Each time you go out and make observations for this project, describe your walk by adding a comment to this post. Include the date, distance walked, and categories that you used for this walk.
Suggested format:
Date. Place. Distance walked today. Total distance for this project.
Categories.
Brief description of the area, what you saw, what you learned, who was with you, or any other details you care to share.
Comments
6/1/21. Tucker Rd, Calais, VT, Railroad Bed East, Marshfield, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 4.6 miles today, 3276.2 miles total.
Categories: birds,blooms, and arthropods
This morning I started with a walk along Tucker Rd looking for birds. It was quite chilly (35F) and still a bit foggy when I went out. I saw a mourning dove, a phoebe, some veeries, a hermit thrush, a robin, a white-throated sparrow, and some song sparrows, as well as a few red efts. In the afternoon my husband and I went to Marshfield for a "tricycle ride". That is, he rode his unicycle while I rode my bike. I dropped him off at Fiddlehead Pond in Marshfield, then drove down to Jerusalem Rd and rode uphill on the rail trail looking for insects, blooms, leafminers, and galls. In bloom were blue bead lily, Canada mayflower, twisted stalk, and moosewood. I find some bees on strawberry blossoms, a shiny beetle, a white butterfly and a bug I've never seen before, a stinkbug perhaps, but with a curvy profile. I also tried to chase down a mourning cloak butterfly and it landed on my shirt. So I had to photograph it with my phone, selfie-style. I found a leafminer on parasol whitetop as well as stem gall, and leaf galls on pin cherry and beech.
By evening the temperature had finally warmed up to a pleasant 65F so I had plenty of visitors at the moth light. I had a plagodis, a curved tip geometer, several grays, a variable carpet and a beautiful walnut sphinx that spent the entire day hanging out on the screen, then began shivering and waking up just as I was making my rounds. I found a Canadian agonopterix, several more wide micros, a leaf mining micro, a click beetle, another beetle, and lots of flies including several different kinds of midges and a mosquito.
6/2/21. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT, St. Augustine's Cemetery, Montpelier, VT, & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2.5 miles today, 3278.7 miles total.
Categories: birds, blooms, and arthropods
This morning I walked up Peck Hill looking for birds. The weather was a little warmer finally, but of course, that meant the mosquitoes were out, keeping me moving. I found a robin, a turkey in the lower field, and then 8 more in the upper farm field, a goldfinch, several alder flycatchers, and a hermit thrush that approached me instead of flying away, not flying until it was 12 feet away. Also, a red-winged blackbird, a Nashville warbler, a hummingbird, a catbird, and a phoebe. And a flock of 40 geese circling, circling the farm lower farm field. Blooming along the road were red clover, wild raisin, and carpet bugle, while the marsh marigold in the marsh at the end of my route has gone to seed.
Later in the morning I met up with @emendela and @edlintonvt for a bug walk at St. Augustine's cemetery. Once again this year, the city is not mowing the cemetery. I think they were depending on prison labor to mow it and that's not available during the pandemic. In any case, the cemetery is now a wonderful wildlife sanctuary with gorgeous wildflowers and lots of bird life in the tall grass. I was quite dismayed to find out when I arrived that I had grabbed the wrong camera. I had brought my Nikon D90, the one that got dunked last week in the canoe mishap. Once it had dried out, it worked for a few days. But then it stopped. I think the contacts corroded or something. I ended up having to rely on my phone for pictures for the bug walk. Good practice, but oh, the bugs were thick and wonderous! I ended up shooting whatever I could catch with my phone, which wasn't a lot of bugs, but included quite a few weeds and leaf galls. I found chickweed, carpet bugle, fleabane, sheep sorrel, cinquefoil, speedwell, hawkweed, blue-eyed grass, buttercups in bloom, strawberry in fruit, and yarrow in bud. Other plants were Polytrichum piliferum, alder, red oak, and then there was a pretty lichen on a tombstone. Bugs that I caught included a gypsy moth caterpillar, a sawfly larva, a snipe fly, marsh fly, several spiders, a harvestman, an ant, a copper butterfly, some bees, a twice-stabbed stinkbug, a syrphid fly, a spittlebug larva, a six-spotted orbweaver. Galls were ground ivy gall, parasol white top stem gall, leaf galls on buckthorn, sugar maple, red maple, black cherry, beech, pin cherry, elm, ash, and box elder.
In the evening there was plenty of action at the moth lights. I had 2 rosy maple moths, a gray spring moth, a friendly probole, some grays, some micros, loads of midges of different kinds, June beetles, and a gorgeous large yellow beetle that I'm sure will be easy to identify once I get my books out.
6/3/21. Adamant, VT, & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 3280.7 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I drove down to Adamant for a walk up Quarry Rd and then along Sodom Pond. I decided to try a bit of recording instead of just taking photos. I recorded northern parula, crows, loons, an olive-sided flycatcher, an alder flycatcher, a warbling vireo, a catbird, a veery, a goldfinch, and a Nashville warbler. I also shot a wood duck and some red-winged blackbirds.
In the evening I had good luck at the moth lights. It had rained most of the day, but the temperature was still in the 60s F. I had some grays, a pug, a rosy maple moth, a friendly probole, lots of micros (including a mating pair), and a good selection of midges.
6/4/21. North Branch Nature Center, Montpelier VT, Groton State Park, Groton, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 4.6 miles today, 3285.3 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I drove down to the nature center for a bird walk led by @cdarmstadt and Sean Beckett. There were 15 of us on the walk. It was the last scheduled walk of the season and there was a lot of socializing going on as well as birding. Between that and the lateness of the season, we didn't actually see that many birds, but had a lot of fun anyway. We saw a chestnut warbler, a broad-winged hawk, an osprey, some chickadees, some goldfinches, a catbird, a robin, some tree swallows, and some house wrens. I also found a leafminer on balsam poplar.
In the afternoon I went on a short bug walk through our blueberry patch and shot some bees. The blueberries are almost done blooming, and I'm disappointed that I didn't find more time this past week to chase bees. The weather wasn't very cooperative, though. Later in the afternoon, my husband and I did our "tricycle" ride in Groton. We started at Kettle Pond and took the trail uphill towards Marshfield Pond. When I got to the beaver ponds along the road, I put my bicycle down and walked along the beaver pond. Not many plants were offering pollen today. But then I noticed the golden Alexanders were active. I shot quite a few bees on them. When I got home, I found a posting from @beeboy on the Vermont Bee Atlas advising to watch golden Alexanders--done! There was also a shiny beetle that was mating everywhere along the beaver pond, and I recorded bird calls of oven bird, black-throated green warbler, white-throated sparrow, red-winged blackbird, ruby-crowned kinglet, and a few more.
In the evening when I went out to the moth lights, there was some light sprinkles, then it suddenly changed to heavy rain and I ducked back indoors after shooting only 3 moths. Fortunately, it was just a shower, and within a few minutes the rain stopped. When I went back out, there were plenty of insects, including a small native bee, plus the big yellow beetle that I saw the other night, an American lappet, a gray, a pug, a very attractive spotted litter moth that I didn't recognize, several more geometers, some micros, several more beetles, and a few flies, but not so many midges as usual.
6/5/21 - Socrates Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove, Queens NY. 2.04 miles today, 2.04 miles total Categories: Invertebrates and flowering plants
Went down to my regular patch to look around for new additions to the Yard Squad challenge. The tide was in so the cove was mostly for the birds (literally) but the park itself was more productive as it's been wet and warm. A good-sized brown-lipped snail was no surprise but I always enjoy seeing them. Also managed to identify a few weedy plants that recently came into bloom, notably alfalfa, Virginia pepperweed, and wild indigo. Found a handful of unidentified non-flying objects along the way as well.
Back home I got a bonus insect (also unidentified, but I got a good enough photo that I have hopes) sunning on the brick wall while I had my iced coffee.
Erika - I love your "tricycle". Sorry to hear the camera didn't make it. My favorite is wobbling at the moment and I'm worried. You have inspired me to try to stay up long enough to check for moths at our porch lights tonight.
Carrie-Welcome! How nice to have the water so close that it's your 'regular" spot. I need to drive at least half an hour for shells, and poor Erika is much farther. I can often help with your plant (and sometimes bug) IDs; feel free to tag me.
6-1-21. North Branch Park, Brachburg, and Green Acres Park, North Plainfield, NJ. 1.25 miles today, 1045 miles total
Categories: blooming, critters.
In the morning I had to get ink for my printer from Staples, so I walked at the nearby County 4-H fairgrounds (or rather the edge of them). I found roses with tons of aphids, Asian lady beetle larvae, and, yes, mating lady beetles (my daughter Katie is no longer offended by bug reproduction, oh well). Then there was porcelainberry with baby spotted lanternflies, cleavers with aphids as well. There was a pretty orbweaver, lots of different kinds of fruiting sedges, a red-seeded dandelion, a white campion growing out of the crook of a tree, mating golden-backed snipe flies, I think an adult emerald ash borer, and Virginia bluebells in fruit (something I'd never seen before),
In the evening I walked with my son, Carl, and Katie at a little park along a brook with a pond and a very old spring in an older urban area. There was a group at the basketball courts in the middle playing music so loudly you could feel the bass in your chest, but there were still a few birds and a lot of plants and bugs to find. I gave Katie a camera again. There were more spotted lanternfly larvae, more mating lady beetles, a stink bug, a water strider, water-willow (a very unusual one for me), some big goslings (and geese, of course), yellow flag, forget me not, water hemlock, poison hemlock, lizard's tail, and some odd, gray fungi. And all the while the pounding music.
6-2-21. Chimney Rock Park, Martinsville, NJ, 0.5 miles today, 1045.5 miles total
Categories: blooming, critters.
They just tore down an old hockey rink at this park and put in more (much needed parking) but it was a bit of a shame as the rink had a lot of interesting weeds. But I parked in the new section and found both common and border privet growing right next to each other. The border was blooming, the common still budding. There was poison ivy in flower with honeybees tending it. I found Phylloxera galls on shagbark hickory leaves, and then a lady beetle looking just like another gall on one of the leaves. The tupelo here has the pretty galls that make the edges all ruffly (Aceria dina). i found a very impressive yellow and black ichneumon that I'm told is a Banchus species, plus wheat growing randomly on the edge of the new parking lot.
There were aphids on shepherd's purse (a new host for me). The cedar-apples had their teliohorns deployed in all their orange gloppy goodness. I found a sun beetle and a morbid owlet moth, and rue anemone still blooming (it's been 8.5 weeks now that I've seen it in bloom in town).
6-3-21. Washington Ave., Green Brook, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 1045.75 miles total
categories: blooming, critters.
There's a little notch in the side of the almost-cliff south face of the First Watchung Mountain with a little pull-out and a culvert to carry a steam under Washington Ave. And that stream's source is a tiny little (but 30 foot tall) waterfall. So I pulled-out and walked around exploring the little notch. It's actually pretty disturbed with almost 100% alien plants, aside from the trees at the edges. But still interesting. And I found baby lanternflies here, too. The most interesting plant was some wild comfrey.
