Birds, Bark Beetles, and Beauty

I was on my way to see if spring beauties were in bloom when I spotted this large limb lying on the ground. I see lots of bark beetle damage on fallen limbs but about 99% of it is on white pine limbs. This one was different because it is an elm limb. The “galleries” bark beetles create have a signature much like a fingerprint, and the ones on this limb looked like those made by the European elm bark beetle. An adult female created the longer tunnel that runs parallel to the grain and then deposited eggs in smaller tunnels perpendicular to the main tunnel. When the eggs hatched the beetle grubs chewed their way across the grain before finally emerging as adults through holes they made in the outer bark, and then flying off to find another tree. What is left is lots of damage to the cambium layer just under the bark, which is the living, growing part of the tree.

The beetle calligraphy went on and on all down the branch, and it spelled death by Dutch elm disease. I’ve never seen galleries cover an entire large limb like this before but I find many things in the woods that are as beautiful in death as they are were in life, and this is one of those. I wondered what the men who will come to clear this away will think about it. Will it be just another day’s work or will they lose themselves in wonder for just a few moments and say “Wow, would you look at that.” That’s how nature hooks you; with just a few moments of wonder.

I left the calligraphy and headed toward where the spring beauties grow but I was stopped again by the neon yellow buds of a bitternut hickory, which I didn’t know grew in this place. These trees are relatively rare here and I think this is only the third one I’ve seen. I don’t even know what the leaves look like but I’ll have a good chance to get a look at them later on. Right now, the new leaves at the terminal point of the branch look like tiny hands. I could see that the new growth was quite fuzzy and that there were no bud scales, which means the buds are naked. I could also see that new lateral buds grew over large, sucker like leaf scars. These scars show where the previous year’s leaves attached to the stem, and they are usually quite large on hickories. They show where corky tissue started healing and scarring over, thereby “turning off” photosynthesizing. No more chlorophyll means each leaf turns bright yellow on hickories before falling.

And here was beauty. I first found these beautiful little spring beauties blooming on April 9^th this year, slightly later than last year when they bloomed on April 2^nd. Another name for spring beauties is “good morning spring” and it fits them well. Once I was sure I had some useable photos I got to my feet and walked back to the car. I thought of the young police officer who found me lying here taking photos last year. He had gotten out of his car, walked through ankle deep dry oak leaves, and stood right beside me, but I never heard a thing until he asked “Sir, is everything all right?” I didn’t think he’d understand my being lost in a flower so I just assured him that all was fine. He seemed relieved to discover that he didn’t have to call the coroner or the men in white coats. I showed him the first spring beauty he had ever seen and as I left on this day I remembered the kindness and concern in his expression. I hope he’ll also remember that day and come back to see the spring beauties.

Sometimes I get home and look at the photos I’ve taken and am astounded by what I see. Not because the photos are anything special, but because the subject is so very beautiful. Here is this little chickweed, a truly hated weed by most accounts, looking as beautiful to me as any other flower I’ve seen. I couldn’t see much of this “out there” because this tiny thing is about half the diameter of a pencil eraser. I saw the white petals but no real detail. To finally see what was little more than a white smudge turn into this beautiful thing almost seems miraculous. If you have good eyes take care of them so you can see all the amazing beauty that surrounds us, live and in person.

I was checking on some box elders to see how close they were to bud break when I looked up and saw this mockingbird watching me. I walked closer for a better shot; sure it would fly away…

But it didn’t fly away; it just turned its head. I don’t “do” birds so I didn’t know it was a mockingbird at the time but Google lens filled me in later. Then I wished I had heard it sing. We had one in the yard most of one summer and that bird’s songs were so beautiful I’ve never forgotten it. I had to laugh when I read that mockingbirds can mimic squeaky gate hinges, sirens, and barking dogs. The real surprise came when further reading revealed that even acoustical analysis couldn’t tell the difference between the mockingbird and the original sound. Life is just one amazing thing after another, day after day after day.

Since the days were slowly getting warmer I thought I’d check to see if the sedges were blooming yet, and I started with a plantain leaved sedge that I know of that grows in an old stone wall. This plant is a lime lover so it tells me that there is limestone in the area. When I found it years ago it was just a single plant but now it has spread to a dozen or more. I admired its crepe papery leaves. It wasn’t flowering yet but all the spiky growths coming from it meant that it was ready to.

