The fern, watered

The fern I watered the other evening already looks better. I feel rather strange picking one plant out of the entire withering forest to water, but I’m trying to ignore myself about that. My instinct was simply to water the fern because it’s a wild fern I’ve enjoyed seeing for years, and I’m not going to let my intellect question why I’m ignoring the other plants in favor of this one. I favor that fern, so I watered it.

It’s a bit like life, isn’t it?   You can’t fix everything or help everyone, so you have to fix or help the one thing you can do something about.  I can’t water the forest. I can’t make it rain, but I can water that fern. So I did.  Let me try and not make it any more complicated than that.

Is it this drought, I wonder, that has the deer so close and so unwary around the cabin?  The other morning, the big doe stood not more than 25-30 feet away and watched as I fed the chickens.  She didn’t even twitch her tail.  She is a big girl, huge even, clearly the leader of the little group of a spring fawn and two small buck that travel with her. She may well be the largest doe I have ever seen, dwarfing the two four-points that are probably only yearlings. I hope she survives the upcoming deer season.  She is wise compared to the younger deer around her and knows what food can be found and where during this dry period. The other deer all take their cues from her. She calmly feeds nearby, so they are willing to feed just outside the door of the cabin as well, if not so calmly. I'd love to know how old she is. How many years does it take for a deer to become the wise one in her group?  Two?  Four?  Do many of them live any longer than that?  She seems healthy and vital, not an old one that might not survive the upcoming winter.  I will never know the answers, of course. So I just watch her and try to learn a few of her secrets.

Winter finch forecast - not good

My winter bird feeders are up again after a respite during the summer. The bird seed molds so quickly then, and the local birds are more inclined to find their own goodies without any help from me. So far, and not surprisingly, the feeders are thus far getting little action. One of the local chickadees stops by regularly, and the ubiquitous white-breasted nuthatch was the first to investigate the new food source. Nuthatches are nearly always the first bird to try the feeders when I first put them up again.

Even with the dry weather, food is still plentiful around the forest, so I don’t expect much activity at my feeders until after the first killing frost. That always spurs the local avian residents to appear on my back deck and investigate the new food source.

The winter finch forecast for this upcoming winter sounds pretty dismal, so I am not expecting to have any at my feeders. The finch forecast comes courtesy of Ron Pittaway, who’s been forecasting the arrival or not of northern finches for some years now. You can read his full report here: http://www.jeaniron.ca/2013/forecast.htm

The 2013-14 finch forecast shows that this is not an irruption year and that Ontario’s cone crops are in good supply. It’s only when that cone crop is poor to non-existent that large numbers of pine grosbeak, purple finch, crossbills, redpolls and the like head south in search of food. The only exception to the good crop comes from white pines. However, the crop in the Adirondacks is excellent this year so whatever finches do head south may well not go any further than there. And no movement of red-breasted nuthatches is expected this year.

So my feeding will likely be limited to the local birds, unless something from the north unexpectedly heads south. I’m not going to count on that, though. Perhaps this will be a good year for me to concentrate on finding a few unusual sparrows at Roundtop. I would be happy with that.

Odds and ends

Dry is the operative work here on the mountain right now. A Christmas fern that has lived for years in the crack of a boulder near the cabin is drying and turning brown. Now, even the leaves on mid-sized trees are drying up. I think the word for the autumn leaf change here will be “brown” this year. I’m not expecting pretty reds or yellows anymore.


I watered the fern in the boulder this morning, which seems a tad ridiculous, even to me. All the plants on the forest floor are withering, and I water a fern in a boulder, which has held on to life despite little soil for it. But I like that fern and would hate to see it disappear, so I watered it. I don’t know if it will do any good. It may well be a matter of too little, too late.

Acorns are dropping all around my cabin, sometimes on my cabin, which makes a heck of a racket, frequently causing Baby Dog to bark at the perceived intruder.. I think it is those acorns that keep the deer so close to the cabin. I scare one or the other of them almost every time I set foot outside. And if I go back inside even momentarily, the deer are back where they were when I scared them the first time. They don’t seem to mind being startled multiple times a day. Sometimes they don’t even move away at all. I wonder if that will change when deer season starts.

This year I’m finding lots of yellow wooly bear caterpillars. The particular species I’ve been seeing is probably a sycamore tussock moth. It can only be told from the banded tussock moth by dissection, though the range of the banded tussock moth seems too much a southern species to be found at my cabin, even in these days of climate change. Since I’m not planning to dissect any of these, let’s just call them tussock moths of some species. They are far prettier as caterpillars than as moths, anyway.

Deer at sunrise

Sunrise September 26 ,2013

Can I let a month go by without posting a photo of a nice sunrise? Why would I even want to let that happen? Here, we are right at the end one month and nearly on the heels of the next, so if I’m going to post a nice sunrise photo, it had better be today.

The three deer that live around the cabin grow ever less wary. I might scare them off when I walk into the drive after a walk with Baby Dog, but once I put her inside and then go out to feed the chickens, there they are again. Last night a large doe “tip-toed” across the driveway behind me. I only saw her when I just happened to turn around. She wasn’t in any hurry.

This morning the same doe and her now-spotless fawn were munching grass in my neighbor’s boulder-sized yard. Sometimes I see them by his boat or his grill. Sometimes they are by my back steps. They are sneaky and apparently don’t mind at all being within hearing distance of televisions, outdoor cellphone conversations or me working around the cabin. They are happing to ignore me as long as I pretend not to notice them. They don’t much like being looked at. Perhaps they will grow more wary when the forest’s summer vegetation is completely gone. For now, they are almost underfoot.

Losing daylight

E. Ridge Rd., Monaghan Township, York County PA

Even on a perfectly clear morning, as this one is, the later sunrise keeps me from taking photos in the forest.  When I leave the mountain in the mornings, sunlight still hasn’t penetrated down to the ground, though the tops of the tallest trees are still bathed in morning’s light.  So I will have to begin taking evening photos again, in order to take photos in the forest now.