6-5-21. Watchung Reservation, Summit, NJ. 1.0 mile today, 1046.75 miles total
Categories: blooming, critters
When I was a child, they wanted to extend the interstate through this reservation. One of the main objections was that the animals would not be able to get from one side of the park to the other. So they built three wildlife bridges and planted them with shrubs and even trees. I walked across one of them today, something I'd never actually done before. It was odd to stand in the woods and hear the cars rush by underneath. There was even an (intentional) crack where you could see through to the road below.
I saw aphids on dock and ants looking for something on greenbriar. There was blooming honewort and jetbead starting to set fruit. I saw the first blue flags of the year and arrowheads, and lots and lots of blue-eyed grass, which my camera does not like to focus on at all.
Welcome Carrie! Great to see the start of your journey here! We are looking forward to photos of your adventures along the way.
I need to take a tip from you, Sara, and watch for more aphids. In Vermont there is a lady beetle project and they recommend aphid hunting as one way to find lady beetles. It sounds like it certainly worked for you! Our poison ivy isn't in bloom yet, but I will watch it to see what kinds of bees pollinate it. I have been looking and looking for emerald ash borers but haven't seen any yet. I have noticed ashes starting to die along the roadsides, though. And I can't imagine the wildlife bridges that you describe. It sounds like science fiction.
6/5/21. Lightening Ridge Rd, Calais, VT, Montpelier bike trail, Montpelier, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 3.8 miles today, 3291.1 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Lightening Ridge Rd looking for birds. Right after I arrived at the Chickering Bog parking lot, someone else drove in, first overshooting George Rd where the lot is actually located. A lone hiker got out of the car and scooted right up the bog trail while I was still counting birds in the shrubs along the top of the field. I didn't see anyone else along the road until I stopped in the middle of the road to photograph the house wren on the metal sculpture again and my doctor breezed by on his bike. Birds along the road included alder flycatchers, red-eyed vireos, including a parent feeding a fledgling, some veeries, some robins, goldfinches, a dark-eyed junco, some song sparrows, a black-and-white warbler, some common yellowthroats, a cardinal, and some indigo buntings. Roadkill included a red-bellied snake, a red eft, and a detached frog leg. But the find of the day was a planarian moseying along the road.
In the afternoon, my husband and I set off for adventure with our canoe on the roof, and unicycle and electric scooter in the car. We first drove to Adamant to see if we could catch the Blackfly Festival, which is usually the village's largest event of the year. It didn't happen last year, and this year was supposed to be a drive by. But with Covid numbers looking good and all but the youngest kids vaccinated, they got together several hours of live music on the lawn and a bake sale this afternoon, which we just missed. But we did get to see and talk unmasked to several friends we haven't seen in person in a year. We had intended on plunking the canoe in the water on Sodom Pond, but a thunderstorm was threatening, so we continued on into Montpelier and arrived in the midst of a heavy rain storm. We parked by the bike trail but it was still raining. So then we parked in the center of town to get some ice cream as we waited the storm out. My, my! Our first food not prepared by us at home in over a year! By the time we finished our ice cream, the rain had stopped, so my husband and I hit the trail, he on his unicycle, and me on my electric scooter. I had hoped to find some bees on the golden Alexanders I had seen last week, but there weren't many pollinators out yet after the rain. Eventually, I found a bee on the golden Alexanders, but the bugs of the day were dusky cockroaches and loads of wood louses. I also found leafminers on sweetclover and honeysuckle.
In the evening, conditions were perfect for mothing, temperature around 70F and a very light misty rain. There were moths buzzing everywhere, in my hair, landing on my lips, my camera, etc. The June bug crawling across my leg was a bit annoying with its claws. But I was not pleased with the burying beetle that flew back and forth in front of my nose because it stank like the carrion it had been feeding on. I had many rosy maple moths and my first lettered habrosyne of the year. I also had my first cecropia moth of the year, quite a thrill. Other moths included grays of several types, yellow dusted creams, white spring moth, carpet moths, several greens, micros, a lightning bug, several other beetles, a tiny wasp, and quite a few different kinds of midges.
Your first food not prepared by you in over a year! Wow! I don't know how I'd have made it through without take-out, we had it at least twice a week for all but the first month or so. It's funny, it took them longer to reopen ice cream stands than take out restaurants here; still, that was last May.
I "mothed" last night at the lights at 10 pm. I got 1 large moth (a geometer of some kind) countless midges, but 11 in focus, 9 click beetles, 7 micro moths, 6 June beetles, 5 other beetles, a stink bug, a sac spider, a plant bug, a lacewing, a caddisfly, an aphid, a carpenter ant, a cranefly, and a wasp. Still, lots of things I don't see often otherwise, and the pool filter yielded and earwig, along with the usual crop of lanternfly nymphs.
What a great moth and arthropod harvest! You must have lots of woods near by.
6/6/21. Pekin Brook Rd, Calais, VT, Buck Lake, Woodbury, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 3.2 miles today, 3294.3 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Pekin Brook Rd looking for birds. I passed our neighbor out early working on his fields. It really looks like he's trying to make a go of it this year farming. He's got several patches of vegetables and flowers planted and they seem to be growing well. It was sunny and warm even before 7AM, and I found plenty of song sparrows and yellow warblers down by Pekin Brook. Other birds included goldfinches, robins, phoebes, kingbirds, a belted kingfisher, a common yellowthroat, a chestnut sided warbler, some red-winged blackbirds, black-and-white warblers, and a chickadee. I also saw a deer, a slant line moth, a curved tooth geometer moth, and a cherry scallop shell moth and a large millipede in the road. Roadkill was a large toad and a red eft.
Later in the morning my husband and I took the car with the canoe still on it from yesterday up to Buck Lake in Woodbury. There had been a fresh hatch of black caddisflies around the lake that were everywhere. I also found a tiny yellow and black ladybug when we stopped to record an olive-sided warbler calling above the lake. This time I had my waterproof camera in the canoe. A wiser choice that I should try to stick to. Other finds included a dark-shouldered spinylegs dragonfly, a darner dragonfly, a newt in the water, and a pumpkinseed fish.
In the evening the moth lights were a little quieter than last night, probably because it wasn't raining. It was certainly warm enough (75F) for insects. I found a splendid palpita, a rosy maple, a yellow-dusted cream, a three-lined balsa, a cream edged dichomeris, a common gluphisia, a pink pseudoeustrotia, a pug moth, and many micros. Plus a few small beetles, some midges, and caddisflies. And a cool Ichneumon wasp with a very long ovipositor and a black and white striped abdomen.
Hi @srall - thanks for the ids! I've never been to that part of NJ but the wildlife bridges in Montana when I lived there were similarly landscaped.
6/6/21 - Astoria neighborhood. .75 miles today, 2.79 miles total. Category: Plants vs. pavement
The heat had me feeling ill (a great time for our AC to be in the shop!) but I had to go pick up CSA veggies so I got a little walking in, at least. I decided to look for plants that had grown through gaps in the sidewalk, road, or other paved areas. Resilience!
Since I was carrying stuff, I only photographed a few species for later id, but I also saw a lot of familiar ones, including common purslane, dandelion, knotweeds, and tree of heaven.
Sidewalk plants! Great stuff!
6/7/21. Chickering Rd, East Montpelier, VT, Buck Lake, Woodbury, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 3 miles today, 3297.3 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
I started the day this morning by walking Chickering Rd looking for birds. It was pleasantly warm at 6 AM with plenty of sun. The birds have moved on to nesting, so it was a bit quieter with less of the frantic feeding activity and calls of the migrants. I saw robins, song sparrows, chickadees, and I caught the olive-sided flycatcher singing from a tree close to the road. I also found a pair of black ducks in the first pond across from the Chickering homestead. While I was in the woods I saw dozens of live red efts and just a few dead ones. I also found half a cecropia being eaten by ants. I rescued it from the ants and brought it home for my roadkill museum. Surprisingly, there was quite a lot of traffic on the road today. On a typical early morning on Chickering Rd I might see one car but probably not. This morning there were multiple cars moving from each of the houses including the 2 Chickering houses, plus a dog walker down at the Airbnb A-frame on the corner. Maybe folks were trying to beat the heat by getting up early.
After breakfast my husband and I returned to Buck Lake in Woodbury. My husband was interested in trying out the trail on his unicycle. The trail got too technical for the unicycle quite soon, so he ended up on the road, which was also technical but rideable. I walked the trail along the lake and found leafminers on wild sarsaparilla and big-leaved aster, leaf galls on basswood, and lady’s slipper and false hellebore in bloom.
In the evening the conditions were decent for mothing, although it was dry. I found yellow-dusted cream, large purplish gray, a pug, green leuconycta, many different kinds of micros, a June beetle, a large black beetle, some small brown beetles, a bug, and lots of midges.
6/8/21. Tucker Rd, Calais, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 3299.3 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Tucker Rd looking for birds. I spotted a few turkeys and 4 crows in the field on Lightening Ridge Rd amidst a fresh crop of round bales of hay. Off of Tucker Rd I spotted the raven family of 4 feeding in another hayfield. I also saw some robins, goldfinches, a veery, and a red-eyed vireo. I recorded a common yellowthroat, a chestnut sided warbler, an ovenbird, a black-throated blue warbler, and a song sparrow. I actually saw a fellow walker this morning around 6AM, the first of the season.
In the evening I had good luck at the moth lights. There was a one-eyed sphinx resting on the deck. Other moths included a lemon plagodis, some pale homochlodes, a white spring moth, a three-lined balsa, a green leuconycta, Morrison's pero, yellow-dusted cream, snowy shouldered acleris, white pinecone borer, lots of other micros, a giant caddisfly (Hydatophylax argus) and lots of other caddisflies, including some itsy bitsy ones (less than 5 mm long). There was a stinky burying beetle, an Asian ladybug, several click beetles, and a ground beetle (?) with big claws. There were many, many tiny Empoasca leafhoppers and lots of midges of many shapes, sizes and colors. As I worked over the micro moths this evening it finally occurred to me that micro moths, which many mothers don't bother with, are actually about the size of a lot of other insects that people do pay attention to. Full sized moths are megafauna, for sure.
I think a lot of moth watchers start out with birds, move to butterflies, and then to moths, so the micros seem vastly different. But I have to say I get very frustrated by caddisflies and then a lot of those little micro moths. I wish it were easier to put them in families or some group below "Lepidoptera".
6/9/21. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT, Kettle Pond, Groton, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 3.6 miles today, 3302.9 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I took a walk up Peck Hill looking for birds. I saw a blue jay, some robins, some cedar waxwings, some red-winged blackbirds, and some song sparrows. I also saw a turkey but it got away before I could shoot it. I recorded a sapsucker, a phoebe, a blue-headed vireo, a white-throated sparrow, an American redstart, a parula, a magnolia warbler and a chestnut-sided warbler. On my way back I ran into a neighbor heading out to work in his pick up truck. He commented that the mosquitoes are thick enough right now that you can get a cardio workout just try to bat them away. Glad I was wearing my bug jacket for my walk!
Later in the morning, my husband and I drove out to Groton so that he could unicycle from Kettle Pond down to Plainfield on the rail trail. While he rode, I took a walk along the trail at Kettle Pond looking for leafminers, galls, and insects. I only found a few bees. The bunchberry and pink ladyslippers were blooming. I found leafminers on wild sarsaparilla and alder. And leaf galls on red maple and pin cherry. While I walked I also recorded bird songs. The blue-headed vireos were the loudest and most persistent, but I also recorded a black-and-white warbler, and a chestnut sided warbler. I had a picnic lunch at the boat launch. While I ate I noticed an odd thing in the water. It was light tan and about the shape and size of a large dinner roll. With white tentacles. And it seemed to be in control of where it was going. At the ocean I would guess it was a crab or small sea cucumber. I took a few photos but I don’t know if they came out.
