On the Trails of IES

Views

• It was a pleasant, mild, Autumn afternoon.
• White-tailed deer bounded away at several points along the route.
• A red squirrel challenged me on the Cary Pines Trail near the Fern Glen.
• It had been otherwise uneventful all the way around the trails without a single photo when orange flashed in front of my face.
• I stepped back, turned on the peripheral vision, and just tried to track the motion until it ceased. OK, zoom in and scan... there, that dark triangle... Of course the field mark was obscured.
• Would it open up? Yup, couldn't resist the afternoon sun: an Eastern Comma. The same event had occured last week at this same spot, the entrance to the Old Pasture from the Wappinger Creek Trail, except the creature had eluded me.
• With smoking camera in hand and photo in my game pouch, I continued warily: American Coppers frequently lurk ahead.
• There in the little bluestem grass on the left - a tiny bright wedge of powder blue. A male Eastern tailed blue... The female is charcoal.
• Motion behind it! Ah, the American copper.
• I rested in the sun a while, gloating and picking off the beggar ticks that had latched onto me during the fight.
• Continuing on, I entered the Sedge Meadow Trail. Among the chickadees was something yellow! Another exercise in stealth and observation yielded a magnolia warbler.
• What walk along the Sedge Meadow Trail is complete without a visit with the Old Oak? The fungi have done nothing this season.
• A stroll along the sun-baked north edge of the back Old Hayfield might be fruitful, I thought. Only some dragonflies, and a couple sulphurs. But just when I was ready to turn around, another Comma errupted from the brush and disappeared over the other side.
• Satisfied, I turned and took only a few strides when something dropped from the sky in front of me. Without another step, I pulled out the camera and pushed the button. A perfect Compton tortoiseshell!
• Heeding the lengthening shadows, I pushed on pausing only briefly to breath in the quiet along the Sedge Meadow Trail boardwalk ... and again to gaze a moment at the clear skies and dark shadows on the way up and out.
• Almost back at the Gifford House, I whirled around at the (now) unmistakable croak of the common raven over the front Old Hayfield. In fact, there were two, and with them a red-tailed hawk, all circling and climbing higher each time around. I watched till they were out of sight.
• Back at Gifford, I was requested to provide visitor services to a hornworm, the caterpillar of one of the sphinx moths - perhaps the blinded sphinx - which was found wandering on the sidewalk. I escorted it to some soft garden soil where it could burrow in to pupate through the winter, and I headed home to contemplate the same.

Birds

• 1 Red-tailed Hawk
• 2 Red-bellied Woodpecker
• 1 Downy Woodpecker
• 2 Pileated Woodpecker
• 14 Blue Jay
• 7 American Crow
• 2 Common Raven
• 7 Black-capped Chickadee
• 1 Tufted Titmouse
• 4 White-breasted Nuthatch
• 6 American Robin
• 1 Magnolia Warbler
• 3 White-throated Sparrow

Butterflies

• 7 Cabbage White
• 6 Clouded Sulphur
• 1 American Copper
• 1 Eastern Tailed-Blue
• 2 Eastern Comma
• 1 Compton Tortoiseshell
• 2 Monarch

Moths

• 1 Sphinx moth caterpillar

Mammals

• White-tailed deer
• Red squirrel