The spiky growths are the sedge’s four to six inch flower stalks, which are called culms. The male butter yellow flowers appear at the top where the dark bud scales are seen, and the wispy white female flowers will appear lower down. You can just see the white threads of a female flower getting started on the left side of the stalk about half way down in this shot.

Just so you don’t think summer has arrived because you see so much sunshine in these photos, I’m putting this photo in to cool things off. I was at the river one morning trying to get some good wave photos but I didn’t have any gloves with me and my hands were freezing cold, so I gave it up. What this shot doesn’t show is the stiff wind that was blowing directly upstream. At about 20 degrees it was a bit cool that day but then later in the week Thursday was 88 degrees and Friday was 91 degrees, so the temperature was all over the place. Not good weather for the plants.

A group of painted turtles were sunning themselves on a log and that put an end to the question of whether or not they had appeared yet. They made me wonder how cold the water was and I also wondered what they were all looking at. Maybe they were just trying to cool off. I’ve heard they cool themselves by exposing more skin to the air. It must have been hot in those shells in the warm sunlight we had that day. Of course, they could have always taken a swim to cool off but then they’d lose their place on the log. Pride of place might be important to a turtle.

A song sparrow sang like it wanted all of existence to hear its beautiful songs. It actually lifted itself almost off its branch each time it started singing. I recently read on NPR that these little birds sing 6-12 different songs, but they don’t always sing them in the same order. They can “shuffle” their playlist and start with a different song each time. Not only does this ability seem more attractive to a potential mate, it also seems to show that they can keep the entire half hour sequence of 6-12 songs in memory, and a half hour of memory is apparently a lot for a bird. There are lots of theories about why birds sing but I’ve always believed a large part of it was simply the joy of living. Maybe all things feel this joy and maybe all things sing, in their own way.

The willows are almost in full bloom now, and they’re beautiful against the blue of the sky.

I haven’t seen any female flowers yet but they can’t be far behind because the males are shedding pollen, as can be seen in this shot. There’s nothing quite like allergy season.

Glory of the snow have come up. There wasn’t any snow but they were still glorious. It looked as if each flower had a tiny light burning in its center. Just look at how they glowed.

Last week I found a magnolia with a single bud showing color and I thought that it might be pushing it a bit and would probably get frost bitten if it opened, but this week it had several flowers open. It obviously decided to roll the dice and go for broke.

These flowers are beautiful; white inside and pink outside, so I do hope they don’t get burned by frost. I’ve seen this tree before with every single petal on it the same color as a brown paper bag, its beauty all wasted. Since we’d had several nights in the mid-20s before I got back to it, I saw that it didn’t mind living on the edge and flirting with disaster.

As I was leaving the pond where I was taking photos of willows a great blue heron glided over me and looked as if it was about to land. I turned and walked back and sure enough, there it was. But it wasn’t playing statue as they so often do; this bird was hungry.

It quickly caught a fish, which after a bit of squeezing it flipped into the air. Then into its big mouth went the fish, head first. It was good at catching fish; from the time it landed until the time it caught one couldn’t have been more than 2 or 3 minutes. Though it looks like a black blob the fish is a yellow perch, and I found that out by going into Lightroom and over exposing it enough to see the dark stripes on its body. I’m not sure why it looks so dark when everything else looks normal, but perch is a very common native fish here in rivers, lakes and ponds and they’re easy to catch. It’s often the first fish caught by youngsters learning how to fish.

The bird swallowed its catch with a gulp and turned to face me with a big grin, as if to say “That’s how it’s done, son.” What a show off.

Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~Mary Oliver

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A Little More Fall Color At Beaver Brook

I thought I might see some good foliage up at Beaver Brook but by the time I got there most of the leaves were on the old abandoned road. But not all of them; I did see some color a little further up the road.

Someone had swept away the leaves on part of the road so you could see the old no passing zone lines.

I stopped at the old bridge over Beaver Brook, which still has its guard rails made of channel iron beams and stout cables.

It’s not a bad place to get a glimpse of the brook as long as you’re steady on your feet.

The beeches were still colorful, which is what I expected.

And the hillsides were full of them.

