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

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Watching The Snow Melt

People are getting spring fever and are starting to ask if it will ever warm up and if the snow will ever melt. The answers are easy-yes to both, but knowing when is a little more difficult.  We’ve had a few days above freezing including one glorious 50 degree day with wall to wall sun, but most have been at least partly cloudy and have hovered on either side of freezing. The snow is melting but it is doing so slowly.

 

Still, the signs are everywhere.

 

When the wind turns and comes out of the north it is never kind and can and can be fierce at times. This row of maples stood up to it and caught the snow it carried before it could fall to the ground. That’s why the snow melted so quickly on the south side of the windbreak. In other places what was knee high a week ago now comes to just slightly over the shoe tops, but it is crusty and still tough to walk through.

 

 Slow snow melt doesn’t have much effect on raising the level of streams like this one but a warm rain in the spring before the snow is completely melted can make small streams rage enough to scour the forest floor. I’ve seen the one pictured grow to more than 10 times this width overnight.

 

What little ice there is along the edges of the river is starting to either melt or break up. This slab was about 3 inches thick. I think this will be another year that the Ashuelot doesn’t completely freeze over. If so this will be only the second time in my lifetime that I can remember that happening. The first was last winter.

 

Though it looks like it might be a raging torrent, this is actually a sign that the snow is melting at a pace that the river can keep up with. When rapids like these have 6 to 8 feet of water over them, making them invisible, is when the river bears watching.

 

Because of the heavy snow it has been hard to find much of anything worth photographing in the woods, but now that the snow has melted away from stumps, trees and stones, lichens and mosses are appearing again.

 

 This orange lichen was hard to miss.  At first I thought it might be a lichen called Caloplaca holocarpa, but since that lichen likes to grow on limestone and this one was growing on granite, I’m leaning more toward granite firedot (Calplaca arenaria.) Natural limestone is scarce in New Hampshire, but we have plenty of granite.

 The ice melted enough to reveal this moss (Hedwigia cillata.) It grows in sun or shade and is common on ledges and stone walls. It also grows well on asphalt and can be found on paving and asphalt roofs. It is said to be an excellent choice when considering a “green roof.”

 

I’ve always wondered what snow depth does to animals like deer. It must slow them down considerably, making them easier prey. I think this is a coyote’s front paw print. The animal had woven a slushy path in and out of low shrubbery along the river where beavers have been active. After rebounding from near extinction, coyotes began the slow trek eastward from the Midwest in the early 1900s, finally reaching New Hampshire in 1944. They are now found in every county in the state, but they stay out of sight.

The snow melts in curious, abstract ways sometimes. The setting sun washed this dirty snow with color.

 

There isn’t much melting going on at night yet. In fact we just had a night with 14 degrees below zero wind chills. But, I read that the planet Mercury could be seen just under the crescent moon if you looked to the west just after moon rise so I had to go out and see it. I saw the moon but didn’t see any sign of Mercury or anything else that looked like a planet. It was mighty cold so I didn’t dilly dally too long, waiting for Mercury to show up.

Those who find beauty in all of nature will find themselves at one with the secrets of life itself. ~L.W. Gilbert

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