February, 2019: Describe your walk by adding a comment below
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.
Comentarios
2/3/19. Adamant, VT. 0.1 miles today, 1836.6 miles total.
Categories: birds
This morning I took a sit on the steps of the Adamant Co-op. The bird feeder across the way was quite busy with chickadees. A hairy woodpecker came by, and so did 6 blue jays. The sight of the day, though, was a pileated woodpecker that flew in and began pecking on a telephone pole. Even though there were chickadees all around, I somehow missed shooting any of them successfully.
2-3-19. Chimney Rock and Washington Valley Parks, Martinsville, NJ 1.5 miles today 431.5 miles total
Categories: lichen, moss, whatever caught Molly's eye
The weather was beautiful, just cool enough for a light jacket. Molly and I walked after her birthday lunch on this "The last day she'd ever be a teenager", as Monday she turned 20. She found a fungus on a pine twig that looked a lot like cedar-hawthorn rust, just goopy orange stuff along the twig, no gall. No idea what it was. She also found a pupal case, perhaps of a wasp? She has sharp eyes. She thinks the little round clumps of Orthotrichum moss on tree trunks are adorable, and has learned Frullania, also. I found an ebony spleenwort (unusual for me, and I've only seen them in this park, though another section). And there was a coralberry in the middle of the woods, perhaps it used to be someone's yard. As we were leaving we passed a barberry absolutely covered in evergreen bagworms.
2-4-19. Starnsky Farm, Warren, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 432 miles total
Categories: moss, lichen, insects, fruit
It was another beautiful, warm day so I walked in a local wooded, wet park. First thing I saw was a grasshopper, of all things! In February! I can't imagine the poor thing will survive, but how cool.
I also found the standard Chinese mantis oothecae but also a bunch of what I think were some other mantis species's oothecae. I'd not seen them this shape before. Will have to reaserch. There were willows with bud galls that were not quite the standard pinecone gall, I'll have to look that up, too.
This is mostly maple-beech wood, with a little oak-hickory section, and I found lots and lots of beechdrops. I also looked for skunk cabbage but didn't find it. There was seedbox, though. And there were a lot of baby spruce trees. They are not native in this part of NJ and I suspect they are from planted Norway spruces.
2-5-19. Veronica Dr., Somerset, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 432.25 miles total
Categories: insects, weeds
I chose to have my mammogram done at a different location, about half an hour from my house, so I could explore the area. I've been to this building before but never walked behind it, where there is a mowed sanitary sewer access. I had my eye out for insects but instead found lots of geese and a single spider. There were a number of fungi and lichen, some moss and a lot of the usual forest edge weeds.
2-5-19. Crabiel Park, Milltown, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 432.5 miles total
Categories: lawn weeds, lichen
I was headed for a park on a river, but stopped at this ball field along the way to see what they had. There was the usual lawn weeds, but one of the dandelions was blooming, in February! They had a very nice collection of lichens on small street trees. I also found a fungal (I think) bud gall on one of the planted shrubs and both shrub and gall look familiar but I can't place them, will have to look up. I also found the most maroon-colored sheep sorrel leaves I've ever seen.
2-5-19. Bicentennial Park, East Brunswick, NJ. 0.75 miles today, 433.25 miles total
Categories: bark, buds, fruit, moss, lichen, fungi, leafminers
This park was my main goal today. It's a somewhat overused park on a river impoundment, but had some nice, less trampled sections near the water. Charley Eiseman has just started a leaf miner project here on iNat, and I spent the weekend going through old photos of leafmines, so they were on my mind. Among them were holly leaf mines, and this park had a lot of American holly (and a few planted hybrids). Lo and behold, lots of holly leafmines as well, even though it's the middle of winter.
My favorite find, though, was umbrella magnolia, a short tree I'd never knowingly seen before, with the most enormous purplish buds on the ends of stout twigs. This park is south of where I usually walk, so near the top edge of the Pine Barrens, and it's not underlain by basalt as most of the area around me is, so there were a number of species I don't see often: fetterbush, fan clubmoss, mountain laurel. Plus lots of wetland species I don't often see: pepprbush, swamp azalea, buttonbush, seedbox, swamp rose, swamp rose mallow, swamp loosestrife. Lots of mosses, fungi, some lichen. Interestingly lots of baby evergreens, too. Not just the usual red cedar but also white pine and some spruce, neither of which is at all common growing wild by me.
