A Lakeside Walk and a River Paddle

Tuesday, June 7: This very busy nature day started off with Sue and me leading a wildflower walk around Moreau Lake for members of the Environmental Clearing House of Schenectady. We had hoped to walk out on the beach where ample sunlight might create a more likely habitat for blooming wildflowers this time of year. But high water in the lake had swamped the beach, keeping us to woodland paths for much of our walk, so we did not find many wildflowers in bloom back there in the deep shade. But I do hope our group was not too disappointed, since we found some other remarkable things, including a water snake lurking among throngs of tiny black toad tadpoles right up close to shore. Plus hundreds of colorful dragonflies and a number of beautiful birds, including Cedar Waxwings and Baltimore Orioles. And we did find some flowers a little out of the usual, such as this Bastard Toadflax. Not all that showy, but not all that common, either.

We were also delighted to find this unusual Green Pyrola, one of the few summer-blooming plants that actually prefers the shady woods. I was very excited to find it, since I did not know that it grew at Moreau Lake State Park.

I don't know if our group noticed these adorable baby Pitch Pine cones. The group had moved on without me, since once I noticed these pretty pink babies, I just had to stop and take a photo.

After bidding goodbye to the morning group, I decided to head a few miles further north to the Betar Byway in South Glens Falls and put my canoe in the Hudson there. Late last summer, I had discovered some very impressive shale cliffs along the river near there, and I was eager to see if any early-season flowers were blooming on these spring-dampened black rock faces.

There were lots of interesting and beautiful mosses, ferns, and liverworts, as well as the leaves of Grass-of-Parnassus, but the only flowers that were actually blooming today were those of Mountain Maple.

When I turned to paddle the other direction, downstream from the shale cliffs, I was amazed to see the monumental piles of flotsam that had piled up on shore from this spring's floods. Much more than the usual blue styrofoam chunks, bait boxes and plastic bags. There were also giant tree trunks tossed up on the banks as if they were no bigger than matchsticks.

I next moved into a quiet backwater -- or what would have been a quiet backwater if not for that distressing duckling scene I described earlier. But things calmed down, once the little creature got free of that hook, and I managed to spy this turtle sharing its basking site with a dragonfly. Hmmm. . . . That doesn't look like a Painted Turtle, does it? Of course, it slipped off the log before I could get a good look, but its shell suggests that it could be a Northern Map Turtle. A nice unusual sighting to end a day already full of delightful nature adventures.

What's Up in the Skidmore Woods

Monday, June 6: Wouldn't you think, that after four days of nature adventures in Concord, I would have had enough of flower-hunting for awhile? Well, if you thought that, I guess you don't know me very well. Especially this time of year, when new species are bursting into bloom, not just every day, but every hour. I had to get out to Skidmore on Monday to see what had come up while I was away. I didn't want to miss seeing the flowers of Orange-fruited Horse Gentian, for one thing, and happily, there they were!

They are small enough to be easy to miss, hiding down there in the leaf axils where the orange fruits will later circle the stem. I had a hard time making my camera focus on them, but it finally did what I wanted.

I also didn't want to miss the blooming time of Green Violet, a plant that probably doesn't grow anywhere else in Saratoga County except in the Skidmore Woods. The plant sure does love it here, growing by the hundreds out of the limestone rocks that litter the forest floor. And yes, I did say violet. They sure don't look like violets, though, do they?

Their flower doesn't look very violetty, either. And you really have to hunt to find it, tucked away under the leaves and also the same color as the leaves.

Well, you don't have to look very hard to see the brilliant pink blooms of Purple-flowering Raspberry! I actually turned down the saturation on this photo, so that it didn't look fake.

I had never noticed before how sparkly the leaves of Hickory could be. Is this sparkly effect due to some resin the leaf itself exudes, or are these leaves just catching droplets falling down from some source up above? I really don't know.

Another thing I didn't know until Ed Miller told me this year, was that the seeds of Bloodroot had these little white wormy things attached. They are called elaiosomes, and they are part of the Bloodroot's strategy to get its seeds planted where they are likely to germinate. Ants just love to eat elaiosomes, and they carry the seeds off to their anthills, where the elaiosomes are consumed and the rest of the seeds discarded -- discarded down underneath the soil, where their chances of germination are enhanced. I found this bulging Bloodroot pod and just had to take a look.

Well now, what's this? Here in the Bloodroot patch, I noticed these white cards with a single seed resting on each, and a yellow flag marking the site of the cards. Must be some kind of experiment, I thought, which would not be unusual, considering that these woods do belong to Skidmore College, and students are constantly performing investigations in here.

Then I saw a fellow with a handful of white cards, so I was able to ask him what he was doing. The fellow turned out to be Josh Ness, not a student but rather a member of the college's biology department, and he was placing Bloodroot seeds under various plants (Bloodroot, Hepatica, and another I don't recall), and timing how long it took before ants carted off the seeds. I believe his thesis was that ants would be hungrier under plant species whose seeds were not yet ripe, and less hungry under species that had gone to seed some days or weeks before. I know I should have taken notes so I would be able to describe the investigation correctly. But I didn't. But I will be back to the Skidmore Woods, and I'll probably see Josh Ness again, and ask him how his experiment turned out.