But of course all the other trees like maples and birches had already dropped their leaves. I used to like moss hunting on the ledges here but there have been some big rock falls so I stay away from most of them now.

I did get close to this ledge so I could show you the icicles, but I didn’t stay long. It was cold in the shade.

The wet leaves below the ledges showed that the icicles were melting.

These were my favorite icicles. That rock on the right with an icicle on its chin reminded me of a skull.

The exposed ledges show that the place is quite literally crumbling away. Much of the stone here is soft, as in feldspar, and it looks like it has shattered. It’s no wonder there are rock slides happening.

The place is slowly putting itself to bed for another winter and once again it will sleep under a blanket of leaves. Seeing them covering the entire length of the old road showed me that.

The brook is slowly eating away the road and evidence of this is everywhere, like in the stilted roots of this golden birch. All the soil has been washed away from them and now the tree hangs precariously out over the brook.

These birches have some impressive root systems but they’re shallow, and the trees do fall over.

I saw a place where I could get to the water without breaking my neck. I noticed that one of the concrete guard posts had been washed up on shore but I didn’t want to think about how the brook would have had to rage to move such a heavy object. They’re about six feet long.  

When I reached the water, I looked upstream…

…and I looked downstream. I saw that the brook was being very well behaved and staying within its banks. It isn’t always so. Someday, I thought as I sat here, in the summer when it’s hot and dry and the water is low, I’d like to walk across this brook and explore the other side. The only thing I know for sure about it is that there is a boulder as big as a house in one spot.

I saw an animal den. It looked like maybe a woodchuck in size but I doubted they would dig so close to water. I don’t think they would find enough to eat here. They’re more a meadow or hayfield animal. Or your flower or vegetable garden.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a frost crack on an eastern hemlock before but I think these warty growths were a healed frost crack. If so, it would now be called a frost rib.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a red maple leaf this color before either. I like it.

What I call the disappearing waterfall usually only runs down this hillside in spring when the snow melts, but here it was running in November. It shows how much rain we’ve had. It’s a pretty scene and I’ve seen lots of people stop to take photos of it.

Once again, especially with all the slippery leaves, I couldn’t talk myself into crawling down the steep embankment to get a shot of Beaver Brook Falls. I did get a side view though. It was roaring.

The old road dead ends and there isn’t much to see after the falls so I usually turn around and head back the way I came. I admired more beautiful beech trees along the way.

And some colorful turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor.) They’re doing well this year and I’m glad about that because I like seeing them. There must be a thousand variations in color. I like the blue and orange ones.

I think it was my blogging friend Eliza who asked me last year if I ever saw any bigtooth aspen leaves. I believe I told her that I didn’t but I should have said that sometimes I miss things, because they were everywhere.

The presence of a path doesn’t necessarily mean the existence of a destination. ~Craig D. Lounsbrough

Thanks for stopping in. I hope none of you are seeing any severe winter weather. So far, so good here.

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Things I’ve Seen

One last photo from the recent January thaw when the temperature reached 67 degrees in Concord, our State Capital. It isn’t unheard of but it is quite rare for it to be that warm in January. This photo is from when the thaw had ended and it had started getting colder again. A mist rose from the warm soil and flowed over the landscape like water.

In places what little snow fell after the thaw had been sculpted by the wind. Wind can do strange things to snow. I’ve seen drifts up over my head and curls like ocean waves.

The wind also made ripples on a puddle and then they froze into ice. I’ve seen some amazing things in puddle ice.

I don’t know what it is about grass and snow but the combination pleases me, and I always enjoy seeing them together.

It hasn’t been truly cold this winter but it has gotten down into the single digits at night, and that’s cold enough to turn pine sap blue. I see it in varying shades of blue just about everywhere I go.

When the snow starts to melt it often melts in layers and as the top layers melt away what were mice and vole runs under the snow are exposed. These small animals are active all winter long but are rarely seen. It didn’t look like this one knew exactly where it wanted to go.

Wild turkey tracks are very easy to identify because of their large size. I happened upon a spot where many of them had gathered but since I didn’t see a trail of tracks either into or away from the place I have to assume that they flew in and out of it. Maybe they wanted to catch up on what was happening in the forest, I don’t know.

Sunshine transformed an icicle into a prism for a few moments as I watched.