In the evening the weather was a little cool (62F) when I went out to look for bugs, and there was still a glimmer of light in the sky. I found yellow dusted cream, Baltimore hypena, rosy maple moth, several micro moths, some micro caddisflies, a green midge, a fly, and a large sac spider.
@erikamitchell Your mothing adventures sound lovely - my sister who lives in Vermont also gets great moths, and has a lot of luck with amphibians as well, which makes me a little jealous.
6/8/21 - Socrates Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove. 1.61 miles today, 4.4 miles total. Categories: Time and Place.
Another short walk because of the heat. I set out early, and the first two plants that caught my eye were a morning glory sp. and a nightshade sp. - so I thought of organisms that had time in their name, and what goes with that? Place!
This turned out to be kind of unbalanced because there are only a handful of organisms with times in their name compared to places, especially if you count both geographic designations and more general place descriptors. I missed Asiatic dayflower and Black-crowned Night-heron, which both would have qualified. I saw but didn't get a picture of Chimney Swift, which would have counted for the place team, but they still 'won' by a margin of 8 to 2. I suppose that makes sense, since where you saw an organism is more of a species differentiator than when you saw it! But I think of things like islands that were named by colonizers after the holidays when they were 'discovered'. So if I'd seen a Christmas Frigatebird, say, aside from causing a mob of birders the likes of which have never been seen in Queens before, which category would that fall into?
Conclusion: Categories are inherently funny. But still useful.
6/9/21- Socrates Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove. 1.73 miles today, 6.13 miles total. Category: Blooms
The heat wave continues, and I suspected/hoped that that would mean a lot of flowers - and I was right! I tried to look for little, less showy blossoms as well as the BBB (big beautiful blooms). Some have been around (chickweed, dandelion) and some are showed up recently (honeysuckle, false bindweed).
One that I didn't photograph but that is very important to me is the linden - my street is lined with them, and right now whenever I step outside the first thing I notice is their scent. It makes me incredibly happy.
Time and place--what cool categories to work with! Yes, a Christmas frigatebird would have been a perfect find for the day!
6/10/21. Sodom Pond, Calais, VT, Dover Rd, Montpelier, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2.6 miles today, 3305.4 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I drove down to Adamant for my bird walk. I began by walking up Quarry Rd, where I saw a morning dove, an eastern kingbird, a bluejay and a robin. I also recorded an alder flycatcher, a phoebe, a blue-headed vireo, a brown creeper, an ovenbird, and an American redstart. Then I walked along Sodom Pond where I saw several wood ducks out on the pond include a young duckling. A green heron flew by on the far shore. As I walked, it suddenly dawned on me that I could actually add my recordings direct to the iNat app instead of waiting until some time in the distant future to download them from my phone and then upload them to my computer so I could upload them to the iNat website. Duh!
In the afternoon I met up with Eve and Ed for our weekly bug walk. We started in Ed's yard where we were joined by Ed's wife in her lovely flower garden. Then we walked across the street to another friend's house for more flowers, and eventually walked around the block looking for overgrown lawns with bugs in them. We found plenty of bees, some bee flies, including a very loudly mating pair, some Ichneumon wasps, a Cuerna striata leafhopper, some grasshopper nymphs, and a ladybug.
In the evening, I tried my luck at mothing but I was too early. We're now at the time of year when the moths simply don't start showing up until 10PM because it's still light out at 9:30PM. I managed to snare a gray, a rosy maple moth, a micro, and 2 different midges, but nothing else before bed.
6/11/21 - Socrates Park, Rainey Park, and Queensbridge Park. 4.59 miles today, 10.72 miles total.
Categories: Insects and the Plants Who Love Them
Much better weather for walking today, including some cloud cover. My category ended up taking in mostly pollinators but I also meant to include insects who are predators of plant pests - as it turned out, the only example I found of that was Asian lady beetle, but they were as always abundant. I'm excited to perhaps get some IDs and learn more about pollinators beyond the usual bees and butterflies (though I saw some of those too - including a few too fast to photograph).
I'm also turning in eBird checklists for the New York State Breeding Bird Atlas these days, and though I had mostly the usual suspects today, I was excited to find a singing Northern Cardinal in Socrates... they've been singing in other locations around the neighborhood for some time now so I suspect he may be working on a second brood at this point.
Congrats on 10 miles! You're well on your way! And great find with the cardinal.
6/11/21. Pekin Brook Rd, Calais, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 3307.4 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Pekin Brook Rd heading east looking for birds. It was about 55F and cloudy. For the last few weeks I've been walking with a North Branch Nature Center group on Fridays, but now their walks are over for the season. I needed a new place to walk close to home. Pekin Brook is always good for birds, but much better on weekends when there is so much less traffic. I found plenty of birds today, but the traffic was not much fun, so I think I'll look for a new location for my Friday walks. I was greeted by a jake turkey as soon as I stepped out the door. We feed a flock in the yard in the winter, and he must have remembered that and come back for a snack. I gave him a handful of food, but he ignored it and followed me down the driveway. Other birds that I saw were a blue jay and a common yellowthroat, and I finally caught the winter wren that sings along our driveway. Meanwhile, I recorded a black-throated green, a parula, a black-and-white warbler, a white throated sparrow, and a yellow-bellied sapsucker serenading our neighbors at 7:00AM on their tin roof.
In the evening when I went out for mothing at 9:15 there was still too much light out for moths. I managed to shoot a single Scoparia. No midges tonight, too early and too cool.
Carrie- I love the time and place categories. I think if you were to find a Christmas Frigatebird it would belong in both. Congrats on 10 miles, that was fast!
Erika- brave of you with the turkey; I find them intimidating. Your neighbor's sapsucker reminds me of our red-bellied woodpecker, who decided the metal gutter right outside my daughter Katie's window is the perfect place to drum at the crack of dawn.
6-6-21. Burlington County, NJ. 2.25 miles today, 1049 miles total
Categories: new or unusual for me
I spent Sunday (despite the 93 degree heat and high humidity) exploring several parks in Burlington County. First was the top end of Franklin Parker Preserve, where I found 6 plants I'd never seen before: Carolina ipecac, spoon leaved purple everlasting, some kind of 3-awn grass, sidebeak pencilflower, narrow leaved whitetop aster, and hairy pinweed. Then 3 I'd never seen in flower before: canada frostweed, goat's rue, and pine barrens sandwort. Plus an ergot on a grass, galls on blackjack oak, Maryland tick trefoil, pine barrens goldentheather just past blooming, proliferous pink, golden club.
Next stop was the south end of Franklin Parker, where I saw the most brilliantly colored Fowler's toad I've ever seen, plus what I think was Heller's rosette grass and my first male calico pennant, the first sheep laurel I've ever seen in bloom, spoonleaved sundew, and several corporal dragonflies, mostly one of the blue ones, but also a white corporal.
I passed a road-killed racoon, so stopped to take a photo.
Next stop was Oswego Lake, where the mountain laurel was blooming profusely, and I saw my first ever cranberry flowers, and my first blooming staggerbush.
After that was Pakin Pond, the highlight of which was a huge, blooming, turkey beard. Also here was a possible three-way sedge, thread-leaved sundew, and purple pitcher plant. There were also lots of gypsy moths, which may be what attracted the weird bird I heard calling that turned out to be a yellow-bellied cuckoo. And when I got home, I found out the neat, little, coil-tipped plant I photographed was curly grass fern, another new one for me.
My final stop was the Michael Huber Prairie Warbler Preserve. But it was a long hike in to the interesting parts, and I was just not up to it. Still, an excellent day overall.
Sounds like a great day, Sara! Congrats on the new plants! I've never heard of any of them, let alone seen them. The yellow-bellied cuckoo was quite a find. I haven't heard any cuckoos at all this year. Seems like they should be starting to call sometime soon.
6/12/21. Lightening Ridge Rd, Calais, VT, Stranahan Forest, Marshfield, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2.9 miles today, 3310.3 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Lightening Ridge Rd looking for birds. I began with a quick trip to the farm field in the east where I heard a very loud family group of corvids. I thought they sounded like ravens, but they looked more like crows. So they're probably crows, but I'll need to let the experts decide. Along the road there were mourning doves everywhere today, 9 in total, plus a hummingbird, a phoebe, some robins, some waxwings, a goldfinch, a chestnut-sided warbler, and the house wren in the front yard of the house with the daylily garden out front. I also recorded a black-and-white warbler, an ovenbird, a veery, a blue-headed vireo, a yellow-bellied sapsucker, a Blackburnian warbler, an alder flycatcher, and an indigo bunting.
Later in the morning I went to the Stranahan Town Forest in Marshfield to meet up with the Vermont Entomological Society and the Vermont Center for Ecostudies Lady Beetle Bioblitz event. This was led by Michael Sabourin from the VES and Julia Pupko from the VCE. There were about 12 of us in the group, including myself and my 2 bug walk friends, Eve and Ed. We began with an hour of walking through the large hayfield beside the parking lot beating with bug nets, where we managed to find 2 ladybugs, an Asian and a native (I forget the native species). Then we walked through the woods where Julia spotted a twice stabbed ladybeetle on a beech tree with beech bark disease. Other finds during the walk included some bees, some orange beetles, lots of flies, including some robberflies, some spiders, including a 6-spotted orbweaver, and galls on pin cherry fruits, basswood leaves, sugar maple leaves, trembling aspen leaves, ash leaves, and pin cherry leaves. And I found some leafminers on honeysuckle and wild sarsaparilla.
In the evening I was up late working and missed my lights which turn off automatically at 9:30 PM. Still, when I went out around 10 PM, I had a large purplish gray, a mossy glyph, a ruby tiger moth, a click beetle, a large midge, and a small horsefly.
wow, 12 people and only three lady beetles. I feel much better now about the fact that I seem to never find them when I'm looking for them; only when I'm looking for something else! Katie seems to be the opposite of your crow experience: she frequently thinks she sees a raven, only to have it open its mouth and turn out to be a crow.
6/13/21. Pekin Brook Rd, Calais, VT, Dog Pond, Woodbury, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 4.4 miles today, 3314.7 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Pekin Brook Rd looking for birds. The road was quite pleasant for walking this morning with only 1-2 cars during the entire walk--such a contrast with Friday when all the early morning folk were heading off to work. I saw some common yellowthroats, a great blue heron, some phoebes, a blue jay, some crows, some chickadees, a veery, a pair of cedar waxwings, loads of song sparrows, a red-winged blackbird, and a hairy woodpecker. I also recorded a chestnut-sided warbler, a gray catbird, a blue-headed vireo, and a magnolia warbler.
