Out on Lake Bonita's Ice, At Last!

Finally, after a few sub-zero days and nights, the "all-clear" came from Moreau Lake State Park that the lake ice was safe to walk on.  I don't know if this is the latest date ever for thick ice to form, but I've sure been waiting and waiting and waiting to get out on the ice of Lake Bonita, one of the three lakes that lie within the boundary of Moreau Lake State Park. So I issued an eager "Let's Go!" to my local hiking pals, and friends Sue Pierce and Dana Stimpson joined me yesterday for an adventure out on iced-over Lake Bonita, high atop Mount McGregor in the Palmertown Mountain Range.

Of course, we had to stop along the forested trail from the parking lot to the lake. This tree-full of Violet-edge Polypore (Trichaptum biforme) beckoned us to take a closer look at it.

A coat of lime-green algae coated most of the fungus's caps, which this time of year don't show much of the purple that suggested this shelf fungus's common name. But that algae was a sign for us to take a closer look at the caps.

And lo!  There they were: the teeny, tiny, itty-bitty black "Fairy Pins" (Phaeocalicium polyporaeum), a lichen-forming fungus that grows primarily on algae-covered members of the Trichaptum genus.

It was Sue's super eyesight that first alerted us to the presence of Fairy Pins on Violet-edge Polypores, but believe it or not, it was my terrible eyesight that first detected this itty-bitty critter scurrying across the trailside snow.  But then, it was Sue who corrected my cry of "Look!  A spider!" when she pointed out the creature had six, not eight long spindly legs.  But neither of us could identify this strange wingless creature, so tiny and moving so fast it was hard to get a clear photo of it.  This was the best I could get. Its body was at most a quarter inch long.

But Sue's photo of this insect was clear enough to elicit a response from an iNaturalist follower, who informed her that this was a Snow Fly, a member of the genus Chionea,  flightless flies that are specifically adapted for cold climates, active only in winter, with bodily fluids composed primarily of glycerol.  Basically, they have antifreeze instead of blood!  Lots more information about these fascinating creatures can be found on Google. Just one more example that proves we never know what we might see on any walk we take!

Here we are on the frozen lake!  Although both Sue and Dana seemed a bit leery of venturing out on what was liquid water only a week or so ago, I tried to assure them that if the park said the ice was safe on Moreau Lake, it surely was also safe on this lake, which lies many hundreds of feet higher in altitude than Moreau.  I also lured them out by telling them all the fascinating plants they would find on the tiny sphagnum-covered islets that dot Lake Bonita.  So out they went! As did I.

The sphagnum that covers these rocky islands was covered with snow,  but the bog-loving shrubs and other plants that grow out here attest to the acidic habitat the sphagnum creates.

Most of the shrubs are easily identified, even in winter. Here are the two most populous shrubs, Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata), with its persistent leathery leaves; and Sweet Gale (Myrica gale), leafless now but possessing distinctive buds and seedpods.

Leatherleaf's flower buds are already present, ready to open into small white dangling bells in early spring.

Some of the Leatherleaf's twigs bear the remnant's of the seedpods that spilled their seeds last fall, but the husks of those seedpods are almost as pretty as flowers themselves.

Sweet Gale's flower buds are quite lovely now, with glossy mahogony-red scales, each scale outlined in pale ivory.

And the seedpods of Sweet Gale offer their delicious fragrance to any fingers that pinch them, which helps to scatter the seed on the snow as well as perfuming those fingers for the rest of the day.

Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) is almost as abundant on these island as the two shrubs mentioned above. During early summer, clusters of bright-pink flowers are borne below terminal tufts of leathery green leaves, and the remnants of both flowers and leaves persist on the twigs all winter.

Some years, I can find the pitcher-shaped basal leaves of Northern Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea) protruding above the snow, but this year, I found only the remains of their big red flowers, remarkably intact even though brown and crispy.