Remembering to do that always takes me some time.  I’ve gotten used to taking morning photos, and I prefer doing that.   A morning photo means the daily writing topic for Roundtop Ruminations  and the day’s photo may have some relation to each other. With an evening photo, that’s less likely.    And this switch from morning to evening photos is a sign that it won’t be long before all my blog photos will need to be taken on the weekends, as it will be dark when I leave the cabin and dark when I return to the cabin during the week.  Those are not my favorite times.  Fortunately, those days are still weeks away.

Early signs of fall

Tulip poplar leaf

On this early day of fall, the season already feels well-started.  Here on Roundtop, the deer are wearing their brown winter coats. The fawns have lost or are losing their spots.  The summer songbirds are gone, and the local residents are noisy again now that the breeding season is over. The mornings are crisp but the afternoons are warm enough to roll up my long sleeves as I putter around the cabin.

The forest's summer understory is withering and and disappearing onto the ground. it is not yet cold enough, not the days short enough, for the big trees of the forest to turn color, but the drying of leaves on the smaller trees continues.  At the moment, the trees most affect are the smaller tulip poplars, a softwood.  The big tulip poplars are as green as ever. August and September so far have been cooler than normal here and also drier, if not by an enormous amount.  I have occasionally before this year seen early yellowing on leaves.  Typically, that has occurred when August is both hot and dry, so I am surprised to see it happen during a cool and dry season. To my eye and memory, the level of this year's drying leaves is extreme.  At the moment, precipitation is not quite 4.5 inches below normal, a goodly, if not extreme amount.

I am thinking that the lessened amount of snowfall last winter and the drier than average spring did more damage to the smaller trees than could be made up by a rainy June. perhaps these smaller and less robust trees were made even less robust by the wet weather of 2012.  And while 2012 was only about 4 inches above normal in my area, 2011 was a record-setting wet year, nearly double the normal precipitation.  So now in a dry year, these trees aren't perhaps as hardy as they might have been if rainfall had been "normal" over their growing lives.

It is well known that a warm, dry summer followed by a rainy autumn produces the best fall colors. We've had the dry part, and the summer was warm, though not hot. Now, if only the rainy autumn would appear, perhaps this would be a good year for fall colors. That is something to look forward to and hope for.

Not Just Hawks at Waggoner's Gap

Hawkwatchers are not just hawk geeks.  We tend to be nature geeks as well.  If the hawks aren’t flying, we’ll look at any other birds that are around the hawkwatch.  Most hawkwatchers are good birders, too.  If the birds aren’t flying, we’ll look at animals or plants or clouds.  Even on days with good flights of hawks, there are times when none are in the air.

The past few days at Waggoner’s Gap hawkwatch had a nice selection of animals to look out.  I was a bit disappointed that Fred the Copperhead didn’t make an appearance, but I guess you can’t have everything.

One of the highlights was a Waggoner’s first, at least so far as any one there knew or could remember.  A young red squirrel ran up the owl pole, stuck its head in the bottom of the decoy and then ambled down the pole, nearly running over someone’s feet and hanging out on a rock for a minute or two.  The owl decoy is used to attract Sharp-shinned Hawks closer to the ridge. They are feisty little things and sometimes just have to swoop at the owl decoy, to the delight of all.

Other but more frequent visitors are the chipmunks.  They are lured by one of the regular hawkwatchers who brings chestnuts or peanuts or something that chipmunks like and places the food on one of the few flat rocks on the outcropping.  The chipmunks scamper through the rocks, used to people, chasing each other and filling up their cheeks until they look as though they have mumps.

Another visitor wasn’t a mammal, but was worth looking at, too. It is an eastern fence lizard, and it came out to sun itself for a while. I’m told three species of lizards are seen on the mountain, but this is the only one of those I’ve ever seen.

There’s always something to look at on a hawkwatch.  It’s not always the hawks.

More Hawkwatching

Juvenile Bald Eagle, showing the typical white axilaries of the young bird

Vacation is over and so is my extended hawkwatching.  Now, I’ll have to be content with hawkwatching on Sundays and hoping the weather cooperates. (The weather won’t cooperate this Sunday, I’m afraid).  The hawkwatching over the past five days was excellent, even though Waggoner’s Gap didn’t get a big Broad-winged Hawk flight (Yet.  Friday could still be outstanding) .  I still saw several thousand Broad-winged Hawks, but the big flight this year was seen at Mt. Wachusetts in MA and at Militia Hill, near Valley Forge PA, where they recorded over 18,500 on September 14.

Adult Bald Eagle

Don’t think I’m complaining, as I’m not.  Typically, Waggoner’s Gap isn’t a premiere Broadwing spot.  Eagles are the main attraction, though it’s still too early for Golden Eagles. So I saw Bald Eagles on this trip, probably about 40 of them over five days, with one day of 15. I also saw at least one of every raptor species that flies at this time of year.  That means I saw a nice young Peregrine Falcon, a couple of Merlins, a few American Kestrels, Sharp-shinned Hawks, Cooper’s Hawks, a few Red-shouldered Hawks, Ospreys and a few Northern Harriers.  Some non-raptors also appeared, including Ravens, another favorite of mine. We also saw a red-eyed vireo still feeding two of this year’s young. It seems awfully late for that, but there it was.

In another month or so the mix of species will change and eventually the Northern Goshawks, Golden Eagles, perhaps the Rough-legged Hawks will be in evidence.  Golden Eagles fly in large numbers, sometimes more than 100 in a season.  Catching the goshawks or the roughies is less certain, especially recently. 

Sharp-shinned Hawk

I got to renew acquaintances with hawkwatching friends and actually got to meet one person I’d only ever emailed before, though we’ve been emailing for some years.  That was neat.  The weather cooperated, if you don’t count the morning it was so cold and windy on those exposed rocks that we all wore long underwear and layers of jackets. I was just glad I had a pair of gloves in my car that I hadn’t put away after last winter.  Waggoner’s Gap is high and exposed to the wind for 50 miles in just about any direction.  Weather down in the valley bears little resemblance to what you might experience on those rocks.  It’s always best to be prepared with both sunscreen and a heavy jacket.   Often, you need both at the same time. 