2-5-19. Rutgers Gardens, New Brunswick, NJ. 1.0 mile today, 434.25 total.
Categories: unintentional plants, leaf mines
Rutgers Univertity's arboretum was on my way home, so I stopped to check out the bamboo forest I'd not visited before. It was neat but I find I don't appreciate monocultures anymore. I want some weeds! The edge of the bamboo ran along a little brook and there were some wild plants here, and I found a pond that had not been carefully tended. The rest of the gardens are very well manicured, but I walked across to check out the huge old winter witch hazels. They had both yellow and a lovely orange in bloom. And on the orange one I found a foraging honey bee! Granted it was 65 degrees out, but it's February, poor thing.
2-5-19. Boyd Park, New Brunswick, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 434.5 miles total
Categories: unintentional plants
My last stop was this urban park on the Raritan River at what used to be the eastern end of the Delaware Raritan Canal (it now ends further up river). The county parks department had been very thorough in mowing and string-trimming every single growing thing here, so the only plants I found were tiny lawn weeds and one patch of mugwort in a fence. Just as well as the battery on my camera died and I didn't have much time anyway and had to turn back.
2-7-19. Gateway National Seashore, Staten Island, NY. 1.0 mile today, 435.5 miles total.
Categories: shells, unintentional plants, leaf miners.
I drove out to the east side of Staten Island to scope out potential locations for the City Nature Challenge bioblitz next April. The parking lots here are right by the shore, just a short stretch of shrubby dune and then beach. So I found lots of shells including a fallen angelwing (new to me) and a false angelwing (I thought it was new but I've actually found it before). There was also a neat sea sponge. I found both Canada and brant geese, and a rose that was neither multiflora nor rugosa. No leafminers, though.
I've also been going through and actually posting observations that I'd journaled about last June but never actually processed.
2-10-19. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, Galloway, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 436 miles total.
Categories: birds, unintentional plants, leaf mines.
I was in Atlantic City to celebrate my husband, Chuck's, 50th birthday. On Saturday my daughter Becca (15) collected shells for me while Molly, Katie, Chuck and I (and some friends) jumped in the ocean. It was 35 degrees out and about that for the water temp and it was very windy. But we did it. And Becca found both a stout Tagelus and snail fur (on a shark eye shell), neither of which I'd seen before.
We spent the night down there, and the next morning I drove over to Forsythe. It was below freezing and still windy, so I didn't walk a whole lot, but got out and did three short trips into the woods in various spots along the auto tour route. I also sat in my car and photographed birds. Not a lot of surprises plant-wise, though a hackberry gave me trouble for a bit. There was southern red oak and probably bear oak, neither of which I usually see, and an evening primrose that I think was not the common one. There was a new-to-me holly leafminer as well. And I saw lots of birds, including three I'd never photographed before (and how I wished I'd had my long lens with me!): Wigeon, Shoveler, and green-winged teal. Also hooded merganser and ruddy duck (both unusual for me), mallard, Canada goose, and maybe a black duck (which I've never photographed).
2-14-19. Hawk Rise Sanctuary, Linden, NJ. 0.75 miles today, 436.75 miles total.
Categories: unintentional plants, birds.
I walked out in this park among huge crude oil tank farms and landfills to the Rahway River delta. There's an interesting little junky wood and then a marsh, all next to the county animal shelter. Not many surprises, though a jimsonweed made me think of you, Erika. There was also a black locust stem gall and a mugwort one, too. Eastern cottonwood and what I think were raccoon tracks were two other things I don't see that often. The only birds were some far-away gulls and some Canada geese.
2-16-19. Prince Rogers Park, Bridgewater, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 437.25 miles total
Categories: Starts with "A", moss, fungi, mammals, cool stuff
Molly and I dropped her sisters and their friends at the mall and then explored this nearby park that has a wooded brook between ball fields. We looked for things starting with "A".
