous boulders and trees downed in front of the boulders on both sides. I think the syndicate that owns the sugar woods is trying hard to discourage ATVs and motorbikes from zooming through their woods and tubing. I ducked around the boulders and walked the Jerusalem Rd trail, which is navigable by ATV and mountain bikes at this point, but not cars. Eventually, the road passed several hunting cabins, and I found the point where I had last walked Jerusalem Rd from the Marshfield side.
The weather was quite warm and comfortable today, and I found small native several bees pollinating some late blooming goldenrods. Also in bloom were selfheal, tansy, fleabane, sweet white clover, and calico aster. I caught a Bruce spanworm on a leaf, a wolf spider, and several dung flies on some days old coyote scat. I found leafminers on blackberry and coltsfoot. Fifteen minute samples today included honeysuckle, red spruce, beech, white ash, trembling aspen, sugar maple, fir, white pine, red maple, hemlock, striped maple, hazelnut, willow, striped maple, and elm. I also found quite a few items for my bingo cards including tansy, Dasineura serrulatae (bud gall on alder), Indian tobacco, buttonbush (down at Ricker Pond), American golden saxifrage, and Canada mayflower. The Dasineura serrulatae gave me bingo on the Groton State Forest card.
11/5/2022. Mystic River, Medford, MA. 3 miles today, 4472.4 miles total.
Categories: trees, bingo
This afternoon I took a fast-paced walk with my sister and brother-in-law along the Mystic River in Medford. My sister had several trees that she wanted to show me. While we walked, she pointed out typical shapes of trees, especially oaks. Most of the trees that we looked at were planted, but I shot some volunteer Norway maples near the river. Her special trees where some very odd beeches. The leaves looked a bit like chestnut leaves or perhaps chestnut oaks, but the buds were most definitely beeches. A cultivated specimen for sure, but I'm not sure what it is. I also found some Japanese barberry for my Massachusetts bingo card.
11/6/2022. Boston Seaport, Boston, MA. 5.5 miles today, 4477.9 miles total.
Categories: 15-minute samples, unintentional plants, arthropods, bingo
This afternoon I took a walk along the waterfront looking for wild plants. I started at Eastport Park because I noted that there were no observations there, none at all, despite being a park. When I got there, I figure out why--the park is extremely sterile, consisting of a few planted trees and some closely tended gardens with absolutely no bugs. No signs of life. From there I walked along several of the piers, seeking out weeds or sidewalk plants. I set my alarm for my 15-minute samples, but every single woody plants landed in my samples today was cultivated. There were simply no wild woodies anywhere. My samples included: red maple, cultivated yew, red osier dogwood, a larch in a bucket, koyamaki, red cedar, shining sumac, gingko, hedera, box bush, plane tree, viburnum, linden, Chinese? elm, swamp white oak, meadowsweet, burr oak, tea rose, and willow. Sidewalk weeds today included amaranth, plantain, goldenrod , spurge, grasses, Bryum argenteum, puslane, cardamine, cow vetch, black nightshade, groundsel, lepidium, mugwort, queen Anne's lace, fleabane, Symphyotrichum, dandelion, Chenopodium, cress, buttercup and 2 volunteer tomatoes, one of which was carrying a nearly ripe tomato. I found lots of honeybees and some flies in the potted mums by the bars. The only galls I saw all day were on fragrant sumac. There were no leafminers whatsoever. A scary sort of place. My favorite surprise was a little Lego house constructed around the foundation for a light post.
11/7/2022. Boston Greenway and waterfront, Boston, MA. 3.5 miles today, 4481.4 miles total.
Categories: 15-minute samples, concrete observations, arthropods, bingo
This morning I took advantage of the delightfully warm sunny weather for a walk up the Greenway from Chinatown to Sudbury St, with a side trip out to Christopher Columbus Park near the waterfront. I was amazed by the Greenway--I never knew this park existed. It is all clean and neat and filled with grass and trees with very few homeless people. Ah, the homeless. They do need to be somewhere, but it's such a challenge when they trash the places where they stay or are disruptive. In any case, I only saw one homeless resident (complete with overflowing trash piles) for the entire length of the Greenway. Virtually all the plants in the Greenway were cultivated, but I managed to catch a common eastern bumblebee, some oleander aphids, green bottle flies, and ants, as well as a lot of honeybees (which I later found out came from maintained hives on the Greenway). I found galls on witch hazel, fragrant sumac, and oak. My "concrete observations" for the day were Bryum argenteum, prostrate knotweed, black nightshade, curly dock, English plantain, puslane, amaranth, evening primrose, and a few sprigs of sand spurrey. I shot some house sparrows and some tiny blue jays--they grow them small around here!