What a difference a day makes

Waggoner's Gap Hawkwatch - view to the north

Waggoner's Gap Hawkwatch - view to the south, taken a day after the first photo

I've gone hawkwatching both yesterday and today (Sunday).  Saturday morning was spectacular, with 500 hawks, mostly Broad-winged Hawks by noon.  We also had 15 Bald Eagles by noontime.  Then the flight pretty much died for the rest of the day.

Today was nearly a repeat of yesterday afternoon, but with more Cooper's Hawks, a few very far out and distant Bald Eagles and several Broad-winged Hawks.  That's the way of hawkwatching--feast or famine, sometimes all in the same hour.

Monday?  It's anyone's guess, but I'm expecting a decent day.

Summer and fall

At first glance, this photo doesn’t look all that unusual, but I think it is.  First off, notice the green forest surrounding the woods road. And then look at the woods road itself. Those are fresh, yellowed and dead leaves on the road.  So the road looks like fall while the trees are still green. That’s the unusual part.

The downed leaves fell during yesterday’s rather violent thunderstorm.  The leaves from the orange tree I posted earlier this week are among those on the ground. The trees whose leaves were prematurely drying or changing color are now closer to being bare than leafed out. Even in this photo you can see some color on the trees near the center of the photo. And those aren't on little trees.

I have seen similar results before in September.  In those years, a very dry and very hot August caused a lot of the smaller trees to drop their leaves early.  This year August was drier than average but quite a bit cooler than usual.  My area is several inches below normal in rainfall, but it’s not any worse than I’ve seen before and quite a bit better than in the worst years.

So I’m wondering if this early September leaf drop is due to something else, though I don’t know what that is.  Certainly the tinier plants are the forest floor are shriveling up, and I know it’s simply time for these mostly annual plants to finish their life cycles.  Leaves on vines are also rolling up and will soon shrivel, despite the quarter inch of rain I got yesterday.

I have investigated, at least a little bit, the species of trees that are shedding their leaves to see if I can find a pattern there.  Beech trees are fairly prevalent among these and also wild cherry.  The larger trees, like the oaks, tulip poplars and hickories, don’t seem much represented. So my best guess at this time is that the lack of rainfall in the past three weeks has unduly stressed these smaller, softwood trees and caused them to drop their leaves early.  I may well be wrong, of course, so I will keep investigating.

Not my day

This is definitely not my day. It started when the trash receptacles were gone.  So here I am at 6 a.m. left with a week’s worth of garbage and no place to put them on the hottest day in two months.

The day continued when I was leaving the cabin this morning and discovered a nice 4-point buck just a few feet away.  And the auto focus on my camera focused on the vegetation in from of the buck instead of on the deer itself. At this point the deer was staring nicely at me and that would have made a great shot.  But as you can see by this morning’s photo, the standing and looking part didn’t last, and the focusing part was never fully resolved either.

And then I drove away from the cabin, located a nice American Kestrel atop a light pole in clear view, but by the time I stopped the car, rolled down the window and picked up my camera, Mrs. Nice Kestrel flew away.

And then I managed to find a small flock of Cedar Waxwings, but the light was so poor and the birds were hiding atop the leaves on the trees that I didn’t get a usable shot of them either.

Are you starting to see the trend here?

And now I find that my work computer is giving up the ghost, but that I won’t be getting a replacement right away. I don't know what "not right away" means, but that doesn't sound very good either, does it?

Maybe I should just go home and take a nap. That seems as though it should be safe enough.

A pretense of summer amidst hints of fall

 

Summer is attempting to make a brief reappearance here on Roundtop mountain. And for two days the season will succeed, boosting temperatures to near-90.  This brief moment of summer heat isn’t fooling anyone or anything, though.  Broad-winged Hawks have started to fly south by the hundreds.  Warblers are moving, too, and a few trees are even turning color.

Broad-winged Hawk

It’s true that most of the trees that are turning appear to be younger ones. Perhaps they are damaged or diseased in some way that’s not immediately visible.  Perhaps their root systems are feeling the effects of a few weeks without any rainfall. But whatever the cause, the leaves are turning yellow or orange, and as a result the forest is starting to show the shades of the impending autumn season.

I love fall, so I am happy to see the change.  I’m also happy because the color is a change from the unending greens of spring and summer.  Now that most of the summer wildflowers are past their prime, I can enjoy the variation of color on a grander scale than the tiny wildflowers offer.

I admit it was something of a shock to see the colors this weekend.  My morning walks with Baby Dog are accomplished completely in the dark, now.  And my evenings have been spent hurrying to finish one project or another at the cabin, so it wasn’t until this past weekend that I really noticed the yellowing trees.

A day spent hawkwatching

View to the north from Waggoner's Gap hawkwatch

Hawkwatching season is starting to move into prime time now, which means I will be spending as much time as I can on a hawkwatch. I usually go to Waggoner’s Gap, near Carlisle, PA, because it’s fairly close for me. It’s also a very good site, especially later in the fall for both Bald and Golden Eagles.

So on Sunday I found myself atop the mountain with Baby Dog and various other hawkwatchers looking for hawks. We had a very nice day, not as wonderful as the day before when I wasn’t there, but very nice even so.  I saw Bald Eagles, Ospreys, Broad-winged Hawks, Sharp-shinned Hawks, a Cooper’s Hawk, Black and Turkey Vultures, Ravens, Cedar Waxwings and hundreds or thousands of Chimney Swifts, just to name a few of the species.

Several Monarch butterflies were also seen, though no where near as many as is typical. That seems to be the case in many areas of the country, which are also reporting them in drastically reduced numbers. Three of the eagles we saw were interesting. All three migrated past within a minute of each other. All were on the same flight path and all were juvenile eagles, making us wonder if they were siblings.

