Fire in the Woods! And Other Surprises

Despite yesterday's unseasonable heat, I didn't expect to find many surprises today in the Skidmore woods, since I'd walked there just the day before. But you never know.

My first surprise was this group of "bee hills" right in the middle of a sandy path. I had never seen such a thing before. At first I thought they were anthills, but then, the holes seemed too big. So I got down on my knees to examine them more closely.

And look who popped up from out of the depths! This bee just sat there for the longest time, completely ignoring my nose (and my camera lens), just a few inches from hers. I wonder if she was laying eggs.

I wonder, too, if this is a different species of ground bee than the ones I found the other day at Mud Pond, whose nests were built in a more vertical sandy surface. I would have to grab individuals of both populations to examine them very closely. But I'm not about to do that.

Continuing my walk, I saw the first Mourning Cloak butterfly of the season, flitting maddeningly out of focal length until, lucky for me, it settled down in a patch of sunlight almost at my feet. What a rich velvety brown those wings are, the better for absorbing energy from the sun in the chilly spring woods. (The temperature barely made it out of the 50s today.)

The edges of this butterfly's wings often look quite ragged, which is not surprising, considering that Mourning Cloaks overwinter as adults, sheltering under bark or leaf litter, protected from freezing in subzero temperatures by high glucose levels in their blood.

I did not expect to see these spears of False Hellebore today, since just yesterday I checked this site and there was not a sign of them. They must shoot up as fast as the rockets they resemble. Some of them had even pierced the leaves they shot through as they reached for the sky.

Yesterday, these fuzzy buds of Leatherwood were closed tight, but today just a little bit of the yellow trumpets was pushing through.

Now, this little Spotted Newt was a total surprise! I had dipped a plastic cup into a vernal pool, hoping to find some frogs' eggs or insect larvae in the murky water, and I captured this little critter instead. I let him go as soon as I snapped his photo.

As for surprises, though, this forest fire takes the prize. Just a few days ago, these leaves were still covered in snow, so one would hardly expect them to ignite. Walking along, I began to smell smoke but assumed it was coming from a woodstove in a nearby home until a fellow hiker alerted me to the flames that were spreading across a valley. The college was notified and fire fighters were called, although they had great difficulty maneuvering their vehicles along the rutted old carriage roads to reach the site. Luckily, only ground leaves were burning and no standing timber caught fire.

Looks like the fire must have started from this illegal hidden campsite. Was this a party spot for kids or shelter for a homeless person? When I spied the structure through the smoke, I ran down to make sure nobody was still inside. I'm happy to report it was empty. I'd had enough surprises for one day.