We found: ash, an acorn, algae (both in water and on an old baseball), aster (several), (crab)apple, damage from carpenter ants, agrimony, autumn olive, American holly, and avens. In Latin also: Acer, Artemisia, Allium, (Phytolacca) americana, Alliaria. And things with A that are not going in iNat: aluminum, air bubbles, asphalt, a sign on a bridge from Alexandria, MN, and a baseball with A1010 on it.
We also found two mosses, two fungi, raccoon and deer tracks, a spider egg sack, an oak stem gall, bark beetle trails, and a really cool cocoon (we think) that had been parasitized (lots of holes).
I really liked having the theme, as Molly has been complaining about never finding any "new" plants, and it made things very exciting and challenging.
1-17-19. Top of the World Park, Green Brook, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 435.75 miles total
Categories: red/yellow/ blue, galls, moss, interesting.
I walked the woody perimeter of the fields in this park today, looking for colors. Red things I found included barberry berries, rose stems, rose hips, wineberry stems, blackberry stems, black raspberry stems, and blackberry knot galls. Yellow things were Paulownia flower buds, horsenettle berries, Indian grass, and little bluestem. The only blue things were young juniper needles and privet berries.
I found 8 mosses, but there may be some duplicates, I'm not great at mosses yet. Gall-wise there were the blackberry knots, both thistle and mugwort stem galls, and rose rosette disease galls with perfectly fine rose hips mixed in among them.
1-18-19. Town Park, Warren, NJ. 1.25 miles today, 437 miles total
Categories: starts with "B", moss, fungi
Molly and I took Katie and her friends to the park in town. Molly and I tramped through the woods looking for things starting with B. For Latin names we found Berberis thunbergii, Betula lenta and Betula populifolia.
In English we found: burning bush, barberry branches and berries, black raspberry brambles, (sweet) birch bark, beech buds, bark beetle trails, a black walnut nut, black cherry bark, broom moss, (green) briar briars and berries, (gray)birch bark, a beech burl, and bull thistle.
Also wineberry brambles; rose and privet berries; linden, silver maple and cottonwood buds; white oak, hornbeam, juniper, and Japanese angelica bark.
And, as usual, Molly abounded with non-iNat "B" items: 2 balls, 2 bottles, a box, a bridge over a brook with steep banks, basalt, a ball field, and a sign about "Bob Beckert".
I can't tell you how much I enjoy hiking with you vicariously! Thanks for continuing the detailed reports of all your wondrous finds! Diving for shells and seaweed in February? Right. And finding dandelions in bloom and honeybees flying in February? Wow! Not much of that going on around here. We've got a base of at least 24" of snow on the ground. Much deeper on our porch, which doesn't get any ground heat from below to compact the snow. So if I could get out and walk, I'd only be looking at epiphytes and bark right now. And tracks...well, hopefully sometime soon I can get out and see some tracks before the snow melts. Way to go on re-starting the alphabetic search!
2/10/19. Adamant, VT. 0.1 miles today, 1836.7 miles total.
Categories: birds
I bundled up for a sit on the steps of the Adamant Co-op this morning. Temperatures were hovering around 5F, but the sun was very bright and there was little wind. The birds were quiet. I managed to hear a crow and a nuthatch. I also saw 3 chickadees and got a photo of one across the way. In general, birds seem really scarce around here this year.
2/17/19. Adamant, VT. 0.1 miles today
Categories: birds
Bright sun in downtown Adamant today. I was tempted to go for a short walk towards Sodom Pond, but thought the better of it and stayed seated on the front steps of the co-o. I heard a mourning dove fly up when a neighbor walked through his parking area. I also heard a crow in the distance. I managed to see 2 blue jays, but my blue jay photos didn't come out. And then there were several chickadees, thank goodness.
Glad to hear you like the hike descriptions as I'm about to do a dozen more from a two day trip up to help my parents out after my dad's back surgery (which came 3 weeks after my mother's heart surgery). Both are doing well, and I got to see their new home in a ritzy continuing care retirement facility in Peterborough, NH.
I read a blog from someone in Scotland and they have daffodils already. I remember living in Middlebury and being told Vermont has 6 seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, more winter, and mud. Sounds like you're looking at more winter there. Even here it's likely a month still til the first crocus.