Duckling in Trouble!

Mama Wood Duck tries to lure me away from her endangered duckling.

While paddling the Hudson at South Glens Falls today, I became aware of a commotion under the trees along the shore. A Wood Duck hen was thrashing back and forth, back and forth, beating her wings on the water and hooting as if she were trying to get me to follow her. Then I saw why: her duckling was snagged by its bill on a lure dangling down from fishing line that had caught in a tree. Oh, the poor little thing! It was jerking and thrashing and tugging, to no avail, for that hook was pushed all the way through its tender little blue bill. I hurried over to try to remedy the situation.

I grasped the duckling in one hand and managed to work that nasty hook out, with mama going berserk around me during the procedure. As soon as the hook was freed, I released the duckling, who tore off to shore and into the underbrush. At that point, mama directed her energies toward trying to lure me away from the site. I obliged her and paddled quickly away.

Gosh, but I hope that little guy will be okay. Please, fisherpeople, make sure you don't leave your lures unaccounted for.

The instrument of torture for a baby duck

In Thoreau's Footsteps

Following our wonderful explorations on Thursday and Friday with Nan and Ruth and Ed at the Garden in the Woods (see last post), Sue and I stayed on at Walden Pond until Sunday afternoon. Sue, a dedicated student of the writings of Henry David Thoreau, has attended gatherings in his honor in Concord for a number of years, so she knew just where to lead me. Here, we are walking the shore of the pond on our way to the site of Thoreau's very small cabin, where he retired to "live deliberately" in as simple a manner as possible.

This is the view of Walden Pond from where the cabin was once located. A replica of his simple little wooden house, just big enough for a bed and a desk and a stove and a chair for a visitor, is now on display near the entrance to the state reservation that oversees Walden Pond.

It took us a while to parse out what this shrub might be, looking like some kind of a cross between Highbush Blueberry and Leatherleaf. Newcomb's Wildflower Guide came through with the answer: Fetterbush.

We did find Highbush Blueberry too, with unripe berries the most beautiful shade of aqua.

Sue led me off from the well-traveled pond-side trails to a dark quiet marshy area called Heywood's Meadow. Here we found a number of interesting plants including Common Bladderwort, Pitcher Plant, and Green Pyrola, but the most interesting find of all was this lightning-struck oak. It looks like it was struck by two bolts, with one of them traveling along the roots for some distance along the ground.

Staying in a charming B&B right across the road from the pond, we had easy access to enjoy the sunsets over the water each evening.

On Friday, after touring the Garden in the Woods all morning, we said goodbye to our friends from home and hurried off to the Old Calf Pasture in Concord, where the Sudbury River becomes the Concord, to meet up with a blog friend of Sue's from the local area. His name is Al, but he's known as Trashpaddler, for his habit of picking up and documenting at his website all the trash he finds as he paddles these waterways. He must have a lot of storage space in that kayak he was paddling.

Al was paddling today with another blogger, Eric, who was scouting the river prior to leading a paddling excursion along these waterways. A frequent trip leader for paddling adventures, Eric documents his trips in his blog Open Boat, Moving Water , where he posted a really nice photo of our Friday encounter on the banks of the Concord River. Sue and I stood on the bridge to wave Al and Eric along their way.

Saturday's major adventure was a hike around the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, a 3800-acre preserve consisting primarily of freshwater wetlands fed by the Concord and Sudbury Rivers. Management of these wetlands, which are systematically drained at various times of the year, provides optimum habitat for many species of resident and migratory birds.

The big excitement the day we visited was the sighting of rare Blanding's Turtles. Turtles are one of Sue's absolute passions, and here she is chatting with members of the refuge's staff, who had been trapping and marking the Blanding's Turtles, baiting their nets with sardines, in order to gather data about this species at Great Meadows.

The turtle trappers told Sue that these turtles had most recently been sighted near one of the drains to the river, so of course that's where we hurried next. Unfortunately, we never saw any turtles, but we did see the strangest sight: these two catfish lying on a concrete pad, facing the current washing swiftly over them. Were they there on purpose, or did they get trapped on the concrete when marsh water washed over it? I thought about throwing them into the nearby river, but thought better of it, remembering the sharp spines that catfish can use to stab your hands.

I am not usually able to identify liverworts on sight, but these puffy little paw-shaped ones I recognized right away. I had come upon masses of Ricciocarpus natans last November when they carpeted the muddy shore of Moreau Lake State Park's Mud Pond. That was during their rooted stage. They were now in their floating stage.