This was Baby Dog’s first trip to a hawkwatch and may well be her last. Most of the time she was well-behaved and slept through much of the day.  However, she barked whenever anyone walked up the trail to the site, letting everyone know that “something” was coming.  She didn’t bark when they left.  And, if someone went to visit the port-a-potty a ways down the trail, she barked when they returned.  Maybe hawkwatching just isn’t for her.

Summer waning

This morning it was dark enough for me during my morning walk to see the constellation Orion in the morning sky.  High overhead, the constellation is a giant one, trailed by the Dog Star, Sirius. We think of Orion as a fall constellation, perhaps remembering the words of Robert Frost in his poem, The Star-Splitter, when he writes about it coming up sideways and “thowing a leg up over our fence of mountains.”

While it is true that Orion can first be seen in the evenings in the fall, it makes its first appearance in a while in the early mornings. And if I’d get up in the middle of the night, I could have seen it weeks ago.  Orion is really almost a circumpolar constellation.  It vanishes into the sunset about May and is invisible during July and July.   It’s up above the horizon still but hidden by the sun. It’s sometime in August when it coincides with night times, and it becomes visible again.  

To me it’s like meeting up with an old friend again.  It’s a sure sign summer is on the wane.  Now it’s time to think about preparing for the colder seasons—getting the fireplace checked, clearing off the decks, getting the air conditioner out of the window.   Fall comes with a whole new set of chores, though I mind those less than the summer ones, primarily, I suspect, because it’s cool enough to accomplish them.  I try to appreciate summer, and I’m better at it than I was, but it will never be a favorite season.    

This and that

Most of the thistles around Roundtop still look like my first photo for today, but a few are already done.  Those sport dry seed pods and dry leaves, finishing their season earlier than most of the other seasonal plants.  Gardeners hate this plant, of course, and it is an invasive species, as are so many in this country.  I have a tough time hating it, partly because I think the flowers are pretty and partly because American goldfinch love it so much.  Of course, I don’t have a yard or a garden where it encroaches.

Canada thistle, as you might not guess, is really a native of Europe.  It spreads both by seeds and through an extensive root system. I read recently that it doesn’t do well in higher temperatures or where the soil is rich.  Perhaps climate change will eventually reduce its range.

With the cooler, clearer nights, Baby Dog and I, well, mostly me though she enjoys coming along, have been star gazing this week.  Now is a good time, with no moon to dim the night.  Last night Cygnus the swan flew right through the middle of the Milky Way, a beautiful sight.

Although I know most of the constellations, I don’t always know the stars that are in them.  Recently, I found a free app called Sky Guide that I use when I am out.  I just point my phone in the direction of the star or stars I want to know about and the guide shows me the same view, but with captions attached to both stars and constellations. It moves around when I do and is pegged to an individual’s location and the time of year, so each user sees only what is pertinent to them. Pretty cool.

Cooler days, darker mornings

Nell's Hill, 7:30 a.m., September 4 ,2013

The mornings are now so dark when Baby Dog and I take our walk that I no longer hear any birds, not even crows or the early-rising pewees.  Instead, we hear crickets and still a few cicadas.  I need my headlamp nearly every step of the way, especially on a moonless morning.  The eastern sky no longer holds any shade of yellow or orange, though I can see only the brighter stars.

The air feels like fall, now that the humidity has been chased out by this past weekend’s storms.  Some of the annual plants on the forest floor are yellowing, but the changes are not yet very far along. This morning I decided to take a photo of the mountain to my west, Nell’s Hill.  The trees aren’t yet touched by fall colors, so now seemed a good time to show what it looks like before the color change progresses.  I took the photo before the sun was well up, when the light hadn’t yet reached the base of the mountain.

This weekend I will likely take my air conditioner out of the kitchen window and store it until next year.  The weather forecast shows cooler temperatures through the next 10 days, and by then it’s unlikely the temperature will rise into the 90 degree range again. Summer’s strength is certainly broken, and fall is on its way.  As summers go, this one held only a few weeks of truly unbearable weather, and that was in July. August 2013 was actually one of the cooler on record, the kind I only see once every decade or so.

With the mornings dark again, my morning birdwatching has come to an end, at least on work days. I’ll have to be content with checking only in the evenings and on weekends. That’s a lot hard to get used to than the cooler temperatures!    

Spied on

One red sassafras leaf

Chimney swifts by the hundreds are migrating past Roundtop Mtn. right now.  I saw too many to count, especially given how they flit back and forth, high and low.  Swifts are even more acrobatic than swallows, and during migration at least, they move in larger groups.  The weather this past weekend was not conducive to much migration. Thunderstorm after thunderstorm rolled through, often several a day, each making the temperature hotter and the humidity higher—until the weekend was over, of course.

Today is the kind of day when lots of birds will migrate. Higher pressure, a tailwind from the northwest, cooler air.  Today would be a good day to be on a hawkwatch, and not only to watch hawks. Lots of species will move today.

Even as poor as the weather was, I had several good sightings when I could be outdoors. The first was an adult Bald Eagle, not migrating, as it was headed north on Sunday morning.  Bald Eagles are fairly common these days, especially along the Susquehanna River, but here on the mountain I can easily go several weeks without seeing one.  The second sighting was better. I was sitting outside in my driveway, keeping an eye on my free-ranging chickens after the Cooper’s Hawk scare of last week.  That’s when I spied a bit of flitting yellow in a tree above me. Even when I’m just watching the chickens, I take my binoculars with me.  But even with my binoculars it took a while to see enough of this bird so that I could identify it. I had a yellow-throated vireo, one of those birds I see rarely and then only in migration. After watching it for a minute or so, it finally appeared on a bare twig long enough for me to tell what it was.

The local deer have been out and about frequently this weekend, too.  I was taking this photo of a red sassafras leaf, the only red leaf in the sea of green. When I was done I turned around and found a doe watching me take photos.  She seemed more curious in what I was doing than scared. A day later, I found three deer in my driveway, one a fawn.  I was feeding the chickens and when I finished and turned to go into the cabin, I found the deer at the end of my driveway, completely unimpressed by encountering me.  Naturally, when I’m feeding the chickens, I don’t carry my good camera with me, though I did have the camera on my phone, so I used that.  It makes them seem further away than they really were.