2-19-19. Pequannock River, Riverdale, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 437.25 miles total
Category: identifiable
Tuesday I had to wait for my windshield to be replaced before I could head to New Hampshire, so I didn't leave until 4;30, and sunset was at 5:30. So I drove 45 minutes north and then stopped at this little roadside, riverbank park I'd never visited before, just off the interstate. There was a crumbling old stone bridge over a little old dam that did nothing anymore and had no obvious purpose. There was almost not enough light for photos, and at the end of my 7 minute walk I was using the flash.
I found: Bark: sycamore, black cherry, yellow birch (unusual for me). Vines: poison ivy, black raspberry, wineberry. Fruit: Japanese knotweed, Oriental bittersweet, catalpa, mugwort, Norway spruce,evening primrose. Green leaves: wild garlic, bittercress, ground ivy, chickweed, greater celandine (I don't see this often), garlic mustard, Japanese holly, a goldenrod, Japanese honeysuckle. Buds: box elder, Ailanthus, spicebush. Dead leaves: a privet, red maple, Norway maple. One pair of Canada geese, two mosses, and two fungi.
2-20-19. Wachusett Reservoir, Boylstown, MA. 0.5 miles today, 437.75 miles total
Category: identifiable
I spent the night in Sturbridge and so was able to get to this reservoir north of Worcester just after sunrise. It was cold, enough so that my toes went numb in just the half hour I was out there, despite boots and snow pants.
I saw what I think must be rose campion, something I've never found in the wild before.
Trees I photographed were blue spruce, an oak, bradford pear, black locust, staghorn sumac, Ailanthus, white pine, red cedar, an alder of some kind, black cherry, black oak, and some Populus species. Shrubs were burning bush, a Rubus species, multiflora rose, a Mahonia (unfortunately out of focus), a blue berry, and autumn olive. Vines: wintercreeper, Hedera, bittersweet. Herbs: goldenrods (several kinds), peppergrass, evening primrose, what I think was white vervain, mullein, red clover, and horseweed,. Plus 6 lichens, 2 fungi, a liverwort, and a goldenrod bunch gall.
2-20-19 Concord Hospital, Concord, NH, 0.25 miles today, 438 miles total.
Category: unintentional plants
I walked around the edge of the parking lot before heading inside to meet my parents. There was 4 inches of snow and a steep embankment, so I stuck to the sidewalk. I found an aster, a goldenrod, a flat-topped goldenrod, queen anne's lace, an apple (though that may well have been planted), and sweet fern (which I never see down by me, except in south Jersey).
On the way back to their house I spotted a Populus sp. tree by the gas station, and a whole flock of turkeys, some of whom were flying, which I'd not seen before.
2-21-19 Rivermead, Peterborough, NH. 0.25 miles today, 438.25 miles total
Category: unintentional plants
I took a short walk Thursday morning in my parent's development. They had gotten 3 new inches of crusty snow on top of 2 old inches, and there were a lot of machines busily clearing it as I walked, so I mostly stuck to the paths/road.
I found sweet fern again, and bracken (another one that's so common up there and virtually never seen by me). Goldenrod, pine, beech, hemlock, ash. It was hard to get close enough to ID much of anything, and very little was sticking up off the ground.
2-21-19 Willard Brook State Forest, Ashby, MA. 0.25 miles today, 438.25 miles total.
Category: Things I could photograph from the road
I stopped briefly at this state park to get an idea what it looked like, but the snow had only been cleared from the parking area, and I didn't feel like putting on all my gear to tramp over the mounds and break trail into the woods so I was very limited in what I could see. Basically it was pine, beech, hemlock and three lichens. But still interesting. I'm very much looking forward to coming back in the summer and quite pleased that the "most efficient" route to their new house is very different from the route to their old house, even though the houses are only 5 miles or so apart. There will be a lot of new places to investigate on my way to and from.
2-21-19 Nebraska St. Worcester, MA. 0.25 miles today, 438.5 miles total
Category: unintentional plants (that stick up through snow)
I had a delicious lunch at a Thai restaurant in Worcester and then walked about two blocks looking for stuff to photograph. There was not much in this urban area, but I found some mugwort, some ragweed, peppergrass, a lichen and a moss.
