May 10, 2013

Notes and Changes since last report

  • It was 70°F, cloudy and calm at 5:00 PM on May 10, 2013.
  • A very late start - not great for butterflies, but birds were singing evening songs.
  • The low light too was not great for photography but...
  • The warm, humid air held the spring time scents of flowering plants, the woods, the earth.

The Trails

  • The lilacs at Gifford House parking lot had opened. The air carried their scent from the parking lot out over the Old Hayfield.
  • By now the grass on the paths was tall enough to cut.
  • In the back of the front Old Hayfield, an apple was in its glory.
  • All around the edge, honeysuckle bushes were budding up.
  • Along the high side of the Sedge Meadow Trail, the bizzare gall of cedar-apple rust - a fungus - was dangling from several branches.
  • The path was strewn with common strawberry and dwarf cinquefoil.
  • Way in the back Old Hayfield, shagbark hickory was in bloom.
  • So too as ironwood.
  • Pretty, but invasive burning bush would soon follow.
  • Flowering dogwood had started last week and was now in profusion.
  • Tucked in the dark side of the Sedge Meadow Trail was another apple with a different looking blossom.
  • Even this late in the day, fresh leaves were glowing green in the view from the bluff over the Wappinger Creek.
  • In the path through the flood plane, cut-leaved toothwort had been blooming.
  • So too were a mustard as well as hooked- and small-flowered crowfoot, obscure members of the buttercup family.
  • Near by, trout-lily was forming its fruit now.
  • On the Cary Pines Trail gaywings were about to bloom!
  • In the Fern Glen along the road, hobblebush was nearly done blooming. A week seems to be about all you get.
  • Dainty oak fern was up in a number of patches in the Glen.
  • Not so dainty Solomon's seal threatened to engulf the bench. Hummingbirds and deer both enjoy this plant.
  • Star-flowered Solomon's seal was in one little patch.
  • Ostrich fern was all over the place.
  • Maidenhair fern was leafing out in the limestone cobble.
  • Large-flowered trillium, brilliant white when new, was gracefully aging to pink.
  • The air was filled with a heavy sweet fragrance; the lilacs couldn't have followed me here... It was wild blue phlox.
  • In the fen, cinnamon fern fiddleheads were errupting.
  • The swamp shrubs did not do well this past winter, but a few rhodora were making a valiant effort.
  • Highbush blueberry seemed to be an exception.
  • Lo, the gaywings were in full bloom here! So strange a flower.
  • Equally strange, large yellow lady's-slipper was budding up. Our other patch has made no appearance whatsoever this year. Apparently from time to time, they simply don't come up for a year.
  • Red baneberry was flowering in many places.
  • Right along the road near the bridge was interrupted fern, so called because the fertile spore producing, leaflets are right in the middle of an otherwise regular, sterile frond.
  • On the way out of the Glen, choke cherry was now blooming along the trail.
  • The big patch of hay-scented fern took me by surprise as I rounded a bend on the way to the Old Gravel Pit. There is a dizzying quality to the sight of them.
  • A last surprise for the day was a fallen branch or trunk, really, of a large white pine. I imagined the noise traveled quite a distance.
Sightings