I had almost given up on finding the remnants of smaller flowers (cranberries, sundews, bladderworts, even orchids!) that bloom on these islands in warmer months, since most now lay hidden under the snow.  But then I spied these distinctive pods, what remained of the seedpods of Marsh St. John's Wort (Hypericum virginicum), our only St. John's Wort with pink (not yellow) flowers.

Many Speckled Alder shrubs (Alnus incana) grow on the islands, the branches already hung with ruddy immature male catkins that will open to shed their pollen in spring.  The female flower buds of this particular shrub have been infected by a fungal plant pathogen called Taphrina alni, which causes only the female buds to produce tangled masses of curly brown tufts. I have read that, although it distorts some of the cones of an individual tree, this pathogen does not harm the tree itself.

This tangled brown mass, however, is not caused by a pathogen but rather is built by a bird, most likely a Red-winged Blackbird, a species that builds its nest low among waterside flora (in this case a Sweet Gale shrub). 

And here was another kind of "nest,"  a rather small beaver lodge that hardly seemed big enough yet to provide a winter home for a family of beavers.  But much of the lodge could be beneath the ice. Since beavers often keep the water open near their lodges,  we kept a wide berth from what could possibly be some recently open water now skimmed over with thin ice.  Perhaps it was time to head back to shore.

There was plenty to enjoy while walking close to the shore. The red twigs of this Highbush Blueberry bush (Vaccinium corymbosum) looked quite stunning, arrayed against the deep-green background of hemlock boughs. 

A large Red Maple tree (Acer rubrum) had fallen from the shore into the lake, but apparently it still remained healthy enough to have borne leaves last fall and also produce chubby red buds that will open to reveal new leaves come spring.

Since Lake Bonita is a mountain lake, huge outcroppings of bedrock line the shore, rising steeply and dramatically from the water's edge.

And of course, where there's rock, there are mosses and lichens and liverworts.  Here, Sue and Dana move in close to see what they can find.

I found some Bazzania liverwort clinging to this rock face, still beautiful even though most of its glossy green leaves had turned brown. But that made the cascading fronds of the evergreen Rock Polypody Fern even more lovely, thanks to the contrast in color.

Winter Fun on "Porcupine Mountain"

It's past 3 o'clock on Friday afternoon as I sit to write this, and the temperature still has not made it up to zero (F), while wind is whipping the trees around.  Brrrr! And those temps will only drop as the hours go by. This sure makes me glad I got out with my friends (l-r) Dana, Sue, and Tom on Wednesday, a cold but bearably so day, especially since it involved an interior-furnace-stoking hike up a Moreau Lake State Park mountainside to search for porcupine activity.   Before we headed up, though, we stopped to enjoy the music of a babbling brook.  

I'm not sure what Tom and Sue are searching the treetops for (did they hear a bird?),  because I was looking down at the creek, enchanted by the sparkling ice and the tumbling rills.

Up and up and up we climbed, finally reaching a height and a hemlock woods where we began to search for Porky's trails.  Aha! Looks like we've found one! Porcupines are really low slung, so their trails reveal the width of their bodies as well as their footprints.

Porcupine trails are easy to identify, even when so packed no individual footprints can be discerned.  The very fact that the trails are so packed is the most significant factor, revealing the porcupine's habit of making a beeline from its den to its chosen feeding tree and returning there day after day.  We often find scat and pee and quills along the trails to confirm our ID.  That's probably what Sue is searching for as she studies this trail.

We followed that trail to where it led to a cave beneath marble moss-covered boulders.  Porky was most likely deep down inside, resting from a night of feeding in surrounding hemlock trees.

I'm glad we didn't see the animal that made these tracks heading down into Porky's den!  For these tracks were made by a Fisher, the only predator capable of killing a quill-armored porcupine.  Somehow these predators and their prey have managed to co-habit these woods without the porcupine population being depleted, but I can't help wondering how.  We often see many Fisher tracks up here near the porcupine dens.  But year after year, we also see no diminishment of well-traveled porcupine trails.

