On the Trails of
The Cary Institute

The Trails

• Being in the area I had decided to start in the Glen, but as I left the Plant Science Bld. a bright spot stood out on a hemlock: a banded tussock moth caterpillar.
• Driving out of the PSB parking lot I spotted a mushroom in the lawn, but no ordinary mushroom - it was easily 12" across.
• In the Glen winterberry had screaming red berries among its turning leaves.
• A colony of more modestly proportioned mushrooms was along the path to the deck.
• The Cary Pines Trail takes a sharp right through a stone wall and passes an old up-turned tree which, today, had a marvelous bracket fungus.
• I see enough of these holes. in my yard; I presume they are from skunks looking for grubs.
• Something prompted me to look in this one.
• Lo and behold: a pine sphinx, unusual among sphingids in it's lack of an anal horn - think tomato hornworm.
• I returned it to its excavation after our portrait session and covered it neatly wondering if it would again be disturbed.
• The Wappinger Creek Trail held quite the variety of fungi today: little straw colored ones popping out of a mossy log...
• Pinkish mushrooms that looked almost like a bracket fungus...
• Shiny wet ones with a characteristic notch on the circumfrence...
• On the ascent to the bluff a fallen log hosted several interesting things: a former nest hole and new fungi growing on the edges of old pre-fall fungi.
• At the top of the bluff a hemlock had a strange mottled appearance.
• Of course, yet another fungus.
• I like the Old Pasture; I like the bench there too; I "meditated" a little while before continuing to the Sedge Meadow Trail.
• There, at the side entrance to the Old Hayfield, stood a burning bush glowing in the sun.
• It's good looks got it here as an ornamental; its seeds, dispersed through birds, spread it around as an invasive.
• As I went to step around a large argiope spider web I nearly took out another.
• The rest of the way back to the Glen was cool and quiet.

Birds

• 7 Mourning Dove
• 2 Downy Woodpecker
• 1 Northern Flicker
• 1 Pileated Woodpecker
• 6 Blue Jay
• 15 Black-capped Chickadee
• 2 Tufted Titmouse
• 1 Red-breasted Nuthatch
• 2 White-breasted Nuthatch
• 3 American Robin
• 10 Cedar Waxwing
• 2 Eastern Towhee
• 1 Northern Cardinal

Butterflies

• 4 Clouded Sulphur

Caterpillars

• 1 Banded Tussock Moth
• 1 Northern Pine Sphinx