In the afternoon I took a walk with my husband and 2 friends from Michigan along the waterfront, past Fan Pier Park and Martin's Park. I shot several seagulls. We walked down along the pier where I shot some barnacles, muscles, and sponges. I also managed to find several actual wild trees today, a cottonwood growing on the bed of a closed bridge, a Siberian elm growing on the margin of the highway, and a mulberry in a vacant lot on the edge of Chinatown. Fifteen minute samples today included red oak, butterfly bush, snowberry, witch hazel, gingko, Chinese elm, American holly, Japanese maple, European linden, plane, larch, box, dogwood, vinca, redbud, red maple, viburnum, red mulberry, honey locust, and a cultivated ash, all cultivated.
11/8/2022. Belle Isle Marsh Reserve and Revere Beach, Revere, MA. 10.5 miles today, 4491.9 miles total.
Categories: 15-minute samples, birds, arthropods, leafminers, sea life
This morning I headed out to Belle Isle Marsh Reserve for a walk. After studying the eBird hotspots, I chose this park because it had the highest bird species count of any location right in the city. I only have my point and shoot with me on this trip, so I didn't have much hope of shooting birds from a distance. But I hoped that bird diversity might also go hand in hand with plant diversity. As it turned out, not quite, but I did at least see some wild woodies today. My 15 minute samples included Honeysuckle, bayberry, Rubus, crabapple, sumac, box elder, multiflora rose, Norway maple, weeping willow, Russian olive, autumn olive, green ash, pitch pine, buck thorn, pin oak, red cedar, Chinese elm, and grape, many of which were wild. I found leafminers on honeysuckle, raspberry, bayberry, and curly dock, and galls on honeysuckle, rugosa rose and ash. Blooming today were honeysuckle, tansy, knapweed, goldenrod, dandelion, mustard, mullein, butter and eggs, chicory, silene, Symphyotrichum, groundsel, and black nightshade. The reserve was mostly dominated by Phragmites with lots of honeysuckle and some Oriental bittersweet mixed in. But there was also some bayberry and lots of sumac. Right down by the water the Phragmites gave way to some salt marsh plants, all new to me. There were some tended bird feeders beside the parking lot where I saw a sapsucker, some chickadees, a goldfinch, a chipping sparrow and some housefinches, plus 2 obese grey squirrels. Other birds on the grounds included perhaps an eagle, some ducks, and a hawk that came out to sit on the boardwalk while I was having my picnic lunch below the boardwalk in the saltmarsh.
After lunch I decided to see if I could walk to Revere Beach, which turned out to be an easy walk, although a little scary as I walked past a police traffic stop with 3 police cars and officers wearing flak jackets. The road came out right at the south end of Revere Beach. I hopped the seawall and began walking up the beach, shooting seashells and seaweed as I walked. Right by the seawall was a flock of middling size birds--American lappets, perhaps? Before long, I got it in my head to walk the entire length of Revere Beach, all the way out to the point, around the tip to the bridge. Which I did, but it was a very long walk from the tip back to Wonderland T-station to get back to downtown again. Insects today included a Bibio fly, a grasshopper, a sulphur butterfly, and a common eastern bee that had stuffed itself inside a butter-and-eggs blossom and refused to come out.
11/9/2022. Greenway, Boston, MA. 1 mile today, 4492.9 miles total.
Categories: 15-minute samples, birds
Today I decided to take it a little easier on my feet and go see the fishes at the aquarium. To get there, I walked up the Greenway from Chinatown, shooting birds and 15-minute samples along the way. I caught some pigeons in Chinatown, then a house sparrow eating the petals of a potted mum further up the way. I only managed to get in one 15-minute sample on my route, which included American holly, sweetgum, European larch, European linden, and an unfamiliar shrub, all cultivated. My main goal at the aquarium was to study the Caribbean reef fishes in the giant tank exhibit. I was extremely disappointed with the almost-total lack of signage about the fish in the tank and Caribbean reefs in general. Throughout the rest of the building, the signage was OK, but there was simply no information about the fish in the tank. I ended up resorting to Seek to try and identify what I was looking at. The penguins were well-signed, however. But the placard explaining common penguin behaviors didn't mention the copulation display that I saw--twice.
11/10/2022. North St, Medford, MA. 0.1 mile today, 4493 miles total.
