Cold Pleasures and Treasures

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I really do find much to love about winter's cold and snow and ice. But it does take a few early outings to reset my inner thermostat from misery to toleration to actual enjoyment of winter's frigid charms. This year, the cold and snow arrived earlier than usual, and I'd probably still be huddling indoors if my pal Sue Pierce hadn't poked me to get on out and start the toleration process. Sue also urged our pal Dana to join us at Moreau Lake State Park this past Monday, where Sue took this photo of Dana and me on the breezy lakeshore, where I'm still huddling within several layers of thick winter garments, while Dana appears quite comfortable hatless and wearing bluejeans. I believe the temps were still below 20. And a brisk breeze was trying to worm inside my winterwear defenses. Brrrr!

Photo by Sue Pierce

We shortly sought the windless shelter of the lakeside forest, which also offered the body-warming challenge of climbing up some hills.

Our goal was to see how the freezing cold might have festooned with crystalline beauty the creek that tumbles down the mountainside here.

But since the creek held only a very small trickle of water, the energetic splashing that in other winters has tossed up fabulous icy bank-side accretions was minimal so far this year.  And the water that collected in pools was not yet frozen.

So, OK, let's just take a walk across the bridge and along the trail, to see what we can find of interest. We could actually feel the warmth of pale sunlight without a brisk wind blowing any warmth away.

It was fun to try to ID what we saw along the trail.  These tiny fleur-de-lis shapes littering the snow are the scales from the seedpods of some species of birch.  I'm not sure which species.  Both Black Birch and Gray Birch are common in this woods. 

I did recognize these bristly little teardrop-shaped seedpods as those of the wildflower called Enchanter's Nightshade.

And this slender branching plant with its hard, split seedpods was probably Sweet Cicely, a lime-loving wildflower. We knew that lime-rich marble boulders were present not far away.

And this squiggly remnant of some kind of vine was most likely from one of our wild grapes.

Glimpses through the trees of the blue lake and its sun-lit shores tempted us to return to those shores. Perhaps we might see some waterfowl, or even a Bald Eagle fishing the wide-open water.

As we approached the lakeshore, we were excited to observe the trails of Otters sliding along through the snow.

Some well-defined paw-prints confirmed that these were indeed Otter trails.

And look where those Otters were heading: right into the icy-cold water of the lake. Otters have such thick furry coats, the cold water never reaches their skin.  And of course, the lake waters hold the fish that Otters love to eat.

We next discovered the Otters' latrine, right next to the shore. I bet if we'd poked the stuff apart, we'd have found some fish scales among it.

Although the lake was mostly still unfrozen, there were wide shelves of ice along this north-facing shore. Some of the ice was even thick enough that we could walk on it.  In this photo, Sue is using her camera's zoom to photograph the Muskrat she has spied walking on a similar ice shelf some distance down the shore.

I noticed a trail on the snow-dusted ice close to shore, and the prints of small feet bunched together indicated that this was possibly the trail of a Mink, another Weasel Family member that enters the water even in winter to hunt for fish. A Mink's gait reminds me of an inchworm, looping along. They also sometimes slide on their bellies as the Otters do, just not as frequently or for such long distances.

Walking along the shore close to where the ice met the water, we finally encountered some of the icy beauty that makes our chilled discomfort dismissible. These glistening baubles seemed to glow with a shining light.

In places, the ice had frozen as clear as glass, except where the freezing had captured rafts of bubbles, both miniature and bulbous.

Where wavelets had tossed up droplets on the underside of this icy shelf, they promptly froze there, creating lines of small circles that resembled strings of glass beads.

Bubbles of gas released by decomposing underwater organic matter were trapped in the ice, resembling silver coins.

Wow!  While I could understand how some of these frozen ice features might have been formed, the forces that created this frieze of vertical lines remains a mystery to me. Did some strong vibration occur before the slushy ice turned hard? Or what? I really cannot imagine!