Back down on the shore of Moreau Lake, we pause to take in the bright blue sky as well as the lake, now frozen at last from shore to shore.  With two or three well-below-zero nights and sub-freezing days in the offing, we'll finally be able to head out across the lake without fear of falling through.

On our way to the park's warming hut to enjoy our lunches by the fire, it was fun to see if we could ID the remains of the flowers that bloomed along the shore last summer.  I particularly loved the organdy-sheer pods of Indian Tobacco (Lobelia inflata).

This array of tuft-circled stems is most likely one of the Lycopus species, either L. uniflorus (Northern Bugleweed) or L. virginicus (Water Horehound), two Mint-Family plants I have difficulty telling apart even when blooming. Neither plant smells very minty, neither in bloom nor as desiccated as these.

A Winter Walk at Meadowbrook Preserve

Because of a painful eye issue that made me want to keep my eyes closed, I hadn't ventured out except for necessities for more than a week. But lucky for me, just as the pain was subsiding and I could reliably see where I was going, my friends arranged to meet for a walk at Meadowbrook Preserve in Queensbury this week and asked me along.  One of the things that's so inviting about this preserve is that it incorporates several different habitats, with well-kept trails that lead through all of them.  So we had a chance to find all kinds of natural things to fascinate us.

When we first started out, we crossed a vast open meadow, some of it dry and other parts of it open wetland.  The remnants of asters and goldenrods were evidence of the dryer parts, while multitudes of Sensitive Fern spore stalks indicated they'd risen from frozen muck (now covered with snow).

More evidence of a wet habitat along this meadow-crossing trail was provided by two native dogwoods, both of them wetland denizens and both of them bearing red bark.  They were even growing so close together we could draw their twigs together to demonstrate the distinctive differences in their barks.  The twig on the left, from a Silky Dogwood (Cornus amomum) bore lengthwise tan lenticels that looked like stripes, while the twig on the right bore rounder, dot-like lenticels, a sure sign that this was the Red Osier Dogwood (C. sericea).

We soon moved into an extensive forested part of the Meadowbrook Preserve.  The snow-covered trail through the woods was so well-packed we needed neither snowshoes nor ice-grippers to safely walk along it.  Here, my friends (L-R) Tom, Dana, Noel, and Sue pause while I studied some Red Maple buds that were littering the snow.

I found the maple buds quite puzzling, since they appeared to have bloomed recently (note the anthers), and also because their twigs appeared to have been nipped off and many were lying around on the snow.  Could our over-mild winter have compelled our maples to bloom so soon?  And has some hungry critter been nipping them off in order to lap at the sap?  The mystery remains unsolved!

The woodland trail leads past several other types of wetland, including this swamp with pools of ice-rimmed open water.

We also encountered open cattail marsh with a flowing stream -- called Halfway Brook -- running through it.

A small flock of Mallard Ducks paddled quickly away at our approach.  As forecasts call for much colder weather -- up to 20 BELOW predicted later this week! -- I wonder where the ducks will go to find open water.

We did not have to consult our guide books to know that American Beech trees (Fagus grandifolia) thrived in this woods.  Just a glance around revealed the presence of many young ones, all holding onto their golden leaves that won't fall until new leaves emerge in the spring.

The wiry bud-studded stems of Beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana) provided further proof that American Beeches grew nearby. This parasitic plant has no green leaves and so must obtain its nutrients by sucking on the roots of beech trees.

Yellow Birch (Betula alleghaniensis) also abounds in this woods, immediately recognizable by its gleaming golden bark with small shredded curls.  When we spotted this arching branch of one, my friends couldn't resist appearing to hold it up for the picture-taking. I sure am glad I have such fun-loving pals!

See how beautifully this Yellow Birch bark gleams as if gilded with gold leaf!  And see also the lovely little patch of lacy green, so beautifully arrayed against the gleaming gold.  