Spying on me

Day hawk encounter

Spa day for the girls, a dust bath

Although I’ve been looking unsuccessfully for nighthawks, I did have an encounter with a “day hawk” last evening.

I’ve been letting the chickens out in the evenings when I get home. After issues with raccoons, fox and opossums, I no longer feel it is safe for them to roam free when I’m not at home.  They were not happy with this new directive, so we compromised. I let them out when I get home, and since they can’t tell time, they don’t seem to mind that their roaming is only limited to an hour or so each evening.

Last night they’d only been out about 30 minutes when I heard Doodle, my Rhode Island Red rooster, give his alarm call.  Now Doodle is a vigilant rooster. He keeps a wary eye on anything that might be trouble for his girls. To him, this can mean the neighbor’s cat is crossing the forest, anxious to get back home to dinner, or it might be a very high and distant turkey vulture that’s passing not very near by. But this alarm call sounded a bit different, so I went out to investigate.

Doodle was standing in the middle of the driveway, all puffed up, looking as large as he could.  Since he is a Rhode Island Red, this is pretty impressive.  He stands almost knee-high, with large spurs and lots of feathers. The girls were all scurrying to hide under the nearest bush.  At first I didn’t see any cause for all this alarm, but then I heard a sound—kek-kek-kek-kek—coming from an oak tree not very far from the edge of the cabin.  A Cooper’s Hawk.

It didn’t take very long before my presence made the hawk nervous.  It left its tree, glided past the house through the forest and disappeared.  I was left to be impressed by my chickens.  After all those years of domestication and being hatched at a hatchery somewhere, growing up with only me as their mother, their instincts are still well-honed.  Isn’t that a beautiful thing?  They are still birds who know what an alarm by their rooster means and know the difference between the near-innocuous alarm raised by the sight of a distant turkey vulture and the danger posed by a nearby Cooper’s Hawk.  The girls rock!

Gloom but no doom

E. Ridge Rd. Monaghan Township, York County PA

Thick fog and overcast skies made my morning walk with Baby Dog as dark and as quiet as midnight.  Not even an owl called, let alone one of the earlier-rising day birds.  Baby Dog stays close by my side and doesn’t stop to sniff anything.   I think she misses the activity of daylight on our walks, too.

I actually find these next two months or so the darkest time of the year for our walks.  Once the leaves begin to fall, the sky overhead becomes visible and that opened-up vista makes walking at night much easier, even when no moon lights the sky.  At the moment, the leaves serve as an impenetrable barrier to light from above.  And so we walk more cautiously now.

The headlamp lights the way but doesn’t help much with navigating the little ups and downs of a dirt road.  The depth of potholes or even uneven ground is hard to judge or to see. It takes some getting used to for me, accustomed as I have been for these last 4-5 months for walking in the morning light.  I have reached the time of year when our morning walks no longer venture off the dirt roads.  Early in the summer we wandered off-road and even off-trail. No longer. The footing on the dirt roads is chancy enough.

The gloomy weather is also slowing or even halting migration this week.  Counters sit on hawkwatches all day long and don’t see more than a handful of birds. I’ve been searching diligently for nighthawks to no avail. Either they aren’t flying or they are flying above the gloom.  I will keep looking. They are a cool bird, these odd little nightjars.  Tonight doesn’t seem as though it will be much better, but I still will look. Perhaps it will clear enough or perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to see them.

Green and gray

It’s warm and overcast today, threatening rain but I’d be hard put to report more than 6-8 drops on anything so far. For a while I thought I’d be forced into a rain jacket on my morning walk with Baby Dog.  I say forced because it was warm enough this morning that even the backpacking shell I use as a rain jacket made me as though I was in a sauna.  I decided that I was better off getting wet than wearing even that feather-weight thing, but I didn’t get wet after all.

Still, rain is falling all around my area but somehow missing Roundtop.  Instead, the humidity is cloying. Rain would likely reduce the humidity.  For August, the landscape around me looks remarkably green. Usually by this time of the year, the grass is withering and the annual wild plants are looking pretty ragged.  This year enough rain has already fallen that the fields and woods retain that deep green shade of midsummer.  If not for the sudden lack of swallows and the shortening length of the days, I would guess it was July.

On clear evenings, now that darkness comes early, Baby Dog and I have been heading up into one of Roundtop’s parking lots to view the night sky.  I am an early riser and so head early to bed as well, and in the prime of summer, by the time the sky is dark enough for good star viewing, I am yawning and ready for bed.  Now, darkness comes early enough that I can enjoy the star viewing and be warm at the same time. Winter brings me plenty of opportunities for star viewing, but the early darkness also brings falling temperatures that can get uncomfortable quickly.  Now and for the next few months, I have both early darkness and balmy temperatures and that makes a good combination for star viewing.

Sometimes I take my spotting scope or binoculars, but mostly we just stand and look.  I never see too much that’s very exciting—a brief flash of a meteor is about as exciting as it gets.  Instead, I watch planes pass, look for the Milky Way on the clearest nights, look for a planet or two, watch the moon rise or set and just generally enjoy the quiet and sky above me. It’s always a beautiful show.

Charms of the season

The eastern sky no longer glows orange, even on a clear morning as this one was, when I take Baby Dog for her first walk of the day.  I need my headlamp, even when I’m not under the cover of the forest, for at least the first 15-20 minutes of our morning forays.  The buck and doe that we saw each morning are now little more than two pairs of golden eyes reflecting in my light.  Half the time Baby Dog doesn’t even notice them, especially not this morning when the breeze wasn’t favorable for a scent.