Snow melts in strange ways. This photo shows how it has melted into a round mound. I’m not sure how or why it would do this. Was it colder in that small, 10 inch spot than the surrounding soil?

I saw a tiny speck move in a cobweb in a building at work so I took my macro camera off my belt and inched it closer and closer until I got the shot of the American house spider you see here. Not surprisingly this tiny, quarter inch spider is called a cobweb spider. The reason it let my camera get so close is because they have poor vision, I’ve read. They can bite but this one didn’t move. I think it was busy eating. They are said to be the most often encountered spider by humans in North America so the next time you see a cobweb this is probably what made it. They can live for a year or more.

Rim lichens are very common in this area but that doesn’t mean they’re any easier to identify. I think this one is a bumpy rim lichen (Lecanora hybocarpa) because of the bumpy rims around the reddish brown fruiting bodies (Apothecia.) They aren’t smooth and round as I’d expect so at first I thought they had simply shriveled from dryness but no, they always look like this. This lichen likes to grow on the bark of hardwood trees in well lighted forests, and that’s exactly where I found this one.

I see lots of drilled holes in stone and many are out in the middle of nowhere, where you wouldn’t expect them to be. Who, I always wonder, would go to all the trouble of drilling a hole in a boulder and then just leave it? An inch and a half diameter hole is not an easy thing to drill in stone.

The smooth sides of this hole tell me it isn’t that old. It might have once been drilled for blasting ledges along the side of a road, but right now it’s filled with pine needles.

If the hole in the stone in the previous photos were from the 1800s it would have a shape like this one, which was made by a star drill. One person would hold the drill bit and another would hit the end of it with a sledge hammer. After each hammer blow the bit was rotated a quarter turn and then struck again. It was a slow process but eventually a hole that could be filled with black powder had been drilled. You filled it with black powder, stuck a fuse in and lit it, and ran as fast as you could go.

Speaking of powder, when I touched this puffball it puffed out a stream of spores that were like talcum. I was careful not to breath any in; there are people out there who seem to think that inhaling certain puffball spores will get them high, but it is never a good thing to do. People who inhale the spores can end up in the hospital due to developing a respiratory disease called Lycoperdonosis. In one severe instance a teenager spent 18 days in a coma, had portions of his lung removed, and suffered severe liver damage.

A thin maze polypore (Daedaleopsis confragosa) wore a cap of snow. This photo doesn’t show much of the maze-like underside of it, but it was there. When fresh the surface is pale gray and turns red when bruised. This fungus causes white rot in trees.

I saw quite a few beautiful blue and purple turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) earlier in the year but now I’m seeing a lot of brown. One of the things I’d like to learn most about nature is what determines this mushroom’s color. It’s like a rainbow, but why? Minerals in the wood would be my first guess but apparently nobody knows for sure.

Among the many things Ötzi the 5000 year old iceman, whose well preserved body was found in the Ötztal Alps in 1991carried were birch polypores (Piptoporus betulinus.) I assumed that he used them to sharpen tools (They are also called razor strops and their ability to hone a steel edge is well known.) but apparently Ötzi carried them for other purposes; scientists have found that Ötzi had several heath issues, among them whipworm, which is an intestinal parasite (Trichuris trichura,) and birch polypores are poisonous to them. The fungus also has antiseptic properties and can be used to heal small wounds, which I’m sure were common 5000 years ago. By the way, polypores always want their spore bearing surface pointed towards the ground, so you can see that these examples grew after this birch had fallen.

I went to visit the skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) in their swamp and saw many of the mottled spathes I hoped to see. They weren’t open yet but inside the spathes is the spadix, which carries the flowers. The spadix is a one inch diameter pink or yellow, stalked flower head from which the small flowers emerge. It carries most of the skunk like odor at this point and it is thought by some that it uses the odor to attract flies and other insects that might pollinate it. 

The skunk cabbages grow in a hummocky swamp. When I was a boy I used to jump from hummock to hummock but my hummock jumping days are over, so now I just wear waterproof hiking boots.

