The Best Laid Plans of Beavers and Man!

I recently learned that the land-trust organization Saratoga PLAN will be celebrating the re-opening of the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail tomorrow, November 3.  A re-opening celebration will take place at 10:30 AM at the newly constructed trailhead parking area on Meadowbrook Road, near the intersection with Stafford's Bridge Road.  This new trailhead will eliminate the need to walk quite a distance along a busy road from the parking area to the previous trailhead, and it follows an old railroad bed through an open marsh, offering scenic vistas as well as great new opportunities to observe birds and other wildlife.

I've been previewing this new trail section on my own for several weeks, so I can personally attest that this is a wonderful addition to an already great trail.  Here are a few of the photos I took of it during the month of October.

It took heaps and heaps of material, many hours of hard labor, and the use of much heavy equipment to construct this section of the trail, especially considering that the resident beaver population made every effort to foil the humans' plans to cross their territory.  Beavers like to increase the depth of their ponds, so they persistently dam off the streams that drain the water from their marsh.  I noticed that the trail workers' efforts to screen culverts off from the beavers would sometimes be foiled overnight.

In several places along the new trail, rising water would flow right across the path, creating the necessity to place drain pipes across these low spots.  I suspect the trail managers will continue to have their work cut out for them, as the best-laid plans of beaver and man come into conflict over this wetland territory.

Here's a photo of where the new part of the trail joins the pre-existing one.  I looked forward to continuing my walk along the old trail, still underlaid with old railroad ties where the wild grasses and wildflowers happily still make their  home.  The crushed-stone paving will be welcomed by bikers, speed-walkers, and baby strollers, but we ambling nature lovers still prefer the lumpy green-grassy trail, even if the uneven old railroad ties tend to trip us from time to time.

Even now, with almost all the blooming wildflowers gone to seed, there are lovely things to see along this part of the trail.  The Panicled Dogwood shrubs have lost all their white berries to the birds by now, but the vibrant red pedicels that held those berries continue to put forth a colorful display.

I was happy to see that some little orchids I found along this stretch of the trail had managed to escape the mowers.  The seed pods of Loessel's Twayblade Orchid are more evident now than were the tiny green flowers that bloomed in June.

As I moved further along this part of the trail, I soon arrived at a place that had been virtually impassable just a week or so before.  At this spot, the rising waters of the marsh had overflowed the trail to a depth that reached up to my shins as I went ahead and sloshed through the muddy water.

But when I revisited the trail a week later,  I discovered that trail workers had laid a boardwalk across the flooded area.

Water still poured over the trail, but the boardwalk made it possible to continue without wading through mud.   Thank you, trail workers, for all your hard work!

This new plank walk led all the way to the existing boardwalk that crosses an open marsh.  Thankfully, the rising water has not flooded this boardwalk, a great place to rest on some benches and watch for birds in the shrubs and waterfowl on the water.

The newly laid planks continued for some  distance beyond the old boardwalk.

I soon reached a part of the trail where the ground was firm beneath my feet, and beautiful mushroom-studded, moss-covered logs decorated the trailside.

These tiny mushrooms have the common name of Fuzzy Foot (suggested by hairs that grow at their base), but their scientific name, Xeromphalina campanella, translates to something like "dry-naveled little bells." They are often found sprouting by the hundreds on rotting logs. This moss, by the way, is a species of Dicranum, also called Broom Moss for its swept-to-one-side appearance.

Many of our mature trees this fall did not display the vibrantly colored foliage we long to see, but the  brilliantly colored sapling oaks along Bog Meadow Trail did not disappoint.

Nor did the bright-red seedling Red Maples that had sprouted up among the pine needles.

Here's a beauty you could look at but not touch!  All sumacs are know for their vivid fall color, and the swamp-dwelling Poison Sumac is certainly no exception.

Especially now that American Beeches are threatened by a widespread disease,  we should bless them while we still have them, if only for the golden glow they reliably produce each fall.