Later in the morning, my husband and I took the canoe up to Dog Pond in Woodbury. Dog Pond is a relatively large pond for the area surrounded by deep softwoods and no roads. There are some camps around the pond, but they are spread out, not on top of each other. Public access to the pond is from a tiny dirt road that looks like a driveway. So if you don't know the pond is there, you'll never stumble across it. Even though it was Sunday with beautiful weather, we were the only ones parked at the public access put in and almost the only ones paddling on the pond. A few of the cabins were occupied, but not many. They tend to be upscale, so the owners probably are quite distant and don't get to visit much. Most of the cabins had large motor boats by the water, but none were being used, so the pond was quite quiet, except for the loons. We also saw robins and grackles, and a recorded a blue-headed vireo and a northern waterthrush. In bloom were sheep laurel and twinflower. The dominant vegetation around the pond was eastern hemlock and sweetgale.
In the evening, my lights went out before I went out (I need to fix that, at least for high summer). But I still found a white spring moth, a green pug, another pug, a melanolophia, a looper, a black-dotted glyph, a black-smudged chionodes, a pine cone borer, a midge, a money spider, and a harvestman.
6/12/21 - Socrate's Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove. 1.78 miles today, 12.50 miles total.
Category: Edible plants
I'm fascinated by foraging although I don't do much of it in the city because of soil quality concerns. Growing up was another story. Today I decided to keep an eye out for edible wild plants, both those familiar from my childhood and those that are new to me. There are plenty around! I didn't see any purslane but I did think of my mom's reaction when she learned that the weed she'd been pulling out of her garden for years was something people pay money for at farmers markets... I did see dandelion, dock, wood sorrel, mulberries, Queen Anne's lace, and more.
On the breeding bird atlas front, I spotted a Gray Catbird carrying nesting material (yay!), and a new batch of wobbly Starling fledglings (somewhat less yay, although I have to admit that I admire their tenacity.)
On Sunday 6/13 I didn't get a formal walk in, but I did go to an art event/celebration called Kin To The Cove sponsored by Socrates Sculpture Park, which was amazing and quite fun (I ended up participating in an improvisational dance, which is not at all like me...) There will be more throughout the summer and it's all about connecting art to environmental awareness and the East River in particular. So I'm pretty excited about that.
Wild edibles is a great category!
6/14/21. Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 0.1 miles today, 3314.8 miles total.
Categories: arthropods
We had steady rain this morning when I got up so I skipped my morning bird walk for the first time in about a month. The showers continued throughout the day and it was cool, so I decided to knuckle down and work all day with the hope of getting ahead a bit so I can get out later in the week when the sun comes out. In the evening I had a few moths at the lights, including Scoparia, a large white plume moth, a snowy shoulder acleris, a cream edged dichomeris, some very small leaf miner moths, and several midges.
6/15/21. Tucker Rd, George Rd, Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 3316.8 miles total.
Categories: birds, arthropods, road crossers
This morning the weather was much better for bird watching, so I walked along Tucker Rd. I found a flock of geese on the big hay field on Lightening Ridge Rd, then a lone turkey on Lilley's farm seen from Tucker Rd. I also saw a sapsucker, a phoebe, some robins, some goldfinches, a chestnut-sided warbler and some song sparrows. I recorded a winter wren, an ovenbird, a magnolia warbler, a northern parula, and an indigo bunting. I also got passed by a bicyclist who wasn't my doctor for a change. I got distracted by leafminers on the way back and found miners on elm, trillium, lilacs and yellow birch. Road crossers today were a golden ground beetle, some red efts, and a very dark caterpillar.
In the afternoon I set out to visit Chickering Bog, but when I got out of the car, thunder was rumbling not to distantly and the wind was picking up, so I hung out in the parking lot wavering about whether to head up the trail. Meanwhile, I scouted the weeds and wild flowers on the edges of the lot searching for insects. I found lots of bees in the red clover, but the thunder seemed to be getting closer, so that's all I got for a walk.
In the early evening we had some rain, which fortunately stopped when I went out to check my moth lights. The rain brought lots of insects out, and I found a white spring moth, a melanolophia, a pug, a black-dotted glyph, several large pepper moths, a garden tortrix, a yellow-dusted cream, a ruby tiger, a green leuconycta, a Virginian tiger, a click beetle, a May beetle, an orange beetle, some cool yellow may flies and the usual collection of midges.
6/16/21. Peck Hill Rd, Chickering Bog, Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 4.3 miles today, 3321.1 miles total.
Categories: birds, arthropods, galls and leafminers
This morning I walked up Peck Hill looking for birds. As I got down to the bottom of the driveway, I heard some robins making a racket. When I finally got close enough to see the robins, I saw what the racket was about--a hawk sitting in the top of a tree. He appeared to be minding his business, although the robins thought otherwise and were mobbing it. I don't know hawks at all, so I'll have to wait for the experts to identify it for me from the photos. I also saw a yellow bellied sapsucker, some chickadees, a nuthatch, some song sparrows, and a common yellowthroat. I recorded a winter wren, a black-throated blue warbler, and a blue-headed vireo. When I stopped to record some loud blue jay calls, a coyote shot out of the bushes about 25 feet away from me. I dropped my phone in the middle of the recording to photograph the coyote. I managed to get one photo at fairly close range, and then my camera battery died. Otherwise, I could have had a long series of photos. Because the coyote went only about 50 feet across the farm field, then stopped and watched me. That was rather chilling. Of all the animals in the woods, coyotes give me the creeps. I stood as tall as I could on my 5'2" frame and walked on down the hill, keeping an eye out for trees to climb just in case.
In the afternoon I returned to Chickering Bog for my delayed walk from yesterday. The weather was sunny and cool today (65F) , too cool even for the clouds of mosquitoes that usually patrol the woods this time of year. I started in the parking lot, checking for the bees on clover that I saw yesterday. There were many fewer today, although I found one or two and an Ichnueomon wasp and a lygus bug. In the woods I kept my eye out for leafminers and found miners on elm, wild sarsaparilla, red osier dogwood, bunchberry, trillum, and ash. I think that mines aren't common on ash leaves, so I collected a few to see if anything emerges. The miner might be Caloptilia fraxinella. I also found galls on leaves of ash, sugar maple, red maple, pin cherry, and black cherry. On the way back, I had to walk rather fast to get to a meeting, but I managed to spot a pickerel frog near the small swamp along the access trail.
In the evening, there was little action at the moth lights after this cool, windy, and dry day. I found a white plume moth, a Scoparia, and a white spring moth, plus 2 largish midges.
6/17/21. Admant, VT, Kettle Pond, Groton, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 4.2 miles today, 3325.3 miles total.
Categories: birds, arthropods, galls and leafminers
This morning I drove down to Adamant for my morning walk. I began with a jaunt up Quarry Rd, where I tallied 37 different species on eBird. I photographed a mourning dove, a chestnut-sided warbler, a common yellowthroat, a yellow-bellied sapsucker, some chickadees, and a gray catbird, and recorded a northern parula, a Nashville warbler, a black-throated blue warbler, a blue-headed vireo, and a veery. I also got to greet a friend who I haven't seen in months who stopped along the road to say hi.
Later in the morning my husband and I drove to Kettle Pond so that he could ride his unicycle on the rail trail down to Plainfield. In the meantime, I got out my bike and rode through the Kettle Pond campground to the trail head for the trail that goes around the pond. To my surprise, the campground was packed. Just about every site was loaded with young people. What a joy to see so many people outdoors! I tucked my bike behind a tree just past the trail head and walked the trail looking for leafminers and insects. There weren't that many miners on this side of the pond, probably because the species diversity was limited, and also because it's still early in the season. This area is boreal forest, mainly spruce and fir, with some sugar maples, yellow birch, and hemlock mixed in. I found miners in wild sarsaparilla, red trillium, and whorled wood aster. There were very few blooms, so no pollinators. I found a few flies, and when I stopped for a picnic lunch along the shore, I found a tattered yellow swallowtail permanently perched on tree branch. On my way back to the car I managed to get a close enough view of a magnolia warbler to shoot it with the 100 mm lens I had on my camera. I also recorded a common yellowthroat, hermit thrush, and black-throated green warbler.
In the evening there wasn't much action at the moth lights. The temperature was below 60F with clear skies and wind. I had a pug, a snowy shouldered acleris, and a couple of midges.
6/18/21. Chickering Rd, East Montpelier, VT, Portal Rd, Middlesex, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 1.8 miles today, 3327.1 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Chickering Rd since it is my favorite birding route, and I had to skip it Monday due to rain. I logged 46 species for the day--everything was out! I shot a phoebe, the olive-sided flycatcher, a yellow-bellied sapsucker, some robins, some chickadees, the pair of tree swallows by the first Chickering Pond, and a common yellowthroat. I recorded an ovenbird, a hermit thrush, a cowbird, a northern parula, a blue-headed vireo, a scarlet tanager, a catbird, and a house wren. No people, no cars.
Later in the morning I met my friends Eve and Ed at another friend's house in Middlesex for a bug walk on her property. We started with her peonies, which were in full glorious bloom, but only a few small native bees were buzzing in them. Instead, the bees were all over the geraniums, bumblebees, honeybees, and natives. Next we sat under a tree by her pond where there was a swarm of ground bees and a few nomads. Then we walked up the steep hill through the woods behind her house and followed the trail that came out at the top of a large field with magnificent views. And wildflowers full of bees. We also shot a caterpillar on an oak leaf, a leaf miner on a poplar leaf, some robberflies, some leaf hoppers, and an Ichneumon wasp.
In the evening there was some light rain falling when I went out to check the moth lights. The lights were mobbed with midges of various sizes and shapes. I had a metarrhanthis, a rosy maple, a Virginian tiger, a snowy shouldered acleris, a black dotted glyph, a yellow dusted cream, a case bearer, and several other micros. I also had some oval shaped black beetles, a lightning bug, and a net winged beetle.
Erika, with every one of your posts your area sounds more and more amazing!
6/15/21 - Socrates Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove. 1.81 miles today, 14.31 miles total.
Category: Plants vs. Pavement, Round 2!
Since I had fun with this category around the neighborhood I decided to take it to the park! Where there are more plants, of course, but fewer pavements. Still found some cool things, though, including a volunteer tomato plant growing between our front steps and the neighbor's railing, Queen Anne's lace nearly in bloom, galinsoga, and bindweed.
I also had some unusual photographic opportunities on the animal front, including a very confiding painted lady on a flowering privet and a couple of house mice who were more interested in the bird seed that one of the neighbors spreads each morning than in worrying about me. Not much new breeding bird survey wise but I did see a second-year red-tailed hawk with the red just starting to appear in the tail.
6/16/21 - Socrates Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove. 1.62 miles today, 15.93 miles total.
Category: Insects
This one was inspired by my encounter with the painted lady the previous day. The only insects I'm able to identify to species so far were an Asian lady beetle and a European paper wasp, both introduced species as their names imply, but hopefully the experts will come through on some of the others in time. I'm especially curious about the blue-gray Megachile bees that over the past week have suddenly become very common around the park's plantings where before they were entirely absent.
Great find with the volunteer tomato plant! I always keep an eye out for them. I've also found some volunteer cilantro on occasion. The trick is to find them together. Volunteer salsa!