We see few birds on our morning walks now.  I still hear a few—crows, of course, and often jays. Surprisingly to me, bluebirds are another early riser. I don’t see them, but I hear their soft calls as we pass the ski slopes, one of their favorite haunts.  Occasionally, I still see an eastern kingbird near the end of our walks, but the noisy chorus of early May has fallen into near-silence now.

Earth’s seasons are long enough that the changes coming with the latest one always seem a bit of a surprise to me.  I know the mornings are quieter in fall than in spring, but the newly quiet mornings still feel unusual and a bit of a shock to me.  That bit of surprise nature brings me with each season’s change is one of my favorite things about the year.  One season stays around long enough for me to get used to it, and then the next one’s charms seem fresh and again.  I might not feel that if seasons only lasted for a month, and it would be quite a shock, I think, if seasons lasted a year.  Instead, a season’s length seems just about the right length, long enough to enjoy one and short enough not to feel panic at the onset of the next.

Sunset over a beautiful weekend

The barn swallows have left the mountain.  I found two on Saturday and none on Sunday.  Last Saturday a group of nearly 30 perched on the wires near a snowmaking pond.  This week, I had to look to find even the two I did see.  The turn towards fall takes another step forward.

I’m finding that the hours of daylight just don’t cooperate with human activity.  Most summer evenings are too hot or too buggy to fully enjoy sitting outside.  But sometimes, the weather cooperated and I could work outside around the cabin, and when I was done I could sit and enjoy the long evenings. Now, the bugs and the heat are mostly gone, but by the time my outside work is done, it is dark outside.  It is, apparently, too much to ask to have evenings long enough to complete outside work and then time enough, sans bugs and heat, to sit outside afterwards into the evening. I guess I’ll just have to learn to deal with that.

I’m also noticing more goldfinches and fewer chipping sparrows, another sign of late summer, if not yet quite of fall. Robins are few and far between at the moment. Some, I suspect, are already moving south, and the northerly robins haven’t yet arrived.  Hawkwatches in the area are already starting to count migrating hawks. The numbers are still rather small, but the birds are moving out of the north.

This August is shaping up to be one of the coolest ever in the local area. Augusts this cool are not unheard of, but they only occur about once a decade or perhaps a bit less. I could get used to having a cool August more frequently, that’s for sure!

Today’s sunset photo was taken last evening and made for a beautiful show.

Morning sights and delights

The time when Baby Dog and I take our morning walk grows ever darker.  On mornings like this one, only an hour past an early morning thundershower, the overcast sky further glooms the morning.  The night creatures stretch their forays later into the day.  A screech owl calls as we leave the cabin.  Later, we see six deer, two of which were the ubiquitous buck and doe we see virtually every morning.  A less seen resident also appeared on our walk this morning, a red fox.

It was still too dark for me to tell much about the fox, other than that it was a fox.  Even that I knew only by its size and eventually by its black-tipped tail as it turned and sped away from us.  I couldn’t tell how healthy it was or how its coat looked.  Was it fat or thin?  Mangy or healthy?  I couldn’t tell. It seemed of good size, which is about as much as I can say.

Baby Dog saw the fox, too, much to her delight.  She is much intrigued by foxes.  When she was still quite young we once spied a fox in daylight. It stood stock still. She looked at it. It looked at her. This went on for some seconds before the fox disappeared. For a good two years afterwards, Baby Dog stopped in the exact spot every morning where she had first seen the fox and gazed up to where it had stood.  Who knew a dog could have a memory like an elephant? So she knew right away this morning’s sight was a fox, and after it disappeared, I let her trail it for a bit, finding it had scurried underneath the paintball mesh and crossed a paintball field to disappear into the woods. We didn’t go further than that, to her disappointment.

Our way led down a different path.  My day was just beginning, and the fox's was already ending.

Summer is winding down

Blue moon over Nell's Hill, 6:15 a.m. 

I’m having a “normal” day here atop Roundtop Mtn.  Normal means Baby Dog and I scared the same buck and doe from earlier in the week. This time they weren’t at the paintball fields but over on the abandoned ski slope.  Poor deer probably think they can’t go anywhere without running into the two of us.

We don’t usually walk that way in the mornings, but I wanted to see the setting full moon, so this morning that is where we walked.  The deer were not amused. I took today’s photo with my phone because:

Good camera  + Baby Dog = Does Not Mix

Signs that summer is winding down are suddenly everywhere.  The barn swallows congregate in big numbers on the wires over the snowmaking pond. Congregating is what they do as they get ready to move south.  I haven’t seen this many at once all summer.  They will be gone shortly, within the week if they hold true to their pattern. Oh, I will likely see a few beyond that time, but those, I believe, are not my resident barn swallows but those heading south from further north. The ones from here tend to leave around August 26 or 27.

They are perhaps the earliest of the summer residents to leave the mountain. Certainly, they are the earliest of the most visible summer residents to head south.  In the early spring I often see tree swallows and sometimes rough-winged swallows. But those don’t stay and move on within a few days.  Rough-winged swallows sometimes do stay, though none seem to have done so this year.

Swallows are fast and not easy to see in binoculars, so identifying the others species can be difficult if the light is less than perfect. Male barn swallows have a nice long tail that makes them easy to identify.  Tree swallows are quite white underneath, making them the second-easiest to identify.  Rough-winged swallows?  Well, if they are sitting, they are easy enough to identify.  Swallows don’t sit very often and seem to do that most often at dusk or when I’m blinded by the glare of the rising sun.  On the rare occasions when that doesn’t happen, I still have more barn swallows than any others.

Soon enough, I won’t have them at all until next April.  Summer is winding down.

Waiting for the piper

Summer is now two-thirds over, though most in the U.S. probably equate the end of summer with the Labor Day holiday and kids’ return to school.  I tend to view the Labor Day holiday as the end of summer, too, mostly in the hope that it really does mean summer is over.  I am not a fan of hot weather, which means I don’t much care for summer, my least favorite season of the year.  So I am always glad to see it go.  It’s just that it doesn’t always go when I’d like it to.