Walking back the way I had come, I was impressed once more by the length of this plank walk, imagining all the effort it took to lay it.  Many thanks again to all the trail workers who have eased my way along one of my favorite trails.

Thanks belong, too, to all the donors who generously contributed to these trail renovations. Here's a link to a Saratoga PLAN site that lists them by name: https://www.saratogaplan.org/events/bog-meadow-trail-reopening/

Fall Foliage and Fungi at Moreau

Seems like it's been a while since we saw the sun.  Rain again today, but just a little, and only off and on.  Remembering my Mom's admonition from many years ago -- "You've got a raincoat.  Go out and play!" -- I donned my Goretex and headed out.  Maybe our autumn color had developed a bit more by now.  Mud Pond at Moreau Lake State Park seemed like a good destination, and to get there I drove over Mt. McGregor and along Spier Falls Road where it runs close to the Hudson River. Here was my first view of the river.  Made me mighty glad I decided to come out today.

When I got to Mud Pond, I was disappointed to see that the foliage on the mountains surrounding the pond was still rather drab, but the sapling Red Maples that line the trail were beautifully colorful.

And the seedling Red Maples were knock-your-eye-out vivid!

I next drove around to enter Moreau Lake State Park by the main entrance,  stopping along the eastern shore of the lake to admire this colorful mountainside reflected in the still water.

I parked my car at the swimming beach and headed over the bridge toward the trail that would take me around the back bay. The Red Maples here were definitely coming into their glory.

I love this wooded trail that divides the main part of the lake from the back bay, especially in autumn, when yellow and ruddy leaves shed a golden light among the dark green pines.

Out on the sandy beach at the north end of Moreau Lake, the Black Huckleberry shrubs have begun their autumn spectacle.  A deep burgundy red now, the leaves should develop their brilliant scarlet color in the weeks to come.

I was glad to see that some Sassafras saplings still held their multicolor leaves.

Can there be any purer yellow than of Striped Maple leaves in autumn?

Standing beneath a low-hanging Red Maple bough, I felt as if I were looking through stained glass.

Is green one of autumn's colors?  Sure it is, when it's the evergreen leaves of Striped Wintergreen.

Heading back to my car, I took the road that runs through the woods, where I found a number of fascinating fungi. This jumbled mass is the fungus called Jelly Leaf (Tremella foliaceae).

I don't know of a common name for these slender greenish miniatures that grow at the base of conifers. The scientific name is Mycena epipterygia var. lignicola.

We have many different look-alike fungi that grow on dead wood, and I had to post this one's photo on a Mushroom ID site before I learned its name is Plicatauropsis crispa, also known as the Crimped Gill Fungus.

If you turn the Crimped Gill Fungus over, you can see how it got that common name.

Here's another fan-shaped, zonally striped fungus that grows on dead wood.  Although it has achieved a brownish color by this late in the season, its name is Violet Tooth (Trichaptum biforme).  When it first develops, it is edged with a distinctly purple tinge, which fades as the fungus matures.

When I turn this Violet Tooth fungus over, I can see the teeth that suggested that part of its common name.

I had to go back to that Mushroom ID site to try to learn the name of these overlapping caramel-colored discs.  The most likely suggestion was Panellus stipticus, or the Luminous Panellus, so called because that species will glow in the dark.  Darn it all!  Now I wish I had brought some home, so I could put it in a closet and see if it glowed with a greenish light.  That would clinch the ID.

This was such a plain mushroom when viewed from above, but look what a beauty it is when viewed from the underside, with those radiating gills.

I'm not sure if this chunky bracket polypore is covered with raindrops (it was raining a bit now), or if it was exuding drops of its own moisture, as some fungi are known to do, especially those of the Fomitopsis genus, which I think this may be.  I just thought it looked quite interesting, protruding from the bark of a tree and dripping with crystal drops, next to some evergreen leaves of Pipsissewa.

