October 08, 2014

Notes and Changes since last report

• It was 65°F, partly cloudy and windy at 1:00 PM on October 8, 2014.
• Again there was about 0.2" of rain the day before.
• Some places the leaves have noticably thinned.
• I heard my first golden-crowned kinglets of the season.

The Trails

• It was a cool and breezy start across the front Old Hayfield.
• Along the edge, privet berries contasted with the unusual leaf colors.
• You know the season is getting on when goldenrod goes to seed.
• The Sedge Meadow boardwalk was covered with the leaves that were missing from the branches above.
• Birds were very active between there and the back Old Hayfield with a blue jay being the only one to let me get a photo.
• A couple clouded sulphurs were out there, too.
• It was amazing how they could drop to the ground right in front of you and disappear.
• After losing it twice - without it even moving, I moved on to easier subjects such as a golden hickory in the Old Pasture.
• The view from the bluff over the Wappinger Creek is a favorite that I haven't taken in a while.
• It's always been difficult to capture the atmosphere in the depths of the Cary Pines Trail.
• In the back of the Fern Glen, some of the winterberry had turned their ghostly white.
• I paused to look at the poor little eastern wahoo - a native relative of the invasive burning bush.
• It has never flourished, but there was some color to it.
• One longer branch had clump of still green leaves... with a silhouette? A bird dropping or a caterpillar?
• Yes, a caterpillar. Now I had to go in and find out which one.
• The visitor on the deck probably thought I'd seen a bear when I let out a "whoop": it was a saddleback caterpillar.
• My whoop was purely from the surprise of seeing it, not of feeling it - the sting from those bristles I've only read about.
• The rest of the walk was pretty quiet after that...
• ...except for a new patch of Japanese stilt grass the had to be removed immediately.