May 04, 2016

Notes and Changes since last report

• It was 47°F and misting with light breezes at 11:30 PM on May 4, 2016.
• The cool, damp weather of late had kept typically short lived spring flowers in bloom.
• Black-and-white warbler and ovenbird were back.
• No butterflies were seen at all.

The Trails

• The forecast was not much better for any day this week, so I headed out into the mist and crossed Gifford House's front Old Hayfield.
• On the Sedge Meadow Trail, honeysuckle was fully leafed out with swelling flower buds while native gray dogwood in the background was barely opening its leaves.
• From a distance shaggy orange balls could be seen decorating the cedars ahead.
• They were the bizarre fungal cedar rust galls.
• Off the side of the boardwalk was a clump of violets.
• The zoom lens got us in close and personal.
• Across the back Old Hayfield, the flowering dogwood didn't look much more advanced than last week.
• Again, zooming in showed that there had been some progress.
• The recent rains, though mostly light, have been enough to fill up the Wappinger Creek.
• At the bottom of the hill, a lighter color in the leaves caught my attention.
• Big wood chips like this I've seen before...
• Directly above was the work site of a pileated woodpecker.
• Down along the creek, I heard the Louisiana waterthrush and noticed a white bump on a stump at the water's edge.
• It was a young shelf fungus. Last year's got pretty big...
• Cut-leaved toothwort was just a few steps ahead. The cool, damp weather has helped keep this flower around for a nice while.
• On the slope up to the sugarbush, a glint of purple was from the first gaywings to bloom.
• Down in the floodplain, invasive narrow-leaved bittercress was beginning to send up its flower stalk.
• The Canada mayflower made quite the ground cover on the Cary Pines Trail.
• Mixed in, here and there, was starflower, just budding up.
• In the Fern Glen, Jack-in-the-pulpit had errupted since the last time.
• Another strange flower like skunk cabbage composed of spathe and spadix.
• Back in the fen, rhodora was starting to bloom.
• Closer to the soil, leatherleaf had already started.
• Little bog rosemary was already with the program.
• Highbush blueberry was ready to burst, in fact just a few had.
• In another corner, tiny goldthread was well on the way.
• Way in the back, the long awaited yellow lady's-slipper was beginning to unroll leaves.
• By the deck over the Creek, toothwort was again having a great season.
• A surprise along the road was golden ragwort; interestingly there was no such advanced stages in sunnier locations elsewhere.
• Another surprise was finding a beaver at work last week. Felling a tree was one thing to watch... dragging it away was another. All that remained was a stump
• On the way out of the 'Glen stood another dogwood.
• Something was a little odd about its form - after the first branch, almost everything was gone.
• In the Old Gravel Pit, honeysuckle was even further along.
• At the Carriage House end of the Scots Pine Alleé, American goldfinch were overhead.
• Behind the Carriage House, fothergilla had barely begun to bloom.
• With wet feet and my car in sight, it was hard to stop for the Bradford pear, but I wanted to verify it was the source of that punky fragrance in the air.