October 09, 2013

Notes and Changes since last report

• It was 60°F, hazy and calm at 2:30 PM on October 9, 2013.
• That's cooler than it has been, but it was just fine for October.
• The past couple days of rain stripped some trees of their leaves.
• Birding hot spot was the Sedge Meadow Trail today.

The Trails

• A tiny moth let me a close up near the Carriage House on the Scotch Pine Alleé.
• The third and last butterfly I would see today was a cabbage white trying to make the most of the feeble sun.
• I didn't recall ever seeing wild bergamot turn such a great color. It usually gets mildew and that's it.
• Around the corner, pokeweed appeared to have been heavily browsed by deer.
• Along the edge of the Little Bluestem Meadow, nanny berry was devoid of leaves.
• But its berries were still hanging in clusters.
• The Fern Glen pond was still and dark.
• Leaves on dark water always make me think of the art of M. C. Escher.
• The 'Glen always has a number of little sassafrass seedlings. But where is there a big one?
• In the fen, poison sumac was looking sharp.
• Nearby, green alder cones were dangling along the boardwalk.
• In the background, that wasn't lichens, that was woolly aphids.
• These strange things fly.
• Stranger still, they are food for our only carnivorous caterpillar - that of the harvester.
• Just before the Wappinger Creek trail heads steeply uphill, there is a nice view that I hadn't really focused on before.
• I sat a little while in the bench in the Old Pasture. Nothing was happening, I continued.
• A nice fairy ring was a couple years old off the Sedge Meadow Trail.
• It could be the same mushroom as the ring that was in the Glen.
• In the back of the back Old Hayfiled, burning bush was showing why it was brought to this country.
• Behind it, our native spicebush was a gaudy yellow.
• Just past them, a few field sparrows were unusually still and not too hidden.
• I looked in the wet part of the Sedge Meadow because I always do, and found it quite busy with birds. Yellow-rumped warblers were chasing around. A good size woodpecker landed amongst them - a yellow-bellied sapsucker! Ruby-crowned kinglets joined the fray while robins were content to sit and eat cedar berries.
• You never know what you're going to find... or where.