How beautiful this life is, and how many wonderful things there are to see. I do hope you’re seeing more than your share of it. It doesn’t take much; the colors in a sunrise, a sculpted patch of snow, the ice on a puddle. All will speak to you if you’re willing to just stop for a moment and look, and listen.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. ~Rumi

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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Things I’ve Seen

We’re still on the weather roller coaster but it is slowly warming up and the snow is melting, as the melt ring around this pinecone shows. I was happy when I found this because it answered a question that I’ve had for a long time: why do melt rings form around tree trunks? As the pinecone shows it has to be the sun warming it up, and as the pinecone releases that warmth the snow around it melts. Or maybe it’s simply heat radiating from the pinecone during the day when the sun is shining. The dark cone would absorb more sunlight than the white snow would.

Here is a melt ring just getting started around this tree. A study done by Emeritus Professor of Botany Lawrence J. Winship of Hampshire College, where he used an infrared thermometer to measure heat radiated by tree trunks, found that the sunny side of a red oak was 54 degrees F. while the shaded side was just 29 degrees F. And the ground temperature was also 29 degrees, which means it was frozen. This shows that trees really absorb a lot of heat from the sun and it must be that when the heat is radiated back into the surroundings it melts the snow. The professor found that the same was true on fence posts and stumps so the subject being alive had nothing to do with it, even though a living tree should have much more heat absorbing water in it. In my mind, the pinecone in the previous photo answers the question of melt rings.

But I didn’t have long to wonder about melt rings on trees because on Monday March 4th we got about 6 inches of new snow. This shows part of my drive to work that day.

I pass this scene almost every day so I can see if the ice is melting. It was and then it wasn’t. Winter can be very beautiful but the pull of spring fever can be terribly strong. By this time of year almost everybody but is ready for spring and waiting impatiently.

It’s hard these days to follow a trail that hasn’t been broken. It never used to be but things change. I’ve never been a real fan of snowshoes so I used to just trudge through it, even if it was up to my knees, but going any real distance through snow much deeper than your knees is a struggle at any age and in any condition, and these days I avoid it.

But as I said it can be beautiful enough to stop you in your tracks. Every season has its own beauty, as this early morning view of Half Moon Pond in Hancock shows.

No matter what the sun always appears again and it was very beautiful on this eastern hemlock tree, I thought. I think algae colored its trunk and the sun came along and lit it up. You can walk just about anywhere in nature and find beauty like this any day of the week, and if that isn’t a gift I don’t know what is.

It’s amazing how a little sunlight can transform the simple into something beautiful, as it did with these deer tongue grass leaves.

I don’t think I’ve ever shown icicles hanging from the eaves on this blog before, but that might be because they are so common. You see them on just about every structure in winter.

I love the way icicles sparkle with color in the sun like prisms. This shot doesn’t quite catch it but there was a lot more color in them.

One cold morning frost flowers bloomed on the ice of mud puddles. They form when the frost point in the air is reached and water vapor condenses into ice. They are a form of hoarfrost, so delicate that a touch of a finger or a warm breath will destroy them. In my experience it has to be very cold for them to form, but there also has to be plenty of water vapor in the air. That’s why hoarfrost is often found near streams and ponds.

Mount Monadnock is an old friend, there in my earliest memories, and it is always at its most beautiful when snow frosts its peak. I would guess the snow must be at least 5 feet deep near the summit. I was up there with a friend of mine on April 19th one year and it was about chest deep in places. We had to climb over it and kind of swim through it rather than trying to break a trail through it. The air was warm and the snow was melting, and the fog generated by the cold snow and warm air mixing together was so dense you could barely see your hand at the end of an outstretched arm. I don’t think I’ve ever been as wet as I was that day.

Tramp art was done by chipping and whittling a piece of wood with a pocket knife. Often pieces of wood from cigar boxes and orange crates were turned into picture frames and other household items which were sold for meager amounts of money. That’s what this piece of branch reminded me of when I saw it but the hand of man played no part in this art; it was made entirely by engraver beetles and was very beautiful, I thought. I wish I had kept it and brought it home but then if I had the next hiker to come along couldn’t have marveled at its insect carved hieroglyphics as I did.

I’ve taken many photos of frullania liverworts throughout the winter but never posted any of them because it’s a tough plant to get a good shot of. It’s a leafy liverwort but each leaf is smaller than a house fly so it isn’t an easy subject. There are about 800 species of frullania liverworts and many grow as epiphytes on the bark of trees where the humidity is high. Epiphytic plants take nothing from the host plants they grow on; instead they simply perch there like birds. Mosses and lichens are also epiphytes.