August 2013 is going to be one of the cooler ones on record in my area, despite the upcoming days in the upper 80’s.  So as Augusts go, I am not finding much to complain about this year.  I just know, however, that I will pay for this nice August weather.  And that will probably mean payment will come due in September or even October.  In central Pennsylvania, one warm or cool month is very often followed by one that’s just the opposite.  So I am already anticipating a fall month with warm to hot weather.  And that I am not looking forward to.

I should, of course, leave well enough alone and simply enjoy a cool August, but I can’t. It’s like having this little storm cloud over my head that constantly drones, “you will pay, you will pay.” Part of it is simply that I love fall and fall weather, so I don’t want it to be a moment shorter than it should be.  Partly, it’s because it’s not much fun sitting on the rocks of a hawkwatch when it’s sweltering.  All things considered, I’d rather have a normal, hot  August if it meant fall weather would begin in early September and last until early December.

Of course, perhaps this year I’ll “hit the lottery” and have a cool August followed by normal fall weather. That would be truly novel.

My photo today was actually taken yesterday. This morning was totally fogged in. I’ve noticed over the years that August sunrises and December sunsets tend to be the most impressive of the year here in my neck of the woods. I have no idea why.

It’s headlamp time again.  I’ve reached the day when I need my headlamp when I walk Baby Dog in the mornings. I didn’t need the headlamp for the entire walk this morning, but I did need it until we walked beyond the edge of the forest. The morning was overcast again, as so many August mornings have been this year and that didn’t help.

I will have to take back my claim of last week that if I kept Baby Dog off lead, she would not be interested in chasing a deer. This morning we walked up onto a nice buck in velvet and a doe.  The doe bounded off without incident, but the buck ran into a high mesh “fence” that’s supposed to keep paintball pellets from flying beyond where Roundtop wants them to go.  I know of a golf driving range that uses a similar containment fence, so you might have seen what I’m talking about at one of those.

The buck kept leaping into the fence and being bounced back. I was starting to fear he would break a leg.  The edge of the mesh wasn’t far from the deer, so I moved to my left, hoping the deer would move to the right where it would soon run out of mesh and could escape. That worked!  The buck leapt away, white tail flagging.  He leaped like a gazelle with every step, no simple running here.

Well, all this was too much for Baby Dog.  She pulled like a plow horse, and I could barely hold on to her.  I’ve never had her pull so hard, and I didn’t know just how strong she could be when she is determined.  So, it’s not just rabbits that make her take off, it’s deer, too.  Sorry, Baby Dog, the leash is going to have to stay on.

My photo today was taken on Saturday in the little town of Wellsville.  I went to their annual fireman’s carnival for a good dinner of a hot turkey sandwich.  I parked a good distance from the crowded festival and walked through the town to it.  I found this swallowtail butterfly amongst the flowers in this person’s yard.

purple blooms

Camp is over for another year.  My last session was yesterday, and a nicer day simply wasn’t possible. The weather was super, and camp had fewer kids than it had for most of the summer, so I was better able to interact with them one-on-one.  The kids were well-behaved and had a great time catching lots of crayfish, water striders (truly, I don’t know what the attraction is with them) and several minnows.

A yellow longtail salamander provided a lot of excitement, but the kids never could catch it.  That’s just as well, as I’m sure it survived the escaped, and who knows what might have happened to it if it had been caught.

So camp is over—another sign of the impending fall.  Also, the thistle is starting to bloom, another late-summer event.  Notice the bee in the center of the one photo.  The bee was still alive, though certainly wasn’t very lively.  I’d like to think it was the cool morning that was keeping it drowsy and not some soon-to-be fatal event.

Reminiscing

Milkweed

Ah, the weather is glorious today—cool with a breeze from the northwest and no humidity. It would have been a good early season day to play hooky and go to a hawkwatch. Alas, I did not do that. I am saving days for when migration really gets under way in another 3-4 weeks.

Unfortunately, the weather did not clear in time to observe the Perseid meteor shower. Hopefully, there will be another year for that.

If August's meteor shower isn’t an indication that summer is on the wane, perhaps my photo today will convince you.  It’s a milkweed plant.  The pods are fat and fully formed but still green, which means they have weeks  to go before the pods open and the seedlings dissipate.  Still,  the fact that the pods are already this large is itself an indication we are on the backside of summer.

When I was a kid I loved to play with the pods. If they were just at the perfect point of dryness, I could press them at the seam, and they would open perfectly, like a little treasure box. Inside were the white, fluffy seedlings that released into the air with a breath.  Of course, part of the fun was that not all of them opened perfectly, so I would have to go to the next one and try another.  Sometimes, it’s amazing what we considered fun in the pre-internet years.  Or perhaps I was just easily amused even then.  I would say opening milkweed pods was not as much fun as catching fireflies, but each season had its own natural charms to investigate and something about it to turn into a plaything.

Raining cats and dogs

Baby Dog

This morning it was raining cats and dogs and probably frogs, too.  I was awakened at 3:15 a.m. by thunder and lightning, and the storm never diminished enough for me to go back to sleep.  A flash flood warning was announced, though on radar the rain looked even worse half a dozen miles south of my cabin.  It was plenty bad enough where I was.

The good news is that once this rain clears, it should take all the cloying humidity with it and bring me clear weather for a few or several days. I missed the height of the Perseid meteor shower last night because of the overcast sky.  Perhaps a few of those meteors will still be left for me to see tonight.

The rain has already washed out my lane, leaving deep ruts.  The paved roads were puddled with rain this morning as well.  It’s been some time since I’ve had a gullywasher quite like this one. I had two inches of rain in about 4 hours and it was still raining when I left the cabin this morning.

I had to wear my Wellies to feed the chickens this morning, who were Not Happy with the weather.  A large tree branch broke off near my front door but was caught by the branch of a tree underneath it.  I will have to see if I can’t pull that down somehow, as it looks as though it could fall without warning.  I am parking my car elsewhere until I accomplish that task.

