On the Trails of IES

Trails

• Autumn crocus were greeting visitors to the Gifford Gardens.
• Along the front of Gifford House, potted cannas matched the color of the brick behind them.
• Dappled light danced on the Carriage House.
• A frequent question during the summer concerned the name of the blackberry lilly; the answer was now obvious.
• The back of the 1st Old Hayfield had several eastern commas and even an eastern tailed-blue.
• Leaves along the Sedge Meadow Trail have been starting to come down in earnest.
• Colors were coming out along the Old Hayfield: red from the alien burning bush and orange from our native sugar maple.
• Birds were really happening below the bluff near post #8 on the Wappinger Creek Trail. A white blaze on the shoulder was of a yellow-bellied sapsucker and the very long tail that went by belonged to a yellow-billed cuckoo. Only a little farther along, a great blue heron rose and gave me a dirty look as it flew down the Creek.
• The "Appendix", as I like to call the area around post #10, provided views of brown creeper and golden-crowned kinglet, whose voices I find so hard to distinguish between. Myrtle warblers were everywhere.
• That button of a mushroom last week, before the bridge by post #9, had expanded into a parasol this week.
• Trying to follow warblers on the Cary Pines Trail was a pain in the neck until I laid down in the path.
• The other mushroom last week in the Old Gravel Pit had also expanded by this time.

In the Fern Glen

• During the week maintenence was started in the roadside meadow to keep it a meadow.
• A giant leapord moth caterpillar was found right at the base of one relocated sapling.
• A little oak harbored something unusual. Although it looked vaguely familiar, even which field guide to select was in doubt until it's little caterpillar face came out; it was later determined to be of the skiff moth.
• One branch away held another peculiarity which, fortunately, was recognized immediately: the saddleback caterpillar. "Nettles are not to be compared in stinging power to the armament of this beautifully colored larva," remarked W. J. Holland in his 1903 work, "The Moth Book".
• Both this and the skiff moth belong to the slug caterpillars in which the usual stubby abdominal prolegs are replaced by suckers and locomotion is gliding rather than wave-like. Many of this group possess stinging hairs.
• There were still just a few herb-robert blooming here and there.
• This is the time of year for asters. Notice the bumblebee at the bottom?
• It was moving pretty slow by this time of day and so was I; I headed home.

Birds

• 1 Great Blue Heron
• 1 Turkey Vulture
• 1 Yellow-billed Cuckoo
• 1 Red-bellied Woodpecker
• 1 Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
• 2 Downy Woodpecker
• 2 Hairy Woodpecker
• 2 Northern Flicker
• 1 Pileated Woodpecker
• 12 Blue Jay
• 5 American Crow
• 7 Black-capped Chickadee
• 1 Tufted Titmouse
• 2 White-breasted Nuthatch
• 3 Brown Creeper
• 1 Carolina Wren
• 5 Golden-crowned Kinglet
• 1 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
• 1 Hermit Thrush
• 2 American Robin
• 2 Gray Catbird
• 12 Cedar Waxwing
• 3 Yellow-rumped Warbler

Butterflies

• 7 Cabbage White
• 12 Clouded Sulphur
• 15 Orange Sulphur
• 1 American Copper
• 1 Eastern Tailed-Blue
• 7 Pearl Crescent
• 3 Eastern Comma
• 4 Monarch

Caterpillars