Last Week
- Last week I joined the Waterman Bird Club to tour the trails.
- Next to the creek-side kiosk along the Wappinger Creek Trail, shinleaf was just beginning to bloom.
- Farther downstream tall meadow-rue was definitely blooming.
- Close up, it's quite different than the little victorian lampshades of early meadow-rue.
- Nearby, already going to seed was toothwort, a contemporary of early meadow-rue.
- Under the end of the big log by the bench at the Appendix, as I like to call the area around Trail Marker 10, was an interesting fungus.
- Partridgeberry was in bloom not much farther along Cary Pines Trail.
- Lounging in the depths of the Fern Glen Pond was a spotted newt.
- Above the limestone cobble, red baneberry was being, well, red.
- On the opposite side of the road, winterberry was preparing for similar redness later in the fall.
- Yet more red was behind the Carriage House in the more common form of sweet shrub. The yellow form was pictured in the Trail Report of June 3.
This Week
- Heading into the Scots Pine Alleé, I was conscious of an incessant 4-note chip coming from a nearby shrub and being answered from somewhere afar.
- The source, I determined, was a professorial looking young Baltimore oriole.
- The reply was from a dutiful parent.
- "With all the rain we've been having where are the mushrooms?", I wondered as I wandered through the Old Gravel Pit. Right in front of me, of course.
- At the edge of the Fern Glen Pond, lizard's-tail was beginning to do what it considers blooming.
- Next to it were the swelling seed pods of the iris, blue flag.
- Off to the left among the cattails, was the unrelated sweet flag. Looking more like lizard's-tail, sweet flag is in the same family as jack-in-the-pulpits; lizard's-tail is in a family of its own.
- On the hunt for seeds, I found Jacob's ladder at the entrance to the limestone cobble.
- Panicled hawkweed could be found blooming in several locations in the Glen.
- Still going strong since last week was flowering raspberry, a thornless raspberry.
- As I left the Glen, I was focusing the binoculars on a great spangled fritillary taking nectar from wild basil when another frit' came flying in from the left knocking the first one off to the right.
- Red efts, the terrestrial form of the spotted newt, were all along the Cary Pines (and Wappinger Creek) Trail.
- More seeds on Cary Pines: maple-leaved viburnum, star flower, and Canada mayflower.
- More fungi on Cary Pines: some looking like insect eggs, and one clearly a mushroom.
- At the Appendix I paused for the steet lamp berries of spotted wintergreen then continued on to seek out the finger-like fungus from last week.
- Right above it was a frothy fungus that, on closer inspection, appeared to either capture or exude beads of liquid.
- On the Wappinger Creek Trail a pair of mushrooms were enjoying a view of the creek.
- And just on the other side of the trail, last week's shinleaf were in full bloom.
- In the Old Pasture bush honeysuckles were full of berries both red and orange to yellow.
- Nearby, gray dogwood was just forming the berries that would later become the soft and white ammunition favored by school kids waiting at the bus stop.
- A new butterfly species was added to the Trails' checklist today: the common buckeye. And we just got new lists printed...
- The spreading dogbane in the first Old Hayfield survived the late frost this spring. They were now attended by the amazingly metalic dogbane beetle.
- Wise to me, a dogbane tiger moth lurked under a leaf.
- It wasn't until I was editing photos that I discovered it hadn't been alone - some kind of beetle was hiding there with it.
- This week I leave you with a possible explanation of why there are so many japanese beetles.
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Butterflies
- 1 Spicebush Swallowtail
- 22 Cabbage White
- 2 Clouded Sulphur
- 1 Spring Azure
- 27 Great Spangled Fritillary
- 10 Meadow Fritillary
- 1 Pearl Crescent
- 2 Eastern Comma
- 1 Red Admiral
- 1 Common Buckeye
- 4 Appalachian Brown
- 8 Little Wood-Satyr
- 2 Common Wood-Nymph
- 11 Silver-spotted Skipper
- 4 Least Skipper
- 8 European Skipper
- 5 Little Glassywing
Birds
- 1 Great Blue Heron
- 1 Ruby-throated Hummingbird
- 1 Eastern Wood-Pewee
- 3 Eastern Phoebe
- 3 Red-eyed Vireo
- 3 Blue Jay
- 2 American Crow
- 4 Tree Swallow
- 6 Black-capped Chickadee
- 1 House Wren
- 1 Winter Wren
- 1 Eastern Bluebird
- 3 Veery
- 3 Wood Thrush
- 6 American Robin
- 4 Gray Catbird
- 1 Northern Mockingbird
- 4 Cedar Waxwing
- 3 Prairie Warbler
- 2 Ovenbird
- 1 Common Yellowthroat
- 2 Scarlet Tanager
- 6 Eastern Towhee
- 2 Chipping Sparrow
- 1 Field Sparrow
- 4 Song Sparrow
- 2 Northern Cardinal
- 4 Indigo Bunting
- 1 Red-winged Blackbird
- 1 Brown-headed Cowbird
- 2 Baltimore Oriole
Plants
- 1 Partridgeberry
- 1 Panicled hawkweed
- 1 Spreading dogbane
Moths
- 1 Dogbane Tiger Moth
- 2 Virginia Ctenucha
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