Categories: concrete observations
Today I only managed a very short walk along North St in Medford looking for weeds while waiting for AAA to come jump-start our car. I found plenty of Persicaria poking up through the sidewalk, plus another weed that looked vaguely like Silene but still quite unfamiliar. AAA came promptly, so I didn't get to go far for my walk.
11/11/2022. Hospital Hill, Berlin, VT. 0.3 mile today, 4493.3 miles total.
Categories: late bloomers
I had an appointment today which brought me up to hospital hill. I was able to arrive a few minutes early, so I took a brief walk near the parking lot searching for late bloomers. I managed to find black medick and autumn dandelion open. I was hoping for some oxeye daisies for my bingo card, but no luck there.
11/12/2022. Sparrow Farm Rd, East Montpelier, VT. 2.5 mile today, 4495.8 miles total.
Categories: road kill
This morning I got together with 3 of my friends for our regular Saturday morning walk. This was the first time that so many of us could get together at once on a Saturday morning for months. It seems we've all either been traveling, had health issues, or family issues for the entire summer. The weather was still warm this morning with a little mist on and off. We found quite a few creatures in the road, including a garter snake, several frogs, and a planarian.
11/14/2022. Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, Joe's Pond, VT. 4 miles today, 4499.8 miles total.
Categories: 15 minute samples, bingo, late bloomers
This afternoon my husband and I drove up to Joe's Pond to explore the rail trail. We had tried to get out here earlier this summer, but it started raining just as we arrived. Today it was cold and blustery. For the first time this season, there were snow flakes collecting on the ground, ice on the ponds, and icicles on the rocks. I wished I had remembered my hand warmers for my pockets. Blooming today were some goldenrods and pineapple weed. I managed to collect paper birch, sugar maple, and rough horsetail for my bingo card. Fifteen minute samples included: beech, fir, trembling aspen, paper birch, alternate leaved dogwood, white cedar, hazelnut, black cherry, red maple sugar maple, red osier dogwood, meadowsweet, wild raisin, and speckled alder. The trail was quite quiet, with only one other couple walking and several cyclists. We were delighted to find that the new part of the rail trail is open, from the former dead-end at the bridge on the west side of the pond all the way to East Hardwick.
11/15/2022. Lamoille Valley Rail Trail, Joe's Pond, VT. 4 miles today, 4503.8 miles total.
Categories: 15 minute samples, bingo, late bloomers
This afternoon my husband and I returned to the Joe's Pond area, but this time we parked at the bridge on the west end of the pond that was closed until last week. While my husband rode his unicycle heading west along the trail, I set off walking, taking 15 minute samples and looking for items for my bingo card. This section of the trail is gorgeous--it goes straight through a boreal forest, with plenty of marshy wetlands on both sides. I noted that the spruces here often have burls, and that the cones are long. They seem to all be white spruce instead of red spruce. I hazy memory came back to me from the dark mists of time. Fifteen or so years ago when I first took dendrology, the professor had mentioned something about white spruces in the Northeast Kingdom. And here they are! Fifteen minute samples today included balsam fir, red maple, yellow birch, white spruce, trembling aspen, alder, paper birch, white cedar, fire cherry, honeysuckle, hazlenut,apple, sugar maple, box elder, meadowsweet, willow, and mountain maple. I found heartleaf aster in bloom. Bingo finds today included sugar maple, Canada yew, and speckled aster. There was another couple out exploring the trail on foot today for the first time, and I also saw a guy on a bike.
11/16/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4505.8 miles total.
Categories: arthropods on snow
We woke up to find several inches of snow on the ground this morning, so after lunch I gathered up my meteorology equipment and headed out to search for arthropods on snow. By mid-afternoon, the air temperature was about 38F. The snow had stopped falling and we had about 2-3 inches on the ground. The temperature of the snow surface was 0.2C. I was delighted to find lots of arthropods, including soldier beetle larvae, caterpillars, 3-4 species of spiders, including wolf spiders, a money spider, and a Tetragnatha, several Trichocera flies, several Lonchocera flies, perhaps a Brachonid wasp, and 3 snow scorpion flies. I also found a dead honeybee under the bee tree from last winter. Could the bee hive have survived the winter and stayed put all summer?
11/17/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4507.8 miles total.
Categories: arthropods on snow, tracks
The air temperature was a little cooler this afternoon when I went out, about +1C at 1.5 m above the ground. The surface was still 0.2C. The snowplows had been through, so the surface of the snow was quite dirty and it was much harder to see arthropods today. Still, I managed to find a single Trichocera fly and a Chionea snow fly. I also found some fresh deer tracks and some turkey tracks.