Here's a closer look at that lacy green growth, with its tiny round overlapping leaves that sprawl across the yellow treebark.  Both Sue and Tom immediately recognized this arboreal liverwort as Radula complanata, also known as Flat-leaved Scalewort.  I am very familiar with the dark-colored Frullania liverworts that decorate many woodland trees, but I had never noticed this vividly green growth before. So beautiful!

Here was another tree with yellowish bark, American Basswood (Tilia americana), this tree displaying the signature lines of holes created by the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker as it drills for sap.

And of course, we found fungi! A winter woodland walk would be so much less delightful without them.  Even if I didn't know what to call it, I still marveled at the beauty of these golden overlapping caps, crowned with snow.  The caps seemed too thin to be Turkey Tail and not wavy enough to be Stereum.

Each golden cap had a cream-colored fertile-surface covered with teeny-tiny circular pores.  That should have been a clue for me, but I confess I'm still stumped!

At least I wasn't stumped by this small stump-full of genuine Turkey Tail fungus (Trametes versicolor), with its distinctive zones of alternating colors and textures.

I confess I have been confused about this next fungus, most likely the Amber Jelly Fungus (Excidia recisa), mistaking it for Wood Ear Fungus (Auricularia sp.), which does look quite similar.  In fact, the two species look so much alike, I may still be mistaken about this ID. There are several articles I can read on Google about how to tell the two apart, but accuracy depends on having the species in hand.  And all I have right now is this photograph.  Very cool looking fungus, whichever one it is. And one that we can depend on finding in winter.

Last fungus, and another one that conspires to confuse us, especially when coated with green algae to mask its normal coloration.  But the distinctive purple coloration of Violet-toothed Polypore (Trichaptum biforme) is also missing this time of year, age having rendered the caps an undistinguishable beige vaguely striped with light brown.   So why am I assuming this fungus is the Violet-toothed Polypore?

I usually depend on the rusty color of Purple-toothed Polypore's fertile surface, as well as the tiny teeth, not pores, that cover it.  Well, that rusty color has remained unchanged, but its tiny teeth sure look different.  Having long ago expelled their spores, the teeth have kind of exploded open, so they form a maze-like jumbled appearance.

At least, I think that's what's happened here.  Sigh!  Winter fungi can be hard!

SNOW!!!

 

Yay!  It snowed!  Finally, some soft fluffy stuff.

But Pooh!  It will soon turn to rain.  Sigh!

I ran outdoors with my camera before breakfast, hoping to prove that we DID get some real snow this winter. It will probably all be turned to mush by this afternoon.

My "three graces" garden nymphs were sporting a tall fluffy topper:

Husband Denis cleared the heated birdbath and pavement where he spreads seeds for the birds.  And I will fill the hanging feeder.  Sadly, since our neighbor cut down all the tall trees that once bordered our yard, we get mostly English Sparrows and Pigeons instead of Cardinals and Chickadees and Downy Woodpeckers.  But sparrows have to eat, too.  And a few Juncos show up now and then. 

More Happiness!

 

Photo by Dana Stimpson

On my last post, I mentioned how happy I am, having such wonderful friends to explore with me the many amazing natural sites that surround us here in the northern regions of New York State.  This week, my friends and I went together again to explore the beautiful Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in nearby Wilton, and that's where Dana Stimpson took the photo of rosy-cheeked me above: the happiest photo I've ever seen of myself.  And one that truly reflects the delight that we were experiencing while enjoying nature together.

That's Dana in the pink hat, leaning down to observe what mosses grew on the banks of the rushing Little Snook Kill, one of two creeks that run through this lovely forested preserve, once the home of the late noted Adirondack botanizer Dr. Orra Phelps, who cherished these woodlands.  It was probably Orra herself who planted the huge Rosebay Rhododendron leaning over the creek, just beyond where our friend Sue Pierce (in buffalo checks) was trying to capture in a video the icy beauty and musical sound of rushing water. Our third dear companion on this cold but gorgeous winter day was Noel Dingman, clad all in green except for her hot-pink mittens.

