Westchester Wanderings

It's only been a week since I last sat down to post a blog, but somehow it seems much longer than that, since I spent very little of the last week in the woods.  I was down in Mt. Kisco in Westchester County looking after my granddaughters while their folks were away.  The girls are no trouble at all to care for and lots of fun to be with, but their interests sure don't lie in accompanying Grandma on nature adventures.  I did manage to get out one day by myself to visit the wonderful Teatown Reservation, a nature preserve and education center in nearby Ossining.  I love to take the trail that circles the lake that lies at the heart of the preserve, and I had a beautiful blue-sky day to do it in.

At one point, the trail passes over a very long footbridge that provides beautiful views of the lake, which was mostly covered with a thin sheet of ice.   I walked this trail just a year ago, when several feet of snow covered the woods, and the ice was thick enough to support the wanderings of deer across its surface.  They would not have been able to do that today.  (To compare the amount of snow this year to last at Teatown, click here.)

The terrain surrounding the lake is rugged and rocky, with many outcroppings studded with glassy patches of quartzite.

Wherever the lake lay unfrozen, various waterfowl swam about in the open water, including this pair of elegant swans.

Because of an overabundance of deer in Westchester County, most of the woods, although lush and green, are bereft of native species of plants, supporting only those invasive plants that deer avoid.  A number of nature preserves in the county are fencing off portions of their acreage to keep out the deer,  allowing the native plants to be reestablished.  At Teatown, this process is being actively managed, with removal of alien species and the planting of native shrubs and trees and wildflowers.  This rustic gate marks one entry into such a fenced-off exclosure.  I look forward to revisiting this area during the growing season to see what native plants have come into flower.

One of my favorite features of Teatown is the exhibits of native birds and mammals, especially the enclosures containing raptors and owls and other birds of prey, all of them having been rehabilitated following serious injury but too permanently damaged to be returned to the wild.  Here, one of the caregivers, Lisa, enters the enclosure of an American Kestrel to offer it shreds of meat.

 

Which the kestrel eagerly devours.  I think I would enjoy this job!

In a nearby enclosure, a Red-tailed Hawk hunches over to enjoy its lunch of rat.  How lovely to get such a good view of the ruddy tail that gives this large raptor its name.  We usually can only see this bird from underneath, as it soars above us, high in the sky.

Inside the nature center are tanks and terraria housing a number of amphibians, snakes, and turtles, including this rare Blandings Turtle that came close enough to let me see its yellow chin and throat, and the distinctive black and white mottling of its shell. 

An informative sign near the turtle's pool stated that this turtle is found in New York only in Dutchess County, but I was able to leave a message for Teatown naturalists, informing them that this rare turtle has also been found at the Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park, right here in Saratoga County.  Where I am again very happily at home, eager to get back to my own Saratoga County woods and waters.

Westchester Woodswalks

I'm just back from a few days downstate in Westchester County, where I tried to interest my grandkids in coming out to the woods with me.  No deal, Grandma.  We've got other plans.  OK, so while the girls were off with their friends and I was relieved of babysitting duties,  I found my way to some lovely local nature preserves.  Marsh Sanctuary, just outside of the town of Mt. Kisco, offers trails that run through a variety of terrains, including the quiet pond pictured above, and the shaded rocky woodland pictured below.

Another trail led up a steep hill through a grassy meadow to a woods of oak and hickory and beech.  On either side of this trail, the breeze moved in waves through acres of Little Bluestem Grass, fully in flower now, the filaments of its fluffy tufts shining in the sun.

There was goldenrod, too, hidden among the waves of grass, and these were just about the only native plants I could find in the whole preserve, not counting the trees and some native dogwood shrubs.  That doesn't mean the vegetation wasn't beautiful, because it certainly was, despite being almost exclusively alien invasives, such as this Japanese Knotweed covering an old stone wall.   I don't believe I have ever seen Japanese Knotweed with such vivid pink seed receptacles any other place but this.

Competing with the Japanese Knotweed and Multiflora Rose and Wineberry and Japanese Barberry to cover every available space was this prolific vine with berries in shades of the most remarkable turquoise blue and purple.  This was a new plant for me, and although I couldn't help admiring its genuine beauty, I was dismayed to discover, when I learned its name, that this vine, Porcelainberry, is considered one of the most invasive plants around.

I did notice some recently planted native shrubs -- Winterberry and several species of Viburnum -- growing around the pond, but they looked pretty spindly, struggling to survive against all the vigorous competition.  Then I came upon this healthy looking shrub.  It looked a bit familiar to me, but it took me a while to remember its name, since this woodsy Westchester  habitat seemed hardly the place where Groundsel Tree (Baccharis halimifolia) would be found.  The last place I found it was among the coastal sand dunes of Fire Island, its typical habitat.  I found just this one specimen at Marsh Sanctuary.  I wonder how it got here?