11/18/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4509.8 miles total.
Categories: arthropods on snow, tracks
We had partly sunny skies today, but the temperatures were about the same as yesterday. We had some fresh snow flurries overnight which freshened up the snow surface. I found some fresh bobcat tracks on our driveway. We've had a bobcat appear several times in our yard over the last few months, so maybe these tracks belong to that cat. I also found deer tracks, plenty of deer tracks. I found 2 spiders along the road up to Peck Hill and back. Just as I was setting up to shoot the second one, a hunter came driving down the road, so I had to pick up my gear and get out of the way. Nine more days of hunting season, and then no more worries about rifles in the woods.
11/19/2022. Taylor Farm Rd, Marshfield, VT. 3 miles today, 4512.8 miles total.
Categories: bingo
This morning I met with 2 friends for our regular Saturday morning hike. We started at the old fine arts building at Goddard, which is vacant and rapidly returning to the earth. From there we walked up Taylor Farm Rd, where we all kept our eyes open for bingo items. We found red pine, late oyster mushrooms (quite frozen), white baneberry, red-berried elder, sharp-lobed hepatica, beech scale, heart-leaved aster, staghorn sumac, thimbleberry, and white ash. We also came upon a small flock of bluebirds which I tried hard to shoot but couldn't quite capture with my phone or my point-and-shoot.
11/20/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4514.8 miles total.
Categories: birds
This afternoon I took a walk up Peck Hill looking for arthropods on the snow. The temperature was about 28F and quite windy when I went out. The snow surface temperature was a few degrees cooler. I didn't find a single arthropod, dead or alive. But I managed to record a belted-kingfisher calling along the stream through the neighbor's field.
11/21/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4516.8 miles total.
Categories: animals
Today was cool again when I went out, mostly cloudy with a stiff breeze. The air temperature was about 29F, while the snow surface temperature was 27F. I didn't find any arthropods at all. I heard the belted kingfisher again but couldn't capture it on a recording, so I shot the small pile of scat on the road--fox?
11/22/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4518.8 miles total.
Categories: arthropods
This afternoon when I went out the air temperature was a little warmer, +3C, and the sun was shining. The snow surface temperature was a full 5C cooler though, so I didn't find any arthropods on snow. However, up by the south facing farm field, I found several in the road, a Trichocera fly, a caddisfly, and a blue bottle fly.
11/23/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4520.8 miles total.
Categories: arthropods and tracks
This afternoon was a +2C when I went with cloudy skies. The air felt humid, perhaps because the snow was melting, with a snow surface temperature of +0.2C. I didn't find any arthropods on the snow today, but I found some fresh deer tracks heading up the wooded section of Peck Hill, and a dead woolly bear in the road at the top of Peck Hill.
11/24/2022. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4522.8 miles total.
Categories: animals
This afternoon the air temperature was about +2 again when I went out, while the snow surface temperature was +0.3C. The snow is looking ragged and is quite dirty, so I didn't find any arthropods on it. I did find some fresh deer tracks on the driveway, however. I also found a large flock of turkeys gleaning pumpkins at the farm field on Peck Hill.
11/26/2022. Cranberry Meadow, Woodbury, VT. 3.9 miles today, 4526.7 miles total.
Categories: bingo
This morning I met up with 4 friends for our regular Saturday morning hike, the first time all 5 of us have made it to a walk together since early last spring. We walked up the road towards Cranberry Meadow a ways before turning around at Long Town Rd. I was looking for bingo items, and with a great deal of help from my friends, I managed to find ostrich fern, speckled alder, black ash, sweet gale, checkerberry, and bluestem goldenrod. I also shot some poison ivy just because it had berries.
11/27/2022. Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 0.5 miles today, 4527.2 miles total.
Categories: animals
This morning I took a walk around our property servicing the trail cameras. The weather was decent, 38F but rain was promised by afternoon. While I changed the batteries and cards out at the trail cameras, I kept an eye for any interesting animal scenes. I found a dead short-tailed shrew in the yard and a couple of caterpillars trying to shelter in the weather sealing of one of the cameras. I also shot a couple of the turkeys that were following me around, curious about what I was doing.
11/28/2022. Pekin Brook Rd, Calais, VT. 2.4 miles today, 4529.6 miles total.
Categories: bingo
Today was a classic stick season kind of day, about 36F and misty, with just enough snow on the ground to be slick but not enough for finding any bugs. I went in search of some bingo items along Pekin Brook Rd. I managed to bag some lesser burdock, balsam poplar, and red pine.
