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.
Sightings