2-21-19 Crandall 's Park, Tolland, MA. 0.25 miles today, 438.75 miles total.
Category: unintentional plants.
There was about 3 inches of rapidly melting stnow on the ground here, and I had my boots on so I ventured off the sidewalk to the edge of the woods around this ball field. They have made some effort to plant native plants around the water here (and put up a sign to that effect).
I found the small kind of goldenrod bunch gall (as well as the usual), a narrow mullein that I suspect is orange/wooly mullein, and white meadowsweet (which I rarely see by me). And a lot of more familiar plants.
2-21-19 West Rock State Park, Wallingford, CT. 0.25 miles today, 439 miles total
Category: unintentional plants
Next stop was this park where there is a tunnel on the Merritt Parkway. I've been through the tunnel dozens of times, but never to the park (it's not that easy to get through from the road). There's supposed to be a neat road to the top of the hill but it was closed. Instead I walked by a lake. There was 3 inches of snow on the ground here and underneath was a slight crust over mud, should have put on my boots!
I found adelgid pineapple galls on the spruces here, something I've seen at home but not often. There were also tongue galls on alters and some interesting lichens, plus some tree with light twigs and dark buds that I feel like I should know but can't figure out.
2-21-19 Mountainview Nature Park, Nyack, NY. 0.25 miles today, 439.25 miles total
Category: unintentional plants.
I stopped at this suburban park right along the NY Thruway and tramped through wet woods and about an inch of patchy, melting snow. I found several mosses and lichens, a couple of fungi, and a lot of familiar, weedy plants. There was a downed tree with some lovely old bark beetle trails on it, as well.
2-21-19 Ramapo Lake Trail, Oakland, NJ. 0.25 miles today, 439.5 miles total
Category: identifiable
Last official stop (I also got gas but didn't walk there) of a long, eventful day. I arrived once again just before sunset (two days ago my first stop had been just the other side of this mountain, and about 8 minutes later). No surprises here, but several mosses, some lichens, some fungi and several familiar woody plants. The snow had nearly all melted but the trail was supremely muddy, steep and slippery, and it was getting dark, so I didn't last long.
2-24-19 Washington Valley Rd., Martinsville, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 440 miles total
Category: moss, lichen, rosettes
I walked on a gray Sunday afternoon up the street near my home. There were lichen, fungi, a herd of deer, a blackhaw I'd never noticed before, some little green weeds, but nothing inspiring. The maples are still closed, though Sandy found some silvers blooming in north Jersey already, and they bloomed here this week last year. No whitlow grass yet, either, and it was flowering now last year as well.
2-25-19. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge: DeCamp trail, Mantoloking; Eno's Pond, Forked River; Bayshore Dr., Barnegat; Cedar Bonnet, Stafford, and LBI, Shipbottom, NJ. 1.5 miles total today, 445.5 miles total for the project.
Category: identifiable
Molly and I drove "down the shore" to check out the northern pieces of Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. They are having a 50th anniversary celebration in May and I have offered to lead a walk or two here as part of their bioblitz. So we were scoping things out. Only we didn't take into account the 25 mile per hour winds with 50 MPH gusts.
Our first stop, at DeCamp Trail, was a typical Pine Barrens pitch pine/oak forest but the trees were thrashing about ominously and we didn't stay long., didn't even make it into the actual wildlife refuge lands.
The second stop, at Eno Pond, was a south Jersey swamp forest, with white cedar and oaks but again, very scary with the trees moving around so much and we just did a quick little loop, and did not get into the national refuge lands. I found an interesting pixicup lichen
Third was a handicap accessible boardwalk through a little bit of dune woods and out into a marsh. Here nothing was tall enough to feel threatening, but the wind whipped the plants around so much they were hard to photograph, and the railings kept us from even reaching over to steady them for photography. There were a ton of red chokeberry shrubs, which I don't see often (though I have one planted in my yard). We spotted one lone dove in the marsh itself.