6/19/21. Lightening Ridge Rd & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 1 miles today, 3328.1 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Lightening Ridge Rd looking for birds. I began with a brief foray east to check the large hay field. Sure enough, there were geese there, but just 9 today, not the 10 I saw there on Tuesday. Then I turned around and headed west up past the yard with the day lily garden out front to check for the house wren. Yes, that was there, too. Other birds for the day were a phoebe, a red-eyed vireo, a chickadee, a brown creeper, some robins, some cedar waxwings, some goldfinches, some chipping sparrows, some song sparrows, and a cowbird. I also recorded an ovenbird, a black-and-white warbler, a chestnut-sided warbler, and a redstart.
In the evening there was some decent action at the moth lights. I had yellow-dusted cream, three-lined balsa, green leuconycta, inornate carpet, a caloptilia, several other micro moths, a giant caddisfly, a regular brown caddisfly, some fungus gnats, some midges, a potato leafhopper and a green leafhopper with prominent black stripes.
our volunteer pavement plant this year was a sunflower between the bricks in our patio (presumably from birdseed).
6-9-21 Watchung Hills Regional High School and Woodland School, Warren, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 1049.25 miles total
Category: blooming.
I was stuck waiting for Katie while she went to a theater club presentation at the high school, so I wandered the local parking lots. There were actually a number of things blooming: beardtongue, pink, honeysuckle, crownvetch, plantain, medic, daisy, smartweed, clover, wineberry, and several grasses and sedges.
6-10-21. D&R Canal, South Bound Brook, NJ. 1.25 miles today, 1050.5 miles total
Categories: blooming, critters.
I walked at the canal in the morning, and then after dinner ended up back here with my husband. My favorite find of the day was yellow salsify both blooming and especially fruiting, the enormous puffballs make me smile every time. There were spotted lanternfly nymphs everywhere, I found them on more than half a dozen different plants. Milkweed, St. John's wort, and horsenettle have just started blooming, and I found a dame's rocket still barely hanging in there. Something was eating the catalpa trees, and I couldn't figure out what, partly because the lady beetles had done a good job of eating IT.
6-13-21. Brookside Dr., Martinsville, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 1050.75 miles total.
Category: blooming
This is a very busy time of year for me, and it had been days since I walked at all, so I squeezed in a quick one at this very local bit of park. I was surprized to find both sundrops and pale spike lobelia blooming here, neither of which I'd seen here before (and both are uncommon in my area in general). The privets, the moth mullein, and the robin plantain were all blooming as well.
6-14-21. Mountain Park, Liberty Corner, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 1051 miles total.
Categories: blooming, critters.
A quick walk at a local park but I ran into two separate old friends here. Very unusual for me to meet people I know while out walking and there were two! Lots of tufted vetch blooming here, and more pale spike lobelia. Various dogwoods were flowering and beardtongue, the milkweeds are getting started. Once again there were spotted lanternfly larvae everywhere. We're going to have an "interesting" fall when they grow into adults.
6-15-21. Great Swamp, Harding Twp., NJ and Gene King Park, Bridgewater, NJ. 1.5 miles today, 1052.5 miles total
Categories: birds, blooming
Katie and I went over to check out the far side of the Great Swamp, where I had never walked. But we forgot to put on bug spray before setting off down the trail, and we thoroughly regretted it. The mosquitoes were intense. Blooming I found tall meadow rue, pyrola, white avens, and my favorite: a blooming arrow arum something I'd never seen (or never noticed) before (it's pretty darn subtle). Katie spotted a catbird, plus an ebony jewelwing and a dancer damselfly of some kind. On the way out, she saw a bunny and managed to get a photo out the window of the car.
Next stop (with bug spray this time) was at the bird blinds in the center of the swamp. Here I saw swamp candles and blooming spatterdock. The broad cattails were blooming, and I found a blue dasher dragonfly. But Katie borrowed my camera for most of the walk (I'd forgotten to bring a spare one for her) and got the back end of a tree swallow going into a nesting box, a swamp sparrow (new for us), a baby praying mantis, a huge snapping turtle, and a really noisy baby red-winged blackbird plus a shot of its mom feeding it. On the way out, way in the far bushes, she shot some unidentified bird that turned out to be a phoebe when I blew it up at home. She'd never heard of phoebes before (except as a girl's name).
That night my husband and I walked in the woods at Gene King Park. He's much faster than me, and the light was not good for taking photos quickly, so I didn't get much here, but there was a hop hornbeam with more fruit than I've ever seen on a single tree.
6-16-21. Middlebrook Trail, Martinsville, NJ. 1.5 miles today, 1054 miles total
Categories: blooming, critters.
This trail is sort of officially closed, as one of the bridges is broken with no good way around, but one can still walk carefully across the broken section and so many people do that the signs get taken down as soon as the town puts them back up. The creeping Jenny was blooming here, and very cheerful. There's also tons of sedges, only a few of which I can guess at an ID for. Fringed loosestrife was blooming, and winterberry was about to. Water hemlock was finishing up. I found deerberry fruit, something I've never seen here before. But the neatest plant for me was blooming poison sumac, something I've never seen at all before.
Critter-wise there were lots of lanternflies, blackfly eggs, a big spider I can't ID, several skippers and damselflies, dense colonies of wooly, gray aphids on vetch, leaf mines on grape, snakeroot, deertongue, and violet, and a couple bees and an azure.
6-17-21. Chimney Rock Reservoir. Martinsville, NJ. 1 mile today, 1055 miles total
Categories: blooming, critters
I walked at the local reservoir today. I was looking for birds for Katie and found a cardinal, robin, catbird, red-winged blackbird, mourning dove, mallard, and a phoebe, plus half a dozen turtles and a pair of bunnies.
Other than lanternflies, critters included some very tame four lined plant bugs, an orbweaver, some stilt-legged bug, flies, bees, a click beetle, a lace-border, and a spreadwinged damselfly.
Blooming were swamp candles, fringed loosestrife, elder, milkweed, trefoil, clover, sumac, broad and narrow cattails, lots of grasses and sedges, crownvetch, privet, beardtongue, wineberry, St. John's wort, dogwood, thistle, honeysuckle, rose, pink, bedstraw, and fleabane.
6-19-21. Cataract Park, Schooleys Mountain, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 1055.5 miles total
Categories: blooming, critters
Molly is working at sleep-away camp this summer, about 45 minutes away. At 10 pm on Friday night her car broke down on the way to Walmart. She got a ride back to camp, but Saturday morning I drove out to deal with getting the thing towed. While waiting, I photographed the nearby weeds. Only dandelion, clover, avens, pimpernel, medic and smartweed were blooming. There were mines in snakeroot and elm.
On the way home, I stopped to walk (straight up the side of Schooleys Mountain, as it turned out) at Cataract Park. The deer here are intense and there's almost nothing growing on the forest floor, though I found some blooming spotted wintergreen. At the brook at the bottom of the hill there was some sedge and wood nettle blooming, and I found what I think is a darkling beetle. Still, I was not impressed, and the sounds of the busy road were very prevalent.
I've seen volunteer sunflowers around the neighborhood, but no cilantro! We had a volunteer corn plant up the block but the roots were very shallow and it was too near to foot traffic - it got knocked down.
6/20/21 - Astoria Neighborhood. .82 miles today, 16.75 miles total.
Category: Trees and shrubs
Most of the trees I see in NYC are cultivated - the street trees, the trees in the yards of people lucky enough to have yards, even the ones in the parks. But a few species are fast and hardy and lucky enough to make a go of it on their own. I looked out for those while I took a short walk to pick up my CSA veggies.
The big success story here is mulberry - no surprise, considering how the Robins, Cedar Waxwings, Mockingbirds, Catbirds, and Blue Jays all go for the berries. The seeds must be spread far and wide! I think all the specimens I saw were white mulberry but I'm still getting a handle on the wide variety of forms their leaves can take. Some others, like the pear and the redbud, were most likely volunteer offspring of nearby street trees.
Speaking of volunteers, I found that the sidewalk spider flower I spotted last week is in glorious bloom today... couldn't be prettier if it was cultivated! And nearby some moss-rose purslane is budding.
Sara: I loved your collection of parking lot weeds. And I've never seen a red-winged blackbird chick--good spotting for Katie! I've also never seen poison sumac in bloom. The only poison sumac I know of is way up around Lake Champlain. And a good reminder to keep an eye out of snakeroot mines.
Carrie: It's great to keep an eye out for wild trees in the midst of the city. What amazing species they are! In the meantime, you can watch the planted trees for insects and leaf mines.
6/20/21. Pekin Brook Rd, Calais, VT, Dog Pond, Woodbury, VT, Lanesboro, Marshfield, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 5 miles today, 3333.1 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Pekin Brook Rd looking for birds. I was quite pleased that there was very little traffic, such a contrast with weekdays. I saw an alder flycatcher, a phoebe, a kingbird, some red-eyed vireos, a pair of tree swallows, a pack of starlings, some robins, some waxwings, several purple finch (at our feeder), some song sparrows, some red-winged blackbirds, and a chestnut-sided warbler. I also recorded winter wren, an ovenbird, a hermit thrush, an indigo bunting, a veery, a redstart, a white-throated sparrow, a parula, and a catbird. I paused to admire some fresh coyote scat in the middle of the road and also saw some deer tracks. The thimbleberry is in bloom, and also the bush honeysuckle.
After breakfast, my husband and I took the canoe back to Dog Pond, where I had noticed a separate hidden pond on the satellite map. It is connected by a tiny stream about 6' long and 4' wide, and 2" deep. We portaged up the stream to explore the small pond, which my husband deemed Puppy Pond. It was quite beautiful and quiet, but my camera battery was dead and I forgot my phone. There was some swamp loosestrife, swamp milkweed, and skullcap in bloom along Puppy Pond, so we need to return with a working camera. We also a large snapper and many painted turtles, as well as perch, pumpkinseeds, and large-mouthed bass.
In the afternoon I drove my husband up to Fiddlehead Pond so he could ride his unicycle down to Plainfield. Meanwhile, I continued on to Lanesboro, the straight stretch of railroad bed between 2 beavers ponds on the outskirts of Groton State forest. I was looking for some bees that specialize in native loosestrife and dogbane. I quickly found some dogbane that is just starting to open and also found bees in it. Later I found some whorled loosestrife, but no bees. I also saw a white admiral butterfly, a crescent butterfly, a Cantharis lividus beetle, a pin cherry bud gall, and a leafminer in meadowsweet. I recorded a hermit thrush, a Canada warbler, a ruby-crowned kinglet, a song sparrow, a common yellowthroat, a green frog, a bullfrog, a black-throated blue warbler, and a scarlet tanager.
In the evening I had good luck at my moth lights. I found a yellow-dusted cream, a three-lined balsa, a green pug, a ruby tiger moth, a black-smudged chionodes, some other micros, some ground beetles, a Cantharis lividus, a small brown beetle, some midges, some fungus gnats, a caddisfly, a grass bug, and a huge fishing spider.
I love the image of you admiring coyote scat in the middle of the road. And Puppy Pond sounds like the perfect name.
Puppy Pond! I love it!
I've already found some interesting galls on the street and park trees this spring: witch hazel cone gall, poplar leaf stem gall, maple bladdergall, some tetraneuras, red nail gall, and a variety of leaf curl fungi.