These brownish balls are not really a fungus, although organisms like this one are usually included in mushroom guides.  This is instead a slime mold called Wolf's Milk (Lycogala epidendrum).  When fresh, it's colored bubblegum pink, but now it has faded to gray-brown as it ages and prepares to release its spores.

Here's the last fungus I found today, this salmon-pink, rather gelatinous growth I found spreading across a debarked log on the forest floor.  It's called Phlebia tremellosa, with the common name of Wrinkled Crust.  Apparently, according to what I have read, this is a commonly occurring wood-rotting fungus, although I have never come across it before.

This puckered piece of it (about an inch across) displays the wrinkled surface in which the wrinkles radiate outward from a central location. The spores develop on the surface of the wrinkles. The folded-over top edges that are evident in this colony are a distinguishing feature of this species of Phlebia.

I broke off a piece of the folded-over flap to examine it more closely, and I discovered this marvelously interwoven structure.  Once again, I never know what I will find in nature, until I take a look.

Ed Leads the Way!

To celebrate his 94th birthday, Ed leads the way along the forested trails of the Galway Nature Preserve.

Each week, my friends in the Thursday Naturalists choose some woodsy or watery or meadowy place to explore together. And this week, since it was his birthday, Ed Miller got to choose our venue: the Galway Preserve, a forested tract in the western region of Saratoga County. Wherever Ed might have chosen, we would have been happy to come along.  Ed has volumes of botanical information to share with us, and now that he's 94 years old, who knows how many years we have left to delight in his company?

Ed's son Bill (tall man in the red coat) came all the way from California to celebrate Ed's birthday with the rest of his family, and we were honored to have him join us on our walk this frigid morning.  As this photo shows, we came well bundled up against the cold.

It was windy, too, but our trail led us promptly into the woods, where the wind didn't reach us.  We also warmed up as we strode briskly along trails that are well maintained by the land-conservation organization Saratoga PLAN.  The Galway Preserve is one of many nature preserves this organization maintains throughout Saratoga County.

Of the options displayed on the trail map, we chose a loop that took us along the shore of a lovely pond, where benches were placed at several scenic locations.

I can't remember exactly what we were studying here, but I'm sure it was one of many fascinating finds that call us into nature, whatever the time of year.

Maybe it was this Wolf's Milk slime mold, also called Toothpaste Slime.  Although its original bright-pink color had matured to this grayish brown, when we crushed one ball, we found it still filled with the pink pasty substance that earned it the "toothpaste" name. Like most slime molds, this specimen was not the least bit slimy.

It's also possible we were peering closely at a clump of Pink Earth Lichen, with tiny bubblegum-pink "lollipops" the size of a head of a pin.

Most of the fall fungi had faded by now, but this abundant clump of velvety, mink-brown Turkey Tail was still as lovely as ever.

The sight of this Paper Birch peering at us through some single-lensed sunglasses caused us to halt our steps and share a laugh.

We also did a double-take at the sight of this tree-trunk patterned like some enormous tropical python!  I later learned that this pattern was created by a fungus called Giraffe Spot (Peniophora albobodia).

Although the foliage colors were not as brilliant as we might have hoped, this scattering of Lemon Drop "fairy cups" on the end of a log was bright enough to capture our attention.

The evergreen leaves and bright shiny fruits of Partridgeberry are as colorful as ever, whatever the season.

All in all,  a most pleasant walk through a beautiful wooded landscape with delightful companions.  Here, our friend Sigrin relaxes on one of the several benches positioned along the trail, enjoying the warmth of the sun as well as the serene beauty of the woodland pond.  We then enjoyed a picnic, all together, seated at a rustic table surrounding a huge old Black Walnut tree and happy to share this special day with our dear friend Ed.  I wish I had taken a photo of our friendly group, but my fingers were too sticky with birthday-cake frosting to operate my camera.  Happy Birthday, Ed, and best wishes for wandering many more trails together.