The liverwort’s tiny leaves are strung together like beads, and change from green to deep purple in cold weather. Frullania liverworts can cause a rash called woodcutter’s eczema in some people. It’s an annoying, itchy rash but doesn’t cause any real harm, and it disappears in a week or two if you stop handling logs with liverworts on them.

This post started with winter but it will end with spring, and that illustrates how quickly one season can change into another here in the northeast. Sometimes it’s as if someone flipped a switch, and it’s what inspired Mark Twain’s “If you don’t like the weather in New England just wait a few minutes” quote. Here our earliest flowering plant, the skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus,) has finally shown its mottled yellow and maroon flower spathes.

Some are yellow with maroon spots and some are maroon with yellow spots. It’s good to finally see them no matter what colors they choose to wear. The spathes shown here appear first and multiple flowers grow inside the spathe on a spadix. Soon the spathes will begin to open so insects can enter and pollinate the tiny flowers, and so a photographer or two might get some photos of them.

Sap collecting has begun but you’d hardly know it these days. When I was a boy it seemed like every yard had trees with sap buckets hanging from them in spring but I had to search long and hard to find just a few this year, and I fear family sap gathering a dying art. Nobody knows when or where sap gathering started but most agree that it was learned from Native Americans. They used to cut a V notch into the bark of a tree and then put a wedge at the bottom of the cut. The sap would drip from the wedge into buckets made of bark or woven reeds, or sometimes into wooden bowls. They would then boil it down until it thickened and became syrup.

This Library of Congress photo from the early 1900s shows a Native American woman tapping trees and gathering the sap in what appears to be bark buckets, which it looks like she is making. Birch bark buckets are entirely plausible since they made canoes from the same bark. Sticky pine or spruce sap on the seams made their canoes leak proof. Since it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup sap gathering was a lot of work, and it was almost always done by the women of the tribe. There are many legends about how Natives discovered the process but nobody really knows for sure. Red and silver maples as well as sugar maples were tapped. So were hickory, box elder and birch, though in those trees the sap was less sweet.

I’ve read about mallards migrating and some articles say they do and others say they don’t, so I’m not sure if this photo is a true sign of spring but I saw these two dancing on the ice at a local swamp, most likely hoping for it to hurry up and melt like the rest of us. I thought it was a pretty, spring like scene.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep. ~Rumi

Thanks for coming by.

 

 

 

 

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A Winter Walk

We had another snow storm recently and though we didn’t get that much snow it did have to be plowed. The worst part of this storm was the long stretch of freezing drizzle that came after the snow. It glazed the top of the snow in a thick coating of very slippery ice, so I had my Yaktrax on for this walk up the old abandoned road that follows Beaver Brook in Keene.

This shot will give you an idea of just how icy it was. The crust was thick enough for me to walk on without breaking through, which is unusual. When I was a boy I went sledding in this kind of snow just once. The runners of the sled broke through the crust and it stopped dead, but I didn’t. I flew off the front of the sled into the sharp crusty snow and got a nasty gash on my chin that I didn’t think would ever stop bleeding. I’ve been wary of this kind of snow ever since. It can be tricky to walk on.

There was blue sky to be seen but also enough clouds to blot out the sun for most of the time.

Enough snow came with this second storm to fully cover the forest floor.

I like seeing the ice formations in winter but Beaver Brook had very little ice on it. After the warmest December ever recorded our January temperatures have also been above average so far, but the month is young. As we found out during the last two winters, it can get awfully cold in a hurry.

Our evergreen ferns look dainty and fragile but they can stand up to some fierce weather. I didn’t look closely but I think that this one was an intermediate wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia) because of the shorter leaflets (Pinnae) at the base of its stem (Stipe) and the scales along the lower part of its stem.

This one grew out of a log as if it was spring. I think it might be another younger intermediate wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia.)

This is the place where I began to pay attention to the beautiful smoky eye boulder lichens (Porpidia albocaerulescens) that grow on the ledges. They taught me that lichens can be pruinose, which means they can have a waxy coating that reflects light much like the whitish bloom on blueberries. These (sometimes) blue disks are called apothecia and are where the lichen’s spores are produced. The wax coating makes them appear blue in the right light and their black border makes them really stand out from the body (Thallus) of the lichen. In certain light the apothecia can also appear more gray than blue.