6/21/21. Chickering Rd, East Montpelier, VT, Sodom Pond Rd, East Montpelier, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2.4 miles today, 3335.5 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I returned to Chickering Rd for my morning walk. I found a mallard in the first small pond at the end of the road. I also shot a chickadee, the pair of tree swallows circling the clearing at the pond, a robin, some waxwings, a song sparrow, a red-winged blackbird and an ovenbird who was very upset about my being in the road. I recorded a veery, a white-throated sparrow, a Canada warbler, and a northern parula before my phone battery announced it was tired. I guess it didn't charge last night when I put it on the charger. I also found leafminers in plaintain, burdock, and heart-leaved aster all at one spot beside the road.
Late in the afternoon my husband and I set off down to Adamant to canoe Sodom Pond, but when we got there the wind had picked up and there was thunder rumbling in the distance. So we decided to walk along the road instead, staying close to the car. We found bees in dogbane, a white admiral butterfly, some skipper butterflies, a Lygus bug, and the first black-eyed susan blooms of the year.
The thunderstorm rolled through just before dinner. I was glad we didn't lose power since I was hosting a Zoom meeting in the evening. After the meeting I went out to check my lights. It was raining lightly and still quite warm, so the conditions were pretty good for moth hunting. Except, earlier in the day I had pulled the shades down on the windows in front of the moth lights and forgot to lift them again before dusk. So there wasn't much out there when I went out. Just a few Quaker moths and a white spring moth that wouldn't sit still.
6/22/21. Tucker Rd & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 3337.5 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning was gray, misty and cool when I went out for my bird walk. I walked along Tucker Rd after parking at the Chickering Bog parking lot. I found a turkey in the big hay field along Lightening Ridge. On Tucker I found a red-eyed vireo, a blue jay, some noisy ravens, some chickadees, a robin, some waxwings, some goldfinches, a song sparrow, and a red-winged blackbird. I also recorded a white-throated sparrow, an ovenbird, a black-and-white warbler, a chestnut-sided warbler, a Canada warbler, and an indigo bunting. It was mostly quiet along the road with no traffic, at least early. Then a tandem logging truck came through, half-loaded. He squeezed past me, tearing down leaves that were overhanging the road all along his route. A few minutes later a pickup truck came by. And then the logging truck came back, no doubt heading for the log landing a little beyond where I usual walk. I could hear him loading near the turnaround point of the walk. Loading at 6:45 AM. The neighbors must love it.
It was gray and cool all day, so I stayed in and worked. In the evening when I checked my lights I found the first small magpie of the year, and oak leaffolder, a garden tortrix, several other micros, a selection of Chironomus midges and some tiny green midges.
I had not heard of small magpie moths (so pretty!) before, so at first thought you had magpie birds at your lights!
I've never been passed by a logging truck while walking, let alone a tandem, yikes. They are scary enough on the highway in a car. There's signs up in the neighboring towns warning garbage trucks about fines for picking up trash before 7 am; I wonder what they'd think of 6:45am logging!
6-20-21. Papaianni Park, Edison, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 1056 miles total.
Categories: flowers, birds.
Katie and I walked at this suburban park with a pond because it always has at least geese and ducks. We also found a cormorant plus robins, morning doves, grackles and innumerable house sparrows. oh, and a domestic goose in with the Canada.
For me the most interesting plants were bracted plantain and silver cinquefoil.
6-21-21. Dewey Meadow Farms, Basking Ridge, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 1056.5 miles total
categories: blooming, critters
This is a somewhat swampy powerline clearing adjacent to a shopping center on one side and woods on the other. Critter-wise I found red winged blackbirds, tadpoles in a puddle, thistle stem galls, thistle tortoise beetle, thistle bud weevil, dogwood spittlebug adult, a horned treehopper of some kind, broad headed sharpshooter, paper wasp, several bees, and a milkweed beetle.
There are both broad and narrow cattails here, plus meadowsweet and steeplebush (the latter not blooming yet) and both narrowleaved and virginia mountain mint. There was squirreltail grass by the road, and the blue vervain has started blooming.
6-22-21. Tempe Wick Preserve, Mendham, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 1056.75 miles total.
Category: flowering
It was drizzling on the way home from taking Katie for her second vaccine (the last of my children). We stopped at this maintained meadow to see what was blooming. Katie shot a chipping sparrow and a blackbird from the car. I got the umbrella and found dogbane, buttercup, fleabane, bedstraw, plantain, heal all, daisy, trefoil, and two kinds of clover blooming. I didn't last long. Katie commented on my tiny umbrella, which I mostly used to keep the camera dry, thus getting my backside wet every time I bent over for a better shot.
6-23-21. Dead River, Lyons, and Middle Brook, Martinsville, NJ. 1.25 miles today, 1058 miles total.
Categories: flowering, critters.
Dead River is another wet powerline clearing, but more rural, and usually wetter. We have been very dry and there was almost no mud anywhere, but I still managed to find enough to get my sneaker so stuck I had to dig it out with my hands. Here there was interesting plant after interesting plant. There was narrowleaved pinweed, helmet skullcap, marsh speedwell, field milkwort, purple milkweed, whorled loosestrife, swamp candles, bur reed, water plantain in bloom. And I shot a weevil in flight, something I've never seen before. On a less positive note, I also saw the first Japanese beetle of the year, and a spotted lanternfly, despite very little in the way of woody plants.
In the evening I took Chuck down a trail I'd done just the other day, but we started at the other end, and I only went half way (he finished the loop and went back for the car to pick me up). I showed him the poison sumac. Moneywort and fringed loosestrife were blooming. And I recorded a green frog.
6/22/21 - Socrates Sculpture Park to the ferry terminal. 2.04 miles today, 18.79 miles total.
Category: Eye level
This is kind of a weird category, but I realized that I'd been spending a lot of time looking way up for birds and down at the ground for small plants. What about in between? I included anything that I didn't have to stoop or crane my neck to spot or to take a picture of.
Because of Erika's suggestion I looked closely at the leaves and trunks of the ornamental trees, finding some (annoyingly fast) mystery bugs as well as lichen and spiderwebs; the ornamental shrubs were even better - my favorite find was a red-banded leafhopper on the mallows, and there were also bees on the hydrangeas and insects of all kinds on the butterfly bush. A couple of Northern Mockingbirds came down to eye level in the corner of the park with the serviceberries - all the mockingbirds in the park are acting very nervous lately (I saw the other pair swooping and chasing one of the local feral cats, who I assume deserved it) so I think their young must be close to fledging. And there are many weedy plants that managed to qualify - from tall Queen Anne's lace and white sweetclover to grapes and trumpetflower hanging from the fences.
Sara: Great finds in the powerline clearings. The variety of plants and animals you can turn up in such places is amazing. And finding the cormorant and domestic goose in the park was great, too. Watch any native loosestrife you find for bees. Apparently, there are some native bees that specialize on loosestrife (and hemp dogbane).
Carrie: Eye level is a great category to focus on. I think Sara tried that a few times in the past. Nice find on the red-banded leafhopper. As for mockingbirds, what a treat! They are quite rare around here since we are too far north. Although I get to see tropical mockingbirds when we go to Martinique.
6/23/21. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT, Eagle Ledge Rd, Worcester, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 4.6 miles today, 3342.1 miles total.
Categories: birds, blooms and arthropods
This morning I took a walk up Peck Hill looking for birds. The temperature was not quite 50F, so I was glad to find my gloves in my jacket pockets. No mosquitoes! As I stepped out the front door, I found a titmouse, red-breasted nuthatch, purple finches,hairy woodpecker, and a white-throated sparrow at our feeder. Other birds along the way included phoebe, red-eyed vireo, blue jay, tree swallows, robins, waxwings, song sparrows, black-and-white warbler, common yellowthroat, and indigo bunting. I also recorded a golden-crowned kinglet on our driveway, a chestnut-sided warbler, a lone spring peeper in the lemna pond in front of the farmhouse on the corner, a common yellowthroat, a northern parula, and a redstart. And I found a pile of very fresh coyote scat in just about the same place I saw the coyote last week.
In the afternoon, my husband and I went to Eagle Ledge Rd in Worcester, he with his unicycle and me walking. This is a road in name only. It is marked town trail, vehicle access only by permit. Sort of like a town park, except only the road itself is public. It runs through a narrow valley filled with a line of beaver ponds, sprinkled with a few hunting camps. As it turned out, a beaver dam about 1.1 miles in had flooded the road and the day was too cool for wading (62F), so we turned around there. I found leafminers on wild sarsaparilla, meadowsweet, parasol whitetop, dock, and cinquefoil. I also found lots of bees on daisies, flower beetles, a collection of flies, and some soldier beetles. Blooming were mountain maple, thimbleberry, daisies, and false helleborine. Roadkill was a garter snake.
In the evening, there was very little action at the moth lights, perhaps because it was cool and dry and there was a bit of light left in the sky at 9:30. I only had an angle moth and a single large midge.
I did chest-high observations when I strained my back a year or two ago. I was surprised by how much I could find at that level, even in winter.
6/23/21 - Socrates Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove. 1.73 miles today, 20.52 miles total.
Category: Insects
This morning while I was walking the dog a leafhopper briefly landed on my phone, setting the category for the day - and I got its picture once it hopped to a wall, too.
I ended up with a nice variety, including common picture-winged fly, European drone fly, golden tortoise beetle (a new one for me!), Western honey bee, margined calligrapher, and an assortment of as-yet unidentified flies, bees, and moths. There were a lot of dragonflies around as well, but my photographic skill and equipment isn't yet equal to capturing them in flight.
There is drama at the feral cat colony. A new, young-seeming, and relatively friendly cat showed up; she promptly had kittens and seems otherwise in need of vetting. I talked with the woman who feeds them (I know, I know, but there's an element of maintaining community goodwill here) about getting her vetted and adopted. I can help with the vetting but I don't think my elderly dog would appreciate a new cat (nor would my boyfriend - also named Chuk!) - although I am tempted. While I watched, she (the cat, not cat-feeder) caught a young house mouse - fine if it's an invasive species, I guess, but there are the mockingbirds and catbirds and robins to think of.
Sara, cool to hear that someone else has tried that (sorry about your back though.)
Erika, we have a lot of mockingbirds but I never get tired of them. I also love how they adapt city noises like car alarms and sirens into their songs.
Great find on the golden tortoise beetle! They are such a thrill! It's amazing what variety of insects you can find in a small area. Good luck with the cats!
6/24/21. Adamant, VT, Dog River Recreational Fields, Montpelier, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 3.1 miles today, 3345.2 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I drove down to Adamant to look for birds. I started with a jaunt up Quarry Rd, where I logged 39 species on ebird, including wood ducks and a great blue heron on Adamant pond, a mourning dove, some yellow-bellied sapsuckers, a phoebe, a kingbird, a red-eyed vireo, a chickadee, a nuthatch, a robin, some waxwings, a goldfinch, a song sparrow, and some Nashville warblers. I also recorded a veery, a brown creeper, a black-throated blue warbler, a Northern parula, a hermit thrush, and a winter wren. By the time I got back to the Adamant Coop where I had parked my car I was running late on time. I knew I should skip the walk along Sodom Pond, but I just couldn't bring myself to do that. Folks come from all over to look watch birds on Sodom Pond, which is an ebird hotspot. So how could I skip the main event? Walking quickly, I found wood ducks, a mallard, a kingbird, a blue jay, some tree swallows, lots of red-winged blackbirds, and a yellow warbler. As I neared the turn-around point, I heard an unfamiliar waterbird call. I wondered if it could be a Virginia rail in the marsh plants. I played the call on my phone to remember what it sounds like, and the bird called back immediately, very loudly, and kept calling for the rest of the time I was in earshot, at least 15 minutes. Ooops!
