On the Trails of
The Cary Institute

Last Week

• We only have one American basswood in the Fern Glen, so I have tolerated the branch leaning into the path. A visitor apparently was not as tolerant and snapped the branch. I was about to trim it off when I noticed a leaf with eggs.
• On the way out to grab the camera, I came face to face with many leaves with unusual galls. One such leaf had obviously been eaten by a caterpillar. A quick look about turned up a very familiar creature, especially the face, but I couldn't put a name to it. Throughout the rest of the walk, the name "hackberry emperor" kept coming to mind - but we don't have hackberry trees in the Glen, I thought.
• The books at home proved it to be the very closely related tawny emperor - which, too, is supposed to only eat hackberries. The next day I followed the gall laden leaves to their branches to the tree trunk itself. We do indeed have hackberry in the Glen!
• Oh, the eggs? Another day later they hatched - they were bugs, true bugs.
• Other interesting sights last week included the coral hairstreak and a female eastern tailed-blue taking in some sun in the back Old Hayfield.
• The Wappinger Creek Trail had red chanterelles trying again at the usual location. Let's see how far they get this year.
• Indian pipes could be found frequently along the Wappingers Creek and Cary Pines trails, both.
• At the creek-side kiosk, shinleaf was producing flowers and seeds, both.
• Nearby wild licorice was showing it's minute blossom.
• A tiny caddisfly appeared to be examining its seed.
• Trying to ID a butterfly across the creek, I spied a familiar color and a familiar leaf.
• The color was of Japanese spirea, the leaves were of Japanese knotweed. Both were introduced in the 1800s as ornamentals and have since "escaped cultivation".
• At the "Appendix" was a stand of the native fringed loosestrife.
• The fringed petiole or leaf stem, for which it is named, can be seen close up.

This Week

• In the Fern Glen near the road, some of our taller summer flowers were starting to bloom: great St. John's-wort and tall bellflower.
• Way in the back, past the shale cobble, a patch of moss along the trail held some of the peculiar "earth tongue" fungi.
• A mid-size summer flower near the back side of the pond was lopseed.
• What flower? Well, they are small - real small.
• At the front of the pond was a big plant, Culver's root with a tall spike of again, tiny blossoms.
• At both the front and the back of the pond was a tall plant with a big flower: turk's cap lily. How it glowed against the sparkling water.
• One of the last sights in leaving the Glen was spikenard. One could pass it off as a young ash were it not for the flower clusters lurking below the leaves.
• I was pausing a moment along the Cary Pines trail when a bird came from the other direction and paused across from me. I took it for a red-eyed vireo or maybe a titmouse but put the binoculars on it anyway. It was a blue-headed vireo! How nice.
• Ah ha! I was wondering where they were! On the Wappinger Creek trail a good sized butterfly errupted from somewhere as I walked by, flew around my head, then bobbed off into the woods. It circled a few times then finally landed in a patch of sunlight: a northern pearly-eye, of course.
• Passing through the Old Pasture, I could hear a yellow-billed cuckoo call in the distance. Very few this year, it seems.
• A monstrous eggshell was nearly hidden in the grass in back of the first Old Hayfield, obviously a turkey's.
• Working my way towards the front of the field, I had a start when a brown thrasher bolted for cover.
• As I was leaving for the day, I came across the new additions at the front of Old Hayfields.
• I'll leave the closer look for the visitor to discover in person.

Butterflies

• 1 Cabbage White
• 5 Clouded Sulphur
• 12 Great Spangled Fritillary
• 3 Pearl Crescent
• 1 Red-spotted Purple
• 1 Tawny Emperor
• 3 Northern Pearly-eye
• 1 Appalachian Brown
• 17 Little Wood-Satyr
• 42 Common Wood-Nymph
• 1 Monarch
• 15 Silver-spotted Skipper
• 4 Northern Broken-Dash
• 2 Delaware Skipper
• 5 Dun Skipper

Birds

• 1 Yellow-billed Cuckoo
• 1 Pileated Woodpecker
• 2 Eastern Wood-Pewee
• 2 Eastern Phoebe
• 1 Blue-headed Vireo
• 2 Red-eyed Vireo
• 1 Blue Jay
• 2 American Crow
• 11 Black-capped Chickadee
• 2 Tufted Titmouse
• 1 House Wren
• 1 Winter Wren
• 1 Eastern Bluebird
• 1 Veery
• 1 Wood Thrush
• 8 American Robin
• 5 Gray Catbird
• 1 Brown Thrasher
• 1 European Starling
• 2 Cedar Waxwing
• 1 Louisiana Waterthrush
• 1 Common Yellowthroat
• 6 Eastern Towhee
• 2 Chipping Sparrow
• 3 Song Sparrow
• 2 Indigo Bunting
• 2 American Goldfinch

Plants

• 1 Culver's Root
• 1 Earth tongue
• 1 Lopseed
• 1 Spikenard
• 1 Tall Bellflower
• 1 Turk's-cap Lily