The base of this hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) was covered in a yellow crust fungus. I think it might have been the conifer parchment fungus (Stereum sanguinolentum,) which is also called the bleeding parchment because of the red colored juice they exude when they’re scratched or injured. This example was very thin and dry and probably wouldn’t have reacted if I had scratched it. Conifer parchment fungus can cause brown heart rot, which is a reddish brown discoloration in the wood of conifers.

The thin papery bark on this yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis) had peeled back to show its lenticels. Lenticels are corky pores that allow gases like oxygen to reach the living cells of the bark. Without enough oxygen, bark can die. Yellow birch likes rich, moist, and cool soils so we don’t see them as often as white birch. In this place it grows well on the shaded side of the road, but there isn’t a single example found on the sunny side.

Winter has teeth and it will bite the unprepared. I met someone here who wore only sneakers and he said “I don’t know what I was thinking when I put sneakers on to come up here!” He was having a hard time of it and I would imagine that his feet were soaking wet and very cold by the time he made it out of here.

Every nature walk seems to come with its own bit of mystery and this one was no different. I’ve never seen this lichen before and don’t know its name. I know that it’s a gray crustose lichen, but that’s about all. I don’t know what the dark outlines signify either but they make it look like some kind of ancient petroglyph.

While I was following the brook and trying to get a shot of a placid pool I didn’t notice the blue of the sky that the rushing water reflected, nor did I see the yellow sulfur dust lichen (Chrysothrix chlorina) on the stone. I’m not surprised; the camera often sees things that I don’t.

Someone turned the old drain pipe into a peace pipe. Being able to see this pipe shows how much of the road Beaver Brook has eaten away over the years.

I made it all the way to Beaver Brook Falls but the path down to the brook was too icy for me, so I took this shot from the road, where the view is marred by brush. The falls were roaring as usual and showed no sign of freezing. I was surprised when I came here last year and saw the falls  frozen into a huge lump of ice. The ice muffled almost all sound and it was the one and only time that I’ve ever heard so little sound in this place. When you expect the roar of rushing water silence can seem amazing.

Typically, the sun came out from behind the clouds just as I was leaving, but I don’t mind an occasional cloudy day. Last summer was made up of an almost endless string of sunny, cloudless skies and I learned then what the term “too much of a good thing” really meant.

By walking in a snowy forest you can really forget about this world, and every time you forget about this world you leave this world, and every time you leave this world you gain a very special wisdom that does not exist in this world. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for coming by.

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Things I’ve Seen

I saw a beech leaf with a bright white crust that I can’t identify on it. It was thin enough to seem part of the leaf and I’ve never seen anything like it.

After two years of seeing hardly any turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) this year I’m seeing them everywhere, and in some beautiful colors too. Over the last two years virtually every one I’ve seen has been in shades of brown but this year blue and purple seem to be the most abundant colors. This bracket fungus gets its common name from the way it resembles a turkey’s tail. According to the American Cancer Society there is some scientific evidence that substances derived from turkey tail fungi may be useful against cancer.

Some of the turkey tails appearing this year have been wearing a deep beautiful blue that I’ve never seen them wear before. Their fuzzy surface makes them look as if they’ve been cut from blue velvet cloth.

These examples in blue, orange, tan, brown and even touches of salmon pink have to be the most colorful and beautiful examples of turkey tails that I’ve seen.  Who can say that there isn’t any color to be seen at this time of year?

Though a polypore will rarely have gills most, including turkey tails, have pores like those seen in the above photo. These pores form tubes and their sides are covered with a spore forming surface called the hymenium. The tubes protect developing spores and help increase the spore producing surface. The size and shape of pores can vary a lot between species and some are small enough so they can’t be seen with the naked eye. Those shown in the photo were challenging but after several tries I was able to get a passable photo of them.

Not all polypore pores look alike though. Some appear stretched and elongated and maze like as the examples in this photo show.

