On the Trails of IES

Trail Report for Sept 19, 2007

The butterfly bush in Gifford Garden was still attractive to butterflies even if looking a little seedy to us by now.
The Appendix, as I like to call the section around trail marker #10, had a winter wren and what must have been a phoebe with no tail - it was gray and bobbing its stump.
Pausing on the Wappinger Creek Trail when the sound of chickadees surrounded me, I spotted the blue-headed vireo, black & white warbler, and black-throated blue warbler.
In the Old Pasture, the American copper could be found basking anywhere between the floor of the trail and the crown of the gray dogwood.
Joining them on the goldenrod were many insects including the familiar paper wasp.
A tiny aster, perhaps heath aster, was at the trail's edge.
In the Old Hayfield, a white form female sulphur presented the rare photo opportunity. If it is not challenge enough that both the clouded and orange sulphur have a nearly identical white form female, the two species hybridize as well...
Something the color of a copper flashed by, but it was too large and the flight was not quite right. Crawling under a leaf was absolutely wrong. It was a scalloped sallow. Note the edge of the wing for which it was named.

In the limestone cobble, sharp-lobed hepatica and jack-in-the-pulpit seeds were striking.
The bench and the logs at the pond both sat in the sun untennented.
I recommend the railing along trail between the shrub swamp and deciduous forest (see the Fern Glen map). I've sat there surrounded by wood thrush, American redstarts and black-throated green warblers.