Later in the morning my husband and I drove down to Montpelier. While he rode his unicycle on the bike path, I met up with Eve, Ed, and Melissa for our weekly bugwalk. @beeboy had suggested checking out the hemp dogbane in the Dog River Rec fields for some specialist bees. We started out down the path through the Japanese knotweed jungle. No dogbane there, but we did find a few bees resting on the knotweed leaves. Out on the rocky beech by the river bank, we found a few patches of dogbane, but not a lot of bee action. Still, we managed to find a few native bees, and well as flea beetles, leaf beetles, and 2 kinds of lady bugs, the Asian and a native with 2 spots. Then we walked the margins of the rec field, which was in the process of being mowed with 2 industrial mowers. Typically at this site, we find lots of bees on the dandelions and clovers in the field, but the grass was down to about 1/2" inch. The insects that had been in the grass who survived were hanging out on the knotweed leaves rimming the field wondering what the heck happened. We found lots of mating rose chafers and 2 more kinds of lady beetles, a yellow one and a 12-spot, although we didn't get photos of the 12-spot. Then we went down another trail to the river and found some more dogbane with plenty of action. But by then we were tired, it was lunch time, and my camera battery had died. The blue vervain along the shore was blooming, and I found leafminers in jewelweed and dock.
In the evening there was some decent action at my moth lights. I had a three-lined balsa, a yellow-dusted cream, another white geometer, a green pug, another pug, and my first snowy urola of the year. Plus 3 kinds of leafhoppers, 2 kinds of midges, a cloud of fungus gnats, and a caddisfly.
6/25/21. Old Trail Rd Trail, East Montpelier, VT, Noyes Pond, Groton, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 3.7 miles today, 3348.9 miles total.
Categories: birds, leafminers, and arthropods
This morning I went searching for a new bird walking route. I was looking for a route with lots of birds, little traffic, and no grass. The trail from Chickering Rd to Old Trail Rd met 2 of those 3 goals--no traffic at all, some birds, but lots of high grass. When I got home, I found 2 ticks on my neck, so I don't think I'll return to this one. The trail started off in the deep woods along the Chickering property, which quickly transitioned into sugarbush managed by the Chapells. Then it dropped down into the industrial dairy farms of East Montpelier. Even though the trail goes through the woods, it still had the feel of farmland rather than the wild woods of Calais. I flushed a turkey on the wooded part of the trail near a field, and saw a hawk in the sugarbush. I also saw a yellow-bellied sapsucker, some northern flickers, a pair of kingbirds hunting from a wire fence along a hayfield, some chickadees, a robin, some song sparrows, a grackle, and loads of red-winged blackbirds near the pond in the hayfields. I also saw another large blackbird at the top of a tree in the hayfields which I first thought was yet another red-wing, but then I saw it had no red wings, but rather a white cap--bobolink! I recorded a hermit thrush, an ovenbird, a black-throated blue warbler, a scarlet tanager, a winter wren, and a yellow-rumped warbler. I also saw a red eft and a herd of cattle annoyed by flies. When I photographed the flies, a man came out with his dog and pointedly asked me if I was planning on continuing to walk the trail.
After spending all morning on an intense Zoom call, my husband and I went up to Noyes Pond in Groton in the afternoon. My husband rode his unicycle on the road there while I hiked the loop around the pond. The forest around the pond is deep boreal forest on one side with some hardwoods on the other. I recorded Swainson's thrush (for the first time!), blue-headed vireo, Blackburnian warbler, ruby-crowned kinglet, yellow-rumped warbler, magnolia warbler, black-throated blue warbler and hermit thrush. I also shot a chalk-fronted corporal, a bluet, a clubtail, a harlequin moth and a red squirrel, all with my cell phone since I managed to get off without a battery in my camera. I found leafminers in wild sarsaparilla, paper birch, trillium, whorled wood aster, and swamp aster, and galls on blueberry and beech. I also found some large patches of pink ladyslippers gone by.
In the evening at the moth lights I had a green pug, a plume moth, a yellow-dusted cream, a Caloptilia, several other micros, a click beetle, some midges, some leafhoppers, and a red mayfly with a large green egg mass.
6/26/21. Lightening Ridge Rd, Calais, VT, Paine Mountain, Northfield, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 3.1 miles today, 3345.2 miles total.
Categories: birds, bog life, and arthropods
This morning I walked along Lightening Ridge Rd looking for birds. I started by heading east out to the hay field to check for big birds like turkeys, geese, or ravens, but the field was empty. Then I headed east up to the day lily garden to check on the house wren. It was there, singing away, but I never caught sight of it, so I just recorded it. I also recorded a cowbird, a black-throated blue warbler, a northern parula, a blue-haded vireo, and a white-throated sparrow. I saw a mourning dove, a hummingbird, some yellow-bellied sapsuckers, an eastern phoebe, a blue jay, some crows, some chickadees, a catbird, some robins, a common yellowthroat, a chestnut-sided warbler, and a female indigo bunting.
Later in the morning, I drove down to Northfield for an outing with the Vermont Entomological Society. We visited the hunting camp of one our members, Doug Burnham. In today's group were 12 people, including my friends Eve, Ed, and Melissa, also Spencer Hardy, and Michael Sabourin. The camp was a rustic camp on the edge of a pond on Paine Mountain. The highlight of the visit was an intermediate fen up above the cabin, with patches of showy ladyslippers. Also in the fen we found buckbean, swamp currant, swamp goldenrod, sneezewort, blue flags and royal fern. When we first arrived at the camp, we found a turtle laying eggs in the driveway. We also found some chalk-fronted corporals, widow skimmers, bluets, sprites, European skippers, hobomok skippers, stoneflies, a Tegragnatha spider eating a harvestman, and a wolf spider carrying babies. I found leafminers in wild sarsaparilla, violets, nettles, and swamp goldenrod.
It began raining just as we finished our hike back down from the fen, and continued the rest of the day until evening. It was also warm and muggy, so I should have had plenty of visitors at the moth lights, but I didn't make it out until the lights went off. Still, I had a bog bibarembla, some micro moths, a crane fly, a bizarre (that's the name of the family) caddisfly, a green lacewing, a click beetle, a tiny brown beetle, and some leafhoppers.
6/27/21. Pekin Brook Rd & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2 miles today, 3347.2 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
This morning I walked along Pekin Brook Rd looking for birds. I shot some purple finches in our yard, and then a hairy woodpecker, and a pair of kingbirds. As I reached the apple tree on Pekin Brook Rd, I found it full of yellow warblers (a family?) and some red-eyed vireos. I also shot chickadees, catbirds, robins, waxwings, goldfinches, song sparrows, and a female indigo bunting. I recorded a blue-headed vireo, a winter wren, a veery, a restart, and an indigo bunting singing. I also saw a neighbor walking down the road enjoying a cup of coffee from a ceramic mug.
In the evening it was hot and muggy (75F), but still light out at 9:15 when I went out to look for insects at the lights. I found a divided olethruetes, a black-smudged chionodes, an angle moth, a fruitworm moth, a Caloptilia and a few more micros, a May beetle, a small black bug, some black striped leafhoppers, and a large red leafhopper.
6/28/21. Chickering Rd, East Montpelier, VT, Ricker Pond, Groton, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2.1 miles today, 3349.3 miles total.
Categories: birds, road crossers and arthropods
This morning I walked along Chickering Rd looking for birds. I found some yellow-bellied sapsuckers, a phoebe, some blue jays, some chickadees, a tree swallow, some robins, some waxwings, some goldfinch, a white-throated sparrow, a song sparrow, and a common yellowthroat. Above the first pond I also saw a hawk in the top of a tree, but I couldn't tell what species. I also recorded a blue-headed vireo, an ovenbird, a black-throated green warbler, a scarlet tanager, a black-throated blue warbler, a winter wren, a northern parula, a hermit thrush, and a chestnut-sided warbler. As I was entering the forested section of the road, I noticed what appeared the tracks of bare feet in the road. Bear? But I got distracted by birds and forgot about the tracks. On my return I heard some crashing of branches in the woods. And got distracted by some birds again. And then the yearling bear ran down the road right in front me. Fortunately, he seemed quite afraid of me and ran off into the woods. I got a few photos, but I don't know if the bear is recognizable in the photos.
Later in the morning, my husband and I took my mother, who is staying with us for a week, out to Ricker Pond in Groton. While my husband rode his unicycle down from Fiddlehead Pond, my mother and I swam near the Ricker Dam. I brought my underwater camera with the intention of doing some snorkeling and fish chasing, but I forgot my swim mask. So I shot a leafminer in wild sarsaparilla instead.
In the evening it was still a little light when I checked the moth lights at 9:15 PM. I found a single inornate carpet, some micros, a Lygus bug, a click beetle, lots of striped leafhoppers, a potato leafhopper, a red leafhopper, and some midges.
6/29/21. Tucker Rd, Calais, VT, Boulder Beach, Groton, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2.3 miles today, 3351.5 miles total.
Categories: birds, roadkill and arthropods
This morning I walked along Tucker Rd looking for birds. I started off with a brown-headed cowbird atop a pine above the Chickering Bog parking lot. Then I found a hummingbird, a phoebe, some robins, some goldfinches, some song sparrows, and a common yellowthroat. At the turn-around point on Tucker Rd I saw a large flycatcher with a yellow belly that I think was a great crested. Just as I was leaving the parking lot to return home, a turkey crossed the road in front of me. I recorded a winter wren, an ovenbird, an indigo bunting, a white-throated sparrow, a black-throated green warbler, and a black-throated blue warber. Roadkill was 3-4 American toads and a wood frog.
Later in the morning my husband and I took my mother to Groton. While my husband rode his unicycle on the rail trail, my mother and I went to Boulder Beach, where we found sheep laurel, winterberry, and bush honeysuckle in bloom and a leafminer on blackberry. I also found a Bupestrid beetle on the blackberry.
In the evening I had several micros at the moth lights including a Coleophora, plus a click beetle, a rove beetle, and a ground beetle, 3 kinds of leafhoppers, several midges, and a Lygus bug.
6/30/21. Peck Hill Rd, Calais, VT, Sodom Pond Rd, Adamant, VT & Frizzle Mountain, Calais, VT. 2.5 miles today, 3354.0 miles total.
Categories: birds and arthropods
I slept in so my morning walk was quite brisk...for a bird walk, 2 miles in one hour. I found some purple finches on our bird feeder and a belted kingfisher on the barn roof at the farm. I also found some chickadees, some robins, some goldfinches, some song sparrows, some red-winged blackbirds, a hummingbird, some common yellowthroats, and a flock of 15 birds that were probably starlings. I also recorded a veery, a common yellowthroat, a chestnut-sided warbler, and an indigo bunting.