The maze like surface shown in the previous photo belongs to another polypore called the thin maze flat polypore (Daedaleopsis confragosa.) Though its upper surface is zoned like a turkey tail the zones tend to be tan to brown to cream, rather than brightly colored like a turkey tail.  Michael Kuo of Mushroom Expert. com says that this mushroom’s appearance is highly variable, with pores sometimes appearing elongated and sometimes more round. The lower pore bearing surface will also sometimes bruise a reddish color and other times won’t.  Once you get used to seeing and identifying turkey tails though, you’ll never confuse this one for one of them.

Velvet shank mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes) are considered a winter mushroom and are very cold hardy. They grow on standing trees and cause white rot and I find them quite often growing on American elm (Ulmus americana) as they were in this photo, sometimes dusted with snow. The orange caps of these mushrooms often shade to brown in the center. The stem is covered in fine downy hairs and that’s where this mushroom’s common name comes from. When the temperature drops below freezing on a winter day it’s a real pleasure to see them.

This jelly fungus (Dacrymyces palmatus) I found growing on an old hemlock stump was the deepest orange color of any I’ve seen. Jelly fungi can be yellow, orange, white, pink, red, or black and grow on deciduous or evergreen trees. They can absorb up to 60 times their weight in water and when dry are little more than colored scales on wood. I found one recently that had fallen from a tree to the forest floor where it sat on a leaf. I tried to pick it up but it was so slippery that I couldn’t pinch it between my fingers to get a grip on it. It was just like trying to pick up a piece of gelatin, and I quickly gave up the idea of ever holding it in my hand.

A few years ago I found this old hemlock with a zig zag scar and I happened to walk by it again recently. None of us could really explain the scar, which comes right out of the soil and runs about three feet up the trunk. Some thought it might have been caused by lightning and I suppose it’s possible, but lightning strikes usually cause much more damage to a tree than this. I haven’t seen anything similar in Michael Wojtech’s excellent book Bark either.

A while ago I found the two zig zag scars in the center of this photo on another hemlock and I wonder if the scar in the previous photo might not be just a natural occurrence. It’s a mystery.

If you didn’t see an occasional icicle you wouldn’t guess that it was December here in New Hampshire. The temperatures have soared above the average almost every day through November and now December. As of this writing we’re 8.5 degrees above average for the month and if we keep going like we have we might break the record for warmest December going all the way back to 1881.

I did find some ice needles in a wet, shaded spot on an old dirt road. When the air temperature is below 32 degrees Fahrenheit right at the soil surface and the soil and groundwater remain thawed, hydrostatic pressure can force the groundwater, sometimes super cooled, out of the soil where it freezes instantly into a “needle.” As more water is forced out of the soil the process is repeated over and over, and each needle grows in length because of more water freezing at its base. From what I’ve seen the needles almost always freeze together and form ribbons like those seen in the above photo.

The paper thin white puddle ice that makes that strange tinkling sound when it’s broken always takes me back to my boyhood. Seeing this ice on puddles after a long winter meant that spring was here and though nights still got cold and icy, the days were warm and muddy. Before long school would let out for the summer and I’d be free to roam the woods and explore the banks of the Ashuelot River once again. My father would have warmed the seat of my pants for me more than once if he’d known all the foolhardy things I used to get up to back then. He was forever telling me to stay away from the river but for me it was like a magnet, and it taught me so much.

Just like the turkey tails we saw previously the Canada geese have returned after a two year absence. This is a favorite spot of theirs on the Ashuelot River but two years ago they just stopped coming for no apparent reason. I wonder if it was just a coincidence that they and the turkey tails disappeared during two of the worst winters we’ve seen in recent memory, or if they somehow knew that those winters would be severe. I think I lean toward them sensing that those winters would be extreme because I doubt that very much in nature happens merely by coincidence. Anyhow, it’s nice to see the geese and the turkey tails back again; they were missed.

I’m not sure what drives people to stack rocks but I suppose it’s something inside some of us that is almost as old as the rocks themselves. The urge was strong enough to make whoever stacked these rocks go for a walk in what I expect were the frigid waters of the Ashuelot River. Personally I’ve never had the urge to stack rocks but I suppose nature tugs at each of us in different ways. In my opinion they detract from rather than add to the beauty that is found in nature, but I’m sure not everyone feels that way. In this case the river will wash them away in no time at all anyway.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. ~Joseph Campbell

Thanks for coming by.

 

 

 

 

 

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