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Visit Cary
Trail Reports
...
May 01, 2019
Notes and Changes since last report
It was 55°F, cloudy and calm at 2:45 PM on May 1, 2019.
Last week featured 16 new flowers - this week 17.
It was too cool and gray for butterflies today.
This week's trail report covers the Wappinger Creek Trail side of the trail system.
The Trails
The view across the front
Old Hayfield
at Gifford House gave a bleak start to today's walk.
Last year's
sensitive fern
stalks promised new growth... soon.
All along the edge of the field,
bedstraws
were erupting.
The Sedge Meadow Trail had the first blooming
garlic mustard
.
A less troublesome alien,
purple dead nettle
, was not much farther along the way.
The
Sedge Meadow
itself was greening.
Tussock Sedge
was resposible for most of that.
Rising above it all was
cinnamon fern
.
Above even that
maple keys
were forming.
In the back of the far Old Hayfield,
Japanese barberry
was beginning to flower.
In the same area,
ironwood catkins
indicated its birch family membership.
The tiny
female flower
is easily overlooked.
Across in the back corner,
flowering dogwood
was coming into its own.
The large, showy flower is actually a mass of
small flowers
surrounded by large, bracts.
At the exit of the field,
wild strawberry and dwarf cinquefoil
were growing together.
Out in the Old Pasture, invasive
bush honeysuckles
were forming flower buds.
Recent rains hadn't been heavy, but maybe frequent: the
Wappinger Creek
was full and noisy.
Oak twigs
littered the forest floor. All with a diagonal break... squirrels?
At the bottom of the hill, patches of
wood anemone
were scattered about.
An
orange fungus
was on a few pieces of dead wood.
Once in a while
rue anemone
stood out in isolation.
The
sycamore stump
always deserves a glance.
Sure enough, the
fungus
was producing quite the colony.
Just past it, the
little tributary
was looking like it was out of a book.
On the banks along the Wappinger Creek,
Christmas fern
was coming up.
Downy yellow violet
was down on the floodplain.
Stinging nettle
was easy to miss, but only once...
The cool, wet weather has probably helped
toothwort
and others last longer this spring.
Some
trout lily
had been forming seed already, some were still blooming.
Ah, and the
cut-leaved toothwort
was still blooming too.
Next week: the Cary Pines Trail side of the trail system.
Sightings
Mammals
Birds
Butterflies
Moth
Insects
Caterpillars
Arthropods
Fungus
Herp
Plants
Other
1 Wild Turkey
1 Downy yellow violet
2 Mourning Dove
1 Dwarf cinquefoil
1 Red-bellied Woodpecker
1 Garlic mustard
1 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
1 Ironwood
1 Northern Flicker
1 Japanese barberry
1 Eastern Phoebe
1 Purple dead-nettle
1 Common Raven
1 Tussock sedge
1 Tree Swallow
1 Wild strawberry
1 Carolina Wren
1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
6 American Robin
2 Black-and-white Warbler
1 Louisiana Waterthrush
2 Eastern Towhee
1 Song Sparrow
2 Red-winged Blackbird
25 Brown-headed Cowbird
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