11/29/2022. Chickering Bog, Calais, VT. 2.3 miles today, 4531.9 miles total.
Categories: bingo
Today was still chilly and overcast. No new snow, but plenty of crusty icy patches in the woods and along the trail to Chickering Bog. I took advantage of the end hunting season (at last!) to venture out to find some bog items for my bingo card. I find Lobaria, northern redbelt polypore, turkey tails, sheep laurel, fuzzy lowbush blueberry, bog rosemary, black spruce, leatherleaf, soldier's plume moss, stairstep moss, staghorn clubmoss, stiff clubmoss, bunchberry, and a leafminer on the bunchberry. When I got back to my car, there was a barred owl sitting on the phone lines directly overhead.
11/30/2022. Leonard Rd, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 4533.9 miles total.
Categories: bingo
Today was a bit dreary. The temperature was about 36F when I went out with steady light rain and quite overcast. I decided to take advantage of the rain to take a walk up Leonard Rd. I've been avoiding going up there lately because of the trailer with the loose dogs, but I guessed that perhaps the dogs would be in today, that their owners wouldn't make them stay out in the rain. I was on a mission to find a striped maple and some black raspberry for my bingo card. Mission accomplished!
I also find Boston a scary place, naturalist-wise. An awful lot of manicured stuff, but at least there are sidewalk weeds. I am amused that the first time you got together with your friends in months you just looked for road kill. And snow already! We've had it as early as October, but this year none, and I'm fine with that; not looking forward to shoveling.
11-2-22. Warren Municipal fields, Warren, NJ.
Today I walked along the poor brook that runs through the town ballfields. They used to let it grow wild on the banks, but now are mowing right up to the edge. Plus they are constructing a new pavilion nearby, and despite some feeble efforts to contain the runoff the brook is silting up as well. At any rate, the maples are still beautiful, and I found watercress in among the smartweeds and water starwort in the slower parts of the stream.
11-3-22. Wight St., Bridgewater, NJ.
I was looking for somewhere new to explore and noticed some preserved land along this little residential street in the next town over. So I walked (briefly) along the edge. I was surprised to find germander and elder, and the sassafras was very pretty.
11-5-22 Tullo Rd., Bridgewater, NJ.
My knee was doing a little better today and I managed to walk nearly half a mile along the brook here. I walk here often as it's the closest park to the rescue squad, so there were not a lot of surprises. But I found a sweat bee and some kind of fancy fruit fly.
11-6-22 Duderstadt Field, Warren, NJ
This sports field has a lovely, wild border near the parking lot. The gate in is often locked, so I was glad to find it open today. I met some women who stopped and asked what on earth I was doing, and I told them "documenting biodiversity". The agrimony, oaks, willow, thistle, honeysuckle, blackberry, and pear were very pretty. And I was surprised to find asparagus.
11-7-22 Annandale Station and Field of Dreams, Annandale, NJ
Now that the leaves are mostly down and the flowers mostly done, I'm not terribly inspired to go out walking. Add in the sore knees, and I was stuck. So I started picking places alphabetically. This was the first, A for Annandale. I went first to a huge, old, wooden play structure I'd taken the girls to when they were little. It had a nice brushy border. Interesting finds here included a fly too blurry to ID and a sweat bee, plus Siebold's viburnum.
From there I went to the train station, where the surprise was a goblet moss in fruit. But there were also a number of pretty crabapples in fruit.
11-8-22. Washington Valley Rd., Bridgewater, NJ
I was covering for someone on the squad today so needed to stay close to home. Thus B was for Bridgewater. I tried to do Brown Rd. in Bridgewater, where there is a nice powerline cut, but they were doing emergency utility repair (on the local lines) and the road was closed. So instead I walked along another section of the cut, staying on the road, as there's no path up the middle here. A very unusual find for this area was the first creeping bellflower I've seen in NJ in about 25 years. (My sister can't get rid of it in her yard near Boston). And there was a huge patch of blooming flower-of-an-hour, plus some with pretty seedheads as well.
11-9-22. Carteret Waterfront Park and Merrill Park (Colonia) NJ.
I had more time today so decided to check out a new to me park over in Carteret on the Arthur Kill, the New Jersey-Staten Island border. I was expecting some water birds, but got just starlings, herring gulls, juncos and house sparrows. I photographed some minnows, though, and my first-ever picture of wild shrimp. The plants were pretty standard, but Sweet Annie and false sunflowers are not common for me, plus there was Jimsonweed in bloom.
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