So there! Sometimes enduring winter's cold seems just too daunting for me. And then I see something like this.

A Sunset Transformation!

A photo of sunset-burnished treetops showed up in my Facebook Memories today, and I wondered if I could find the original higher-resolution copy in my photo files.  Which I did, in a folder from 11/29/15.  In that same folder, I also found my photo of the nearly identical scene taken an hour or so earlier, before the lowering sun had set the gray leafless treetops afire with blazing color. Wow! What an amazing transformation! 

A late-fall afternoon on the Hudson River, with West Mountain rising beyond the far bank. The scene was pleasant enough, but the leafless trees on this mid-river island look colorless in the late-afternoon light. But just wait !

Ta da! Just an hour or so later, a lowering sun set the leafless trees on this mid-river island ablaze! The very same scene, transformed by light!

I never know what surprising delights Mother Nature has in store for me.  I'm so glad I preserved these moments in photos, and also that I filed these two photos in a way that allowed me to find them again.

A New Month, New Snow, and a Catch-up Blogpost

 

Here comes December, and here came some SNOW! Some pretty snow, too, soft and sparkly and about 6 inches, and I hope it's the first of many lovely snowfalls to come. But before I get distracted by all the glittering charms of winter, I do want to post some photos of the most recent walk I and my friends in our Thursday Naturalist group enjoyed during the waning days of November.

We visited Anchor Diamond Park, which contains 246 acres of conserved woodlands and trails, located at the historic site of the former Hawkwood Estate a few miles south of Ballston Spa, New York.  Now permanently protected through a conservation easement by Saratoga PLAN (Preserving Land And Nature), this preserve is owned by the Town of Ballston and open to the public year-round. The park honors the wishes of the late Frank Schidzick Jr., whose Trust purchased the property and generously gifted it to the Town in 2015. Today, Anchor Diamond Park is a place for visitors to connect with nature and enjoy the beautiful landscape. 

Our Thursday group has visited Anchor Diamond Park more than a few times over recent years, but this time we opted to follow a longer route than in past visits, one that took us along the main Hawkwood Trail until we reached the Hemlock Loop, the trail colored yellow on the map pictured below.  This took us into a part of this preserve several of us had not visited before.

Before we reached the Hemlock Loop, we enjoyed exploring some of the evidence of human occupancy of this estate many years ago, not just the visible remains of the original Hawkwood Mansion, but also the crumbling foundations of other buildings that lined the wide Hawkwood Trail. We had not yet experienced a killing frost in Saratoga County, so many green plants and occasional late-blooming wildflowers were still evident in such sheltered havens.

As we followed the Hawkwood Trail into the heart of the preserve, we walked beneath towering trees that soared over our heads like the arched ceiling of a cathedral.

Some of the trees were very old, especially many huge Black Locusts, now dead and disintegrating but still quite monumental, even in their considerable decline.

We paused to ponder what had occurred to cause these sturdy twin trunks to curve in this way.

As we walked along, we were often accompanied by the sounds of the rippling Delavan Creek that runs throughout the preserve. 

Shortly after entering the Hemlock Loop, we encountered this old stone fireplace, standing alone on the forest floor, with no evidence of any building having ever surrounded it.

Apparently, we were not the first people to ponder the origin of this fireplace, according to a sign that was posted at the site:

As we moved further along the Hemlock Trail, we were dismayed to find evidence of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid infesting the trees. We could only hope that biological controls, such as the release of other insects that prey on the adelgid larvae, would help to save some of the hemlock trees that were concentrated in this part of the preserve.

Avoiding physical contact with the needles of infested hemlocks, we concentrated our explorations on the remains of fallen trees scattered about the forest floor.  Here, Tom and Sue have found a stump populated by quite an assortment of interesting fungi.

The fungi came in quite a colorful assortment on this particular stump. I see bright-yellow Lemon Drop Fungus, a copper-colored sac fungus, some blue-green Blue Stain Fungus, some lumps of hard dark-brown fungus riddled with tiny holes,  some flat brown caps I can't identify, some orange Eyelash Fungus, and a whitish stuff that might be a lichen or slime mold.  I hardly bother to try using the scientific names of fungi, so many names have changed since my old mushroom guides were published.