Before traveling further along the trail, we lingered near the creek and surrounding swale, testing ourselves to see if we could name some of the many mosses, lichens, liverworts and evergreen plants that thrive abundantly here, looking just as lush and lovely as ever, despite winter's freezing cold.

We had to brush some snow from this frilly lime-green liverwort to make sure we were indeed seeing  Handsome Woollywort (Trichocolea tomentella), a plant that's as pretty as its delightful name is amusing. 

This particular swale is home in spring to some of the largest, reddest Skunk Cabbage spathes I have ever found, spathes still hidden within this super-early-bloomer's winter bracts.  Most of the winter bracts were as dark as the surrounding mud, unlike these two pale-green ones, protruding from a mat of bright-green Atrichum moss.

There appears to be more than one kind of moss crowning this lichen-beautified boulder.  Knowing the names of neither the mosses nor the crustose pale-green and speckled lichen did not diminish my delight at this lovely co-habitation.

More crustose lichens, quite likely more than one species, decorated this boulder with a colorful pattern.

We eventually moved along to an upland woods, where each fallen log offered much to fascinate us.

Just one single limb from a fallen tree held this vividly colorful mix of various fungi and lichens:  Black Witch's Butter, Red Tree Brain, and wee little Lemon Drops were the fungi; and the lichens included the bright-yellow Poplar Sunburst and some gray-green Rosette Lichens.  I am not including the scientific names for any of these (their vernacular names are self-evident), because almost all fungi are now called by some other names than those in my mushroom guides. And lichens often require microscopic examination to determine their species.  

Another log held these cream-colored shelf fungi with few distinguishing marks to their caps.  After consulting her iNaturalist app where she shared photos of both caps and porous undersides, Sue suggested this might be the Lumpy Bracket Fungus (Trametes gibbosa).

When I turned one of the cream-colored shelf fungi over to examine its fertile surface,  I was intrigued by what looked like many orange dots, a color pattern I had never observed on a mushroom before.  But my camera's macro lens revealed what my un-aided poor eyesight could not see: dozens of tiny orange larvae happily feeding among the fungus's pores! Anyone know what they are?  A Google search for "tiny orange larvae feeding on fungus" turned up nothing that looked like these.

At least I was sure about which understory tree produced such vividly red twigs in mid-winter.  The opposite branching, large tapering oval buds, and pale bracelets ringing the twig are definite field marks for Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum).  Not every specimen of Striped Maple bears twigs this red in winter, but I often do find thickets of red-twigged ones all growing in the same location.

Of all that enchanted us at Orra Phelps today, this rushing creek and its icy adornments provided us with probably the most delight.  Recent rains had filled the creek to overflowing with rushing whitewater, and freezing nights had turned much of that water into forms of crystalline interest and beauty.

I was intrigued by how these icy forms emerging from the bank resembled in shape and striation the large shelf fungus called Ganoderma.

Where rushing water spread shallowly across plates of shale on the creek bottom, freezing had captured in dark rippling lines the rippling flow of the sheeting water.

This frieze of dangling crystal trumpets was particularly fascinating.  The structure was certainly beautiful, observed from upstream, a rhythmical pattern of glassy ice, glowing with shimmering light.

From behind, this frieze was even more beautiful, animated by how the light changed from bright to dark as the rushing water rose and fell with each rippling wave.  Here, the icy forms glowed with captured light.

And here, some of the bells of the trumpets grew inky black while others continued to glow with a pearly light.  I was completely captivated by this beauty!

No wonder I was so thoroughly enchanted!  Someone had constructed this tiny house for the woodland fairies.  So perhaps the fairies were fluttering near, touching me with their magic wands and causing me to never want to leave.