Fourth and longest stop was on a little island in Manahawkin Bay. They just opened a trail here in July, on an island formed of dredging spoils. They've planted hundreds of small trees but right now it's mostly fast growing weeds, though at the start of the path there's an established shrub layer. Here I found cut-leaved blackberry (unfortunately), it's a very uncommon invasive in the state. We also spotted brants, gulls, a far away raft of buffleheads, and a lovely northern harrier that was trying to fly upwind so basically held still for me to photograph, unfortunately through my windshield.
Finally, after lunch, we walked off the national refuge lands entirely at a public beach on Long Beach Island. The wind was from the west and the dunes are in the west here, so it was slightly less difficult to walk than otherwise. We found 12 kinds of shells, a crab, a kelp, and a bryozoan, but all of which I had seen elsewhere before. Still, all in all it was a fun day.
2-27-19. Delaware and Raritan Canal, South Bound Brook, NJ. 0.5 miles today, 446 miles total
Categories: blooming, starts with C, galls
Molly and I took a brief walk along the canal here, looking for "C"s, but I chose this spot as it also has silver maple and whitlow grass and I wanted to see if they were blooming. Lo and behold, we found open buds on both as well as both hairy bittercress and gray field speedwell. Spring is creeping in, though it sure doesn't look like it here (we got another dusting of snow last night). We checked the elms here but they weren't quite blooming yet.
For "C" in Latin we found: Cardamine, Conium, Cerastium, Carex, Cornus, and Centauria plus Branta canadensis, Potentilla canadensis, and Flavoparmelia caperata. In English: chickweed, and a canine print (presumably dog). Not going in iNat Molly also found: the Canal with Cracks in the wall, Chewed gum (ick), Cans, and apple Core, a plastic Case, and a Cigarette.
In galls we found horned oak and mugwort stem galls.
Wow! Thanks so much for the detailed trip reports! I didn't know there was any Ailanthus in Massachusetts. Glad you found it! I've spent far too much time at Concord Hospital myself, between visiting my grandmother and my father. In any case, if you make it up to Peterborough again this summer, let me know and maybe we can meet up in person and go hunting green things. Great to hear that there is a snow line somewhere, and that it seems to be in New York. We've still got a good 3' of snow on the ground. No going out anywhere without boots and snowshoes here. Your day at the wildlife refuge sounds fun but chilly. So much wind!
2/24/19. Adamant, VT 0.1 miles today, 1836.8 miles total.
Categories: birds
I sat for a half hour on the steps of the Adamant Co-op this morning. This was a good day for appreciating the validity of wind chill factor. Even though it was nearly 20 degrees F warmer this morning than last week, the wind was blowing hard and there was a lot of moisture in the air. Brrrr! The birds were not very active. I only saw 8 chickadees, a crow and a blue jay. I managed to get a photo of a chickadee and a blue jay, but not the crow. Adamant sits on the crossroads between Calais and East Montpelier, but officially in Calais by several hundred feet. The East Montpelier road truck came by sanding the East Montpelier roads. Calais has a policy of not doing any road maintenance unless absolutely necessary on weekends. The East Montpelier guy was nice enough to leave his sander on as he rounded the bend across the East Montpelier line. He got out of his truck to get some snacks at the Adamant store and fell right in front of me on the glare ice. He got a shovel and spread some sand from his truck around the ice, even though the ice he fell on was in Calais and not East Montpelier. I felt bad for the guy--a very nasty fall. This is definitely the year for permanent ice crampons on the boots.
2-28-19. Surprise Lake, Watchung Reservation, Summit and Mountianside, NJ. 0.75 miles today, 446.75 miles total
Category: unintentional and identifiable
I walked in the reservation here. I was looking to find a swampy area that might have skunk cabbage but the bank was higher here than I expected and the swampier side was inundated. There were 4 pick up trucks parked here, left running, with parks department shields on the sides. Turns out it was mosquito control looking to un-dam some brooks that were ponding and were not supposed to. While there was snow in the morning it had all melted by this point.
Not a lot here that I don't usually see, but I found a stem gall on blackberry that didn't look like blackberry knot, and ash flower galls. There was horse manure, which is unusual for me. And I spotted a stonefly on the bark of a beech tree.
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