I used to know that Eyelash Fungus as Scutellinia scutellata, but I have since learned there might be many different species that all look a lot like this.  Can you see the tiny dark "eyelashes"?

A knothole on another stump held a nice group of the tiny fruiting bodies of Blue Stain Fungus surrounded by bright green moss.

Is this compact clump of bright-orange stuff the fungus called Orange Jelly?  Or is it Witches' Butter? One grows on hardwood, the other on conifers.  I can't remember which wood this was. It was quite an impressive clump of fungus, whichever one it is!

I am glad I remember the name of this small gilled fungus with an "innie" bellybutton on top, which often grows in bright-orange masses on rotting conifer wood.  Its scientific name is Xeromphalina campanella, which means something like "small bells with dry bellybuttons."

One of the vernacular names for Xeromphalina campanella is Fuzzy Foot.  It's often difficult to detect any fuzziness of its feet, but this particular population yielded a perfect example of how it got that name:

We found many pretty mosses and low-growing plants throughout Anchor Diamond Park, but this red-berried, green-leaved groundcover  called Partridgeberry seemed the most appropriate for anticipating the upcoming Christmas season.  Wishing a happy holiday season for all of my readers!

November Wanderings, Redux

Once again, I am neglecting this blog, often finding only enough energy in my lame old age to enjoy a woodsy or watery adventure,  but not enough to post in good time a blog about these adventures.  I have been out, and I do have hundreds of new photos to select and edit, but since a couple of these photos were more blurry than I wanted to post, I went searching through past posts to see if I might have better ones in my files.  And lo!  I found this entire old post from almost exactly five years ago (11/23/2020), in which I reported many of the same finds that I have found this year, and from exactly the same locations.  So I decided, why not re-post this blog from 2020? Some of the photos are better than my new ones, and I'd probably have written the same words about them now.  The post was titled November Wanderings. So here it is again, November Wanderings, Redux!

Yep.  It's November, all right.  One day the temps are down in the teens, then two days later they reach the mid-70s.  And after that, mostly gray has prevailed.  Maybe the sun breaks through for a bit, but low clouds soon cancel out that bit of blue in the sky. Next day, some rain, a few flakes of snow.  A sunny day dawns promising, but a chill wind drives the cold inside my winter coat.  It hasn't been very inviting out there, for this aging old lady with an arthritic knee.  But I have ventured out since I posted here last, just for an hour or so here and there.  And I'm always glad I did. Nature always has something delightful to offer. Even in November.

November 10, Bog Meadow Brook Nature Preserve 

There's lovely color still to be found on this trail, even after the vivid autumn foliage fell many days ago.  The Winterberry shrubs (Ilex verticillata) that line this pond are thick with scarlet berries (above), and Red Osier twigs (Cornus sericea) (below) glow lipstick red along the bank. The curling siliques of Northern Willowherb (Epilobium ciliatum) shine golden in the late-fall sunlight.

What once were the small white flowers of a trailside aster have turned into fluffy white tufts.

The pale-gold seedpods of Loesel's Twayblade Orchid (Liparis loeselii) are much easier to find this time of year than were their tiny greenish-yellow flowers hiding among summer's grasses.

How wonderful to still see dragonflies darting about on the autumn air!  Especially dragonflies as colorful as this Autumn Meadowhawk basking in the sun.

The sun goes down early these late-fall afternoons, and it cast a warm golden light on this small flock of Canada Geese floating calmly on a trailside pond.

November 18, Evergreen Plants at Mud Pond

I didn't get out until afternoon on this freezing-cold day. On my way to a powerline clearcut near Mud Pond at Moreau Lake State Park, I was surprised to see how thickly icicles hung from the spring-watered boulders along Spier Falls Road, despite their exposure to hours of sunshine this day.

