Trail Reports

Notes and changes since last report

• It was cloudy, 60°, and occasionally breezy at 12:00 PM on September 26, 2012. It calmed down and there were sprinkles later.
• Several butterflies made appearances in spite of this unfavorable weather.
• Waterman Bird club and Cary Institute dedicated two memorial benches this afternoon.
• My clutch cable broke on the way home.

The Trails

• It was one of those cool, gray days that get surprisingly sticky when you start moving along.
• A couple crows in a dead tree along the front Old Hayfield were making a lot of noise.
• Dogbane was turning golden in the back corner.
• I stopped to look for the long, skinny seed pods and instead found a long, skinny caterpillar - one of the inchworms, or geometer moths.
• Pods were indeed present, but in searching for the most photogenic I came across another caterpillar. Kind of like a very plain tiger moth, I thought... dogbane tiger moth? Only the Golden Guide agreed; "Delicate cycnia" claimed the other books... but the latin names were the same.
• I settled on one nice grouping of pods and moved on.
• Even though the back Old Hayfield had been mowed, I circled it anyway because, well, that's what I do. A large dark butterfly zig-zagged from behind and landed along the tree line - a mourning cloak!
• Along that tree line, burning bush was warming up.
• Birds eat the berries and assist the spread of this alien.
• If it hadn't been for the 'cloak on this cool, gray day, a pearl crescent in the Old Pasture would have been more exciting.
• Another little bit of orange went racing by... too fast for a "PC". It was an American copper.
• A dead tree along the Wappinger Creek Trail was sporting some amazingly orange fungi. I'll have to keep an eye on these.
• I interrupted my usual route to attend the dedication of two memorial benches, one in the Scotch Pine Alleé, and one in the Lowlands.
• Members of the family, the Bird Club, and the Institute attended.
• Back on my rounds again, I admired partridge berry tucked among the hemlock roots on the Cary Pines Trail.
• A little farther along I was struck by the geometric regularity of Virginia creeper. creeping up a tree.
• In the Fern Glen, a lesser traveled trail surprised me with black cohosh.
• The sepals fall off and the petals are tiny giving the impression each blossom is just a cluster of stamens.
• Witch hazel was just beginning to bloom around the pond and in the shrub swamp; I smelled it before I could see it.
• Fungi were widely spread along the trails today. I stopped for a pair of puffballs in the Old Gravel Pit, but it had sprinkled briefly once already and I didn't want to push my luck so I pressed on wondering rather than waiting to see if it was slugs that had made the all too familiar holes.
• Luck was indeed with me: drops began to fall as I approached my driveway and my clutch cable failed just as I arrived at the garage door. Bad luck doesn't get any better.