Later in the morning I took my mother down to Adamant where we met up with Eve and Ed for our weekly birdwalk. We walked along the north east edge of the pond on what we call dragonfly ally. We found bluets, spreadwings, and a widow skimmer, plus a deer fly, a Toxomerus syrphid, a couple of bees, a ladybug, and some orbweavers. The weather was hot but quite breezy with sprinkles. I found lots of leafminers, including some on fireweed, jewelweed, meadowsweet, dandelion, parasol whitetop, meadow rue, burdock, and red clover.
In the evening, it was warm and humid after a thunderstorm, but I didn't make it out to the lights until they had gone off. I found a yellow-dusted cream, a ribboned carpet, a green mossy glyph, a black dotted glyph, a Scoparia, some Crambids, some other micros, a brown weevil, a green immigrant weevil, 3 kinds of leafhoppers, several midges, including an yellow one with orange stripes, a small crane fly, and some tiny caddisflies.
I love the names of some of the bugs; I wonder sometimes what the entomologists were thinking. I've never seen a turtle lay eggs, though I've seen plenty of them crossing roads in order to do so (why? why isn't the pond side of the road good enough?).
My husband would approve of your husband's method of taking your mother places. You two hang out at the water and he goes off riding (though not on a unicycle in Chuck's case).
6-24-21. Stamford Nature Center, Stamford, and Crandall's Park, Tolland, CT. 1 mile today, 1059 miles total
Categories: birds, bugs, flowers
Katie and I left for our New England trip this morning. First night would be with my sister, Kate (it gets a little confusing, there's even yet another Katie in the family as well), outside of Boston. First stop was a park with a pond, a nature center, a petting zoo, boardwalks through a swamp, a nature themed playground, and a sculpture garden. Very busy but interesting. Katie loves birds, so I spent more time looking at those than usual. She found Muscovy and domestic ducks, a cowbird, plus the more typical Canada goose, robin, starling crow, cardinal, chipping sparrow and house sparrow. I found Japanese Mazus and some bottlebrush buckeyes, plus the beech trees here have the beech leaf disease that's spreading from just north of New York City. Sad.
Our second stop was at a park with two ponds. We walked a bit along each. At the second Katie and I spotted a kingbird, her first. Unusual things for me included a black firefly, cow wheat, bush honeysuckle, paper birch, a purple sawfly larva of some kind, a bladderwort, watershield, a speckled sharpshooter, American chestnut sapling, what I think was narrow leaved everlasting pea, and a dragonfly exuviae.
6-25-21, Fort McClary, Seapoint Beach, and Cutts Island Trail, Kittery, ME. 1.5 miles today, 1060.5 miles total
Categories: birds, bugs, flowers, shells
Friday Kate, Katie and I drove up to Kittery, Maine, simply because Katie had never been to Maine before and Kittery is the closest Maine town to Boston. We stopped at an old fort, where Katie and I saw eider ducks in the water. I found fragile and lady ferns, hawkbit, valerian, tansy, black swallowwort, European raspberry, European barberry, biting stonecrop, and knotted wrack, all of which are unusual for me.
We had lunch at a lobster shack, where we saw a swimming cormorant and a flying great blue heron, then went to a beach where I found enormous numbers of different seaweeds, lots of periwinkle snails (unusual for me) and Katie found eider ducks with chicks this time.
Then we walked up a trail along a creek where Kate and Katie got well ahead and found both a female scarlet tanager and a barred owl (with a little help on that one from another birder). I missed both, but was very happy with a handsome cormorant, plus European mountain ash, lady's slippers (unfortunately not blooming), shinleaf, stitchwort, and lovage, all of which are rare for me.
In the evening we stopped at my cousin's house in Dover, MA, where we saw chimney swifts and sweet William catchfly.
Eider ducks with chicks! What a find! A few years ago I saw some Eider ducks off the Maine coast, but not with chicks. Good spotting on the chestnut sapling!
6-26-21. Dunback Meadow, Lexington, MA; Ponemah Bog, Amherst, NH; Friendly Farm and Mud Pond, Dublin, NH. 1.25 miles today, 1061.75 miles total.
Categories: birds, bugs, and blooms
Today Katie and I headed up to visit my parents in New Hampshire. But first, Katie was mad that she didn't find a blue jay in Maine and was determined to get one in Massachusetts (they are her favorite because you can easily ID them, even if you only see a little bit of the bird). I looked on eBird, and someone had spotted a bluejay just that morning between my sister's house and the highway, so off we went, and we actually succeeded. And there I got buckthorn, golden Alexander, goutweed, and tansy, all of which are unusual for me.
Next stop was a lovely bog that had dozens and dozens of tuberous grasspinks blooming. Also sundews, pitcher plants, tamarack, bog rosemary, cranberry, sheep laurel, maleberry, and even a couple ripe blueberries. Katie saw crows fighting over something bloody and also tree swallows. I saw a bog copper plus white tailed and pondhawk dragonflies and more black fireflies.
With my parents we went to the petting zoo the kids loved when they were little. Katie still got a kick out of feeding the goats. They now have two white and one regular male peacocks and also a tom turkey, all of whom spent nearly the whole time displaying, very impressive. I found red elderberry (we don't have it in NJ) and several leaf mines, plus a pretty ichneumon and a weird fly with long legs.
We also stopped at a fascinating caterpillar museum in Marlborough, and got a tour from someone who actually specializes in the wasps which parasitize the caterpillars.
In the evening I went alone to Mud Pond and found my first ever maiden pink, plus rafts of swamp candles, variegated pond lily (we only have spatterdock by me), blue toadflax, blue eyed grass, swamp milkweed, and more cranberries.
6-27-21. Horatio Colony, Keene, NH; Montshire Museum, Norwich, VT; Pillsbury Park, Washington, NH; Dublin Pond, Dublin, NH; and Cheshire Rail Trail, Keene, NH. 0.75 miles today, 1062.5 miles total
Categories: birds, bugs, blooms
Katie slept in this morning but I was up, so I checked out a local preserve. However the heat and humidity were already high, and the mosquitoes were fierce, despite repellant, and I didn't last long. There were some neat fungi and a litter moth. I was saddened to see the hemlocks here were covered in adelgids; I hadn't realized they'd made it this far north.
The main point of today was to drive up to Norwich to the Montshire Museum, traditionally a favorite of Katie's, though she's about grown out of science museums, and the weather was very uncomfortable. I did find a dogwood spittle bug and a bluet here.
On the way back, we stopped at Pillsbury State Park, and this was much more successful. We found our first ever red squirrel, a female purple finch, our first yellowthroat, a kingbird, and a goose with goslings. Then there were chalk-fronted corporals, whitetails, ebony jewelwings, mating violet dancers, a calico pennant, some kind of spreadwing damselfly, a rose chafer, whirligig beetles, plus orange hawkweed, little floatingheart, a pondweed in flower, blueflag, striped maple, a trillium, sundew, hazel, pipewort, cranberry, white baneberry, bog myrtle, and a narrow leaved bullreed. Definitely my favorite stop of the whole trip.
In the evening we swam with my parents at Dublin Pond and then walked briefly across the old stone bridge on the Cheshire trail. Here there was a variegated ground spider, plus sweet fern, whorled loosestrife, and an anemone of some kind.
6-28-21. Creamery Covered Bridge, West Brattleboro, VT; Castle Craig, Meriden, CT; Audubon Preserve, Fairfield, CT; Vince Lombardy Rest Area, Ridgefield, NJ. 0.75 miles today, 1063.25 miles total
Categories: birds, bugs, blooms.
We headed home today, first stopping at a covered bridge in VT, looking for a bluejay (but failing to find one). I did find purple flowering raspberry, though.
Next stop was at Craig Castle. On the way up the mountain we found NJ tea, something I'd been looking for for over 20 years. Here Katie found a red tailed hawk and a turkey vulture, both flying below her, which was neat. I found yellow star grass, and there were tons of common thread waisted wasps.
We stopped next at the CT Audupon in Fairfield, mostly because of traffic on the Merritt Parkway. Here Katie was thrilled to find a turkey and then we saw what turned out to be a baby veery (and an adult, too), a new species for us. There was a fragile forktail and blooming wild yam. And I was sad to see they also have beech leaf disease.
We got stuck in awful traffic the rest of the way home, and stopped again at a rest area. here we found lots of grackles and house sparrows, but also a yellow warbler, which was a surprise.
6-30-21. Sons of Liberty Park, Liberty Corner, NJ. 1.25 miles today, 1064.5 miles total
Category: caught my eye.
I walked with my friend Laura today, despite the awful hot, humid weather. I didn't stop to take many photos, but found a miner in violet leaves, ghost pipes, comfrey fruit, and an almost-ripe mayapple.
Oh man, the last week of June just got away from me, but I did get some walks in:
6/24/21 - Socrates Sculpture Park and Hallet's Cove. 1.64 miles today, 22.16 miles total.
Category: Bugs and blooms
A short walk today, but not without some cool finds. Clearwing moth sp., fourteen-spotted lady beetle, and this unidentified critter: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/84314319 were the highlights for the bugs. I only saw two new blooms, a nightshade (thanks for the help with that one, @srall ) and a mustard. Also quiet on the bird front. It's amazing how much the number of Canada geese at the cove has dropped off now that they're molting... I suspect that they feel more vulnerable right now, and the chance of free bread isn't worth the risk of getting near people and dogs to them. There's plenty of algae and plant matter in the river and that's probably better for them anyway. The ring-billed and laughing gulls have mostly disappeared too; still seeing steady numbers of herring gulls though. I suspect them of nesting on some roofs on Roosevelt Island.
6/26/21 - St. Michael's Cemetery. 6.81 miles today, 28.97 miles total.
Category: Bugs and blooms, redux
After more than a month away, I decided it was time to return to St. Michael's Cemetery and see what was new over there, with an eye for additions to both the NY Breeding Bird Atlas and the Empire State Native Pollinators Survey.
I confirmed breeding of some fairly expected birds - starlings and house sparrows, robins and American crows - but the highlight was a single European goldfinch feeding on dandelion seeds. By itself this bird is a probable escape. And acquaintance in Brooklyn found what seemed to be evidence of breeding this year though - a group of unbanded juveniles traveling in a group - and it does make one wonder...
The insects were few but spectacular: yellow-fringed dolichomia and elm spanworm moth, spotted cucumber beetle and some kind of Neurocolpus, grape phylloxera and hackberry nipplegall psyllid (the last two identified from galls). The blooms were a bit more abundant and I was happy to see some healthy-looking common milkweed. Also found silverleaf cinquefoil, white campion, chicory, and yellow sweetclover. And it seems like a dangerous place for dogs, at least in terms of nomenclature - I spotted both dogbane and dog-strangling vine (swallowwort).
Sara: Sounds like a great visit to Ponemah Bog. I'll have to look that one up next time I get south. I would love to see the maleberry, which we don't have up here. And a bog copper! I was sorry to hear that woolly adelgids are so active in Keene. I guess they are coming north. And I had to laugh about your first every red squirrel. Gosh, when I see a gray one, I get a photo because all I see are reds. Congrats on the New Jersey tea. That's one I haven't found yet, and the wild yam.
Carrie: What a great find with the fourteen-spotted ladybeetle. And that's an interesting observation about the molting geese. We usually have loads of geese in downtown Adamant, but I haven't seen any this year. Great work on the breeding bird survey. The European goldfinch was quite a find--such a pretty bird, even if it doesn't belong here. The yellow-fringed dolichomia was neat, too.
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