The powerline clearcut above Mud Pond passes beside a pine woods, and the open area next to the woods is carpeted with thick mosses, this carpet studded with small seedling conifers and other evergreen plants.

I had come here on this Wednesday to prepare for leading some friends on an "Evergreen Plants Walk" the following Friday. But before I even began to catalog the many green plants that grow here, I was startled to see how the stems of many Frostweed plants (Crocanthemum canadense) were still surrounded with icy curls of frozen sap, even this late in the day (it was now 3pm).  Usually, these delicate curls melt or evaporate as soon as the morning sun touches them.  But the freezing cold had persisted all day long.

As I walked near the edge of the woods, my feet sank deep into thick carpets of moss. The predominant moss here is one called Big Red-stem Moss (Pleurozium schreberi).

Many other mosses thrive in this sandy soil, including this lime-green one with fern-like leaves called Brocade Moss (Hypnum imponens).

Among all the green mosses were several mounds of Sphagnum capillifolium moss that was colored a surprising pink! This mound was studded with tiny White Pine seedlings (Pinus strobus).

There were at least two species of Reindeer lichens (Cladonia spp.) sprouting up from amid the pine needles, both a pale-green one and this one, colored a beautiful gray.

Fallen logs lay at the edge of the woods, most of them covered with many different lichens, mosses, and liverworts, including this curly-leaved liverwort called Lovely Fuzzwort (Ptilidium pulcherimum).

Several clubmosses, too, are part of this evergreen community, including this Tree Clubmoss (Dendrolycopodium obscurum) with its golden pollen stalks.

Fan Clubmoss (Diphasiastrum digitatum) is another evergreen denizen of this powerline clearcut.

Running Clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum) also thrives here.  Another vernacular name for this sprawling, ground-hugging plant is Wolf's Claw, suggested by the pointed tufts of white hairs at the end of each branch.

And of course, there are several different kinds of baby evergreen trees, including at least two species of pine. I believe this one is a Red Pine seedling (Pinus resinosa), with its fascicles (needle bundles) containing two stiff needles.  White Pine seedlings, with fascicles containing five more-slender needles of a bluer shade of green, were even more numerous at this site.

An occasional Spruce seedling (Picea sp.), with its short sharp needles, could also be found among the other baby conifers.

I found only one Juniper sapling (Juniperus sp.) among all the other conifers, and it was abundantly studded with berries of the most beautiful blue.

I assert that we can call these British Soldier lichens (Cladonia cristatella) another evergreen plant, since its leafy thallus is definitely greenish, even when its fruiting bodies are a brilliant red.

November 19, Moreau Lake Shore

This Thursday afternoon was breezy and cold, but breaks in the clouds let a few rays of warming sun cast a golden light on the north shore of the lake.  My friend Sue had joined me to see how far we could walk on dry land around the lake.  But first we had to cross the brand-new bridge that spans the narrow waterway between the main lake and the back bay.  Thanks go to The Friends of Moreau Lake State Park for providing the funds to replace the old bridge, which had been much in need of repair. 

For the past month or so, I've been celebrating the emergence of the lake's walkable shore, as lake levels had started to fall from the highs that found the water risen well into the woods.  But wow! It looked as if just overnight the levels had fallen precipitously, as the still-damp sand along the north shore appeared to indicate.

Sure enough, we were able to easily stride along the shore, with ample amounts of dry footing between the woods and the water's edge.

We made it all the way to the cove along the eastern shore, where seven years ago I had discovered a large population of one of New York's rarest plants, the Endangered species called Whorled Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum verticillatum var. verticillatum). At that time, the population included nearly 300 blooming plants, many of which had been submerged now for nearly two years by remarkably high water levels.  Would we find any at all remaining today?  Sadly, only a few.  But the specimens we did find bore seed heads that had dropped their seeds, so we can hope that many more of this super-rare plant will once again find a happy home on the shore of Moreau Lake.