Great Meadows is managed primarily for the benefit of migratory birds, and we saw and heard lots of different ones. I'm hoping that Sue posts her blog Water-lily about our adventures soon, because she managed to snap a photo of a Marsh Wren in full voice. She may even have it on video. The only bird I managed to photograph was this shiny blue Tree Swallow. I don't believe I have ever seen one sit still for so long. They are usually whizzing over the water, eating insects as fast as they can.

This Bullfrog, too, was kind enough to sit still for his portrait.

On our trip from northern New York to Massachusetts, we had driven through Vermont and New Hampshire, passing through many charming towns and exquisite landscapes along the way. We found this Rhodora blooming near a bridge in New Hampshire where we had stopped to stretch our legs midway in our almost 5-hour journey. This is a plant I doubt I will ever find in New York, but Thoreau writes lovingly about it in his journals, so it must have once grown in Massachusetts. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem about it that I hope Sue will include in her blog about our trip when she posts it. We found it growing wild. Just one shrub. And very near finished blooming.

We picked a sprig and kept it fresh in water, until we could lay it on Henry's grave.

A Garden of Eden for Flower Friends

How to describe a trip to Paradise? Neither words nor photos can convey the delight that I and my fellow flower enthusiasts Sue and Nan and Ruth and Ed (left to right) enjoyed on our trip to the New England Wildflower Society's Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Massachusetts. We all met at the garden last Thursday in time to picnic together before exploring the trails through one of the most magnificent collections of native plants to be found in the eastern U.S.

I suppose most folks could "do" the tour of the gardens in a couple of hours, but our group inched our way plant by plant to complete about half of the tour in the rest of the day. We then convened to a most congenial bed and breakfast in nearby Lincoln, Thoreau's Walden B&B, situated within view of Walden Pond, where we rested up to continue our explorations the following day.

We found many plants that are very familiar to us in northern New York, including some that are considered quite rare in New England. I am sorry now that I failed to take photos or notes regarding these familiar plants, since I can't remember now which ones they were. (Maybe Ed or Ruth will remind me.) I focused my attention more on those plants that I never have found near my home, such as this lovely Yellow Stargrass. New York State is within its range, but I have never seen it.

This dainty Yellow Pimpernel could also reside in New York, but this is the first time I ever laid eyes on its perfectly spherical balls of tiny blooms.

Perhaps some day in my local paddlings I might come across this beautiful Golden Club.

I doubt I will ever find Climbing Fern, a really rare one where I live. Sue told me that when Henry David Thoreau once found it, he very carefully kept its location secret. A very unferny-looking fern, it develops its spores in the undercurled edges of its leaves.

Braun's Holly Fern is another fern I doubt I will ever see in my local woods, so I'm very glad I got to see its handsome brown-stalked fronds here.

Ed told me he has seen this pretty pink-flowered Bristly Locust near the Mohawk River, but that's an area I rarely visit. What a sight it would be to see whole trees-ful of these blooms!

These next plants I have no hope of ever seeing near home, since their range is much more to the south. This is Carolina Sweetbush, which, despite its appealing name, is poisonous to ingest. But lovely to look at.

Oh gosh, I neglected to write down the name of the fir these cones are sprouting from! But rather than tossing the photo, I include it here because those cones are just so exquisitely beautiful.

This Blue False Indigo is also really beautiful, a plant that is native from Pennsylvania south, but which has escaped from gardens to grow wild in New England now. But not yet in Saratoga County, that I know of, although we do have the related Wild Lupine, which looks quite a bit like it.

Here's another amazing native from more southerly realms, but it sure is thriving in the Garden in the Woods. It's called Turkey Beard, not because of its spectacular starry blooms, but because of the long narrow strands of its leaves that lie on the ground around it.

We have lots of Pitcher Plants in our northern bogs, but none that look like this Green Pitcher Plant from more southern regions.

There were dozens and dozens more plants, some beautiful, some not, but all of them fascinating. I can't believe I did not take photos of the spectacular rhododendrons, blooming now in all their glorious colors, pink and white and coral and even blazing orange. Maybe I neglected them because these native blooming shrubs are also such common garden plants. At any rate, we could only take in so much ravishing plant material at one time, and we were glad to retire at the end of a long day to our most hospitable B&B. Sue and Nan and Ruth were eager to walk around Walden Pond before supper, despite a chilly wind.

I started out to accompany them, but soon turned back, my ears stinging from the wind, to keep Ed company with his nice bottle of champagne in our inn's commodious Great Room.

When the ladies returned, they brought reports of finding a single One-flowered Cancer Root growing out of a sandy bank, a big surprise. (And one that would probably be invisible to anyone other than these practiced botanizers.) Probably the commonest plant in the woods surrounding Walden Pond is the shrub called Sweet Pepperbush or Clethra. What lovely shiny leaves it has, and later those dry brown seed heads will be replaced by spikes of fragrant white blooms, a favorite of butterflies.

A perfect day, sunny but cool and breezy to keep the bugs away. And there we were, in one of the loveliest places on earth. With some of the nicest people for companions. Heaven!