As a result of the extreme rain this morning, my photo of Baby Dog was not taken this morning but last night as we dodged puddles on our evening walk. BD does not like to have her picture taken and did everything she could to avoid looking at the camera.  She whipped her head from side to side as though I was trying to give her a pill. A profile shot is the best I could get. At least her head was still momentarily.

Something foggy, something new

I am tired of the fog and overcast that is the month of August in 2013. Fog has worn out its welcome, as far as I’m concerned. Photographically, fog can be interesting, but I’ve come to suspect that it’s only interesting if you don’t have to look at it every day.  Partly as a result of the fog, today marked the first day of the waning part of the year where I needed my headlamp on my morning walk with Baby Dog.

Around the cabin, the Joe Pye weed is blooming, a sign that summer is waning.  It’s too early to say I can see signs that autumn is approaching, but I can tell that summer is past its peak.

This weekend for the first time I heard three yellow-billed cuckoos calling at the same time. Two were quite close to the cabin. I even saw one as it flew away, though if I hadn’t been able to pinpoint where it was by its call, I never could have ID’d the bird from the momentary flash of wings that I saw. The second bird wasn’t much further away but on the other side of the cabin.  I only heard the third bird because I stopped what I was doing to listen to the calls of the two near me. The third bird was so distant, it may well have been on the neighboring mountain.

I’ve always assumed there was more than a single cuckoo around, but I never heard them calling back and forth like this.  Usually, I hear one and after a pause, I’ll hear another call a bit of a distance away, and then perhaps I’ll hear another call from even further away, but that could easily be explained as a single bird moving through the forest.    I’ve never heard three separate birds calling at the same time before.  
Something new like that really makes my weekend.  Much that happens during a natural year is a repeat of what happened the year before and the years before that.  As much as I enjoy the ordinary progress of a year, catching something new to me is always much appreciated.

Dreary August

Who ever thought the words "dreary" and "August" would go together?

I find it hard to believe, but I only have one more session of camp this year.  That means the summer is nearly over, at least the unofficial summer that most in the U.S. define as Memorial Day to Labor Day.  The equinox, which marks the actual end of summer, is still six weeks away.

The recent rains means the creek where the kids from adventure camp get to catch crayfish and minnows is flowing decently again, if not at full bank.  Yesterday, the kids caught more than three dozen crayfish, three or four minnows, a nice mud puppy perhaps four inches long and saw the small water snake again.  The snake took one look at the kids and disappeared into a hole for the rest of the day.

I was glad the weather was no hotter than it was, which was about 80 degrees. It was so humid yesterday down at the creek that if it had been any warmer, it would have been unbearable.  As it was, it was nearly unbearable. I came home as soaked in sweat as if it had been 95 degrees.

Foggy morning walk

Baby Dog enjoys her morning sightings of deer, which happens nearly every morning.  Still, no matter how close they are, they are not as exciting to her as a rabbit. This morning we nearly walked up to a small, young deer. It stood and watched us as we approached.  It twitched its tail but didn’t seem inclined to move.  When we finally got too close it bounded away, but not too far, stopping to look at us yet again.

Baby Dog saw the deer and watched it carefully.  Her ears were up.  When the deer eventually went into the woods, she watched it go and we kept walking.  And then she saw the rabbit, which was further away than the deer, and that’s when she nearly pulled my arm out of its socket.  This is the reason why I don’t let her off lead.  As long as we didn’t see anything, she would stay right with me.  If we saw a deer, she would probably stay with me, but I’d need to tell her to stay.  With a rabbit, I would have no chance.  She’d be gone before she heard me say a word, and who knows where she’d end up?

She forgets everything I’ve taught her when she sees a rabbit.  Baby Dog is a mix-breed dog, which is the polite way of saying she’s a mutt.  I know she’s part Chow-Chow because she has a black tongue and the one photo I have of her mother looks like she might be half-Chow.  What her other parts are is a mystery.  I’m guessing those parts must have some kind of rabbit-chasing dog in them, perhaps a spaniel or a small setter.

She is coming up on her eighth birthday, which never ceases to surprise me, as I still think of her as young dog without a lot of sense. She definitely doesn’t have a lot of sense, but she certainly no longer qualifies as a young dog.  She’s a sweet thing, most of the time, though she does think of herself as the house cop in charge of cats.  Whenever a cat is bad, she’s right there to agree and sometimes to punish. People who’ve never seen her in punishment mode can’t believe she has that streak in her.

This morning the fog made our early-morning walk darker than usual.  Still, I know the time when I will need my headlamp when we leave the cabin on our walks can’t be far away.

Night visitor

Clouds moving in ahead of rain - 7:30 a.m.

August is starting to feel a lot like early September to me.  At the moment August 2012 is running at a pace that would make it the third coolest August in Harrisburg’s years of weather records. That’s fine with me.  I just hope this doesn’t mean September 2012 brings August-like temperatures, because that would just be cruel.

Last night as I was running Baby Dog outside for the last time, I watched a bat twirling among the trees near the cabin. It favored the open spot where my driveway meets the lane.  It was a surprise to see one there. Usually, I see them around the one or the other of the ponds that are out in the open. My cabin isn’t very far from one of the snowmaking ponds, though, especially in bat-distance.

I don’t know for certain what species it was, but it was a small bat, so it was very likely the Little Brown Bat, which is the most common on the 9 species found in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has several species of small bats, and if you have one in your hand you could certainly identify the species from its color or tail shape.  But since it is dark enough that I can’t see any colors, differentiating the species is impossible for me.
Bats are good neighbors, since they eat thousands of nasty bugs during a summer. I’m sure you know that they eat mosquitoes but they also eat those infernal stinkbugs.  As far as I know, which might not be much, bats are about the only predator of those things, so that alone gives them high marks from me.  Bats have a bad name, and I’m not sure why.  From horror movies, maybe?  I often heard the words bats and rabies muttered in the same sentence but that connection is pretty much a misnomer.  Although any mammal can contract rabies, the incidence of rabies in bats is low, less than 0.5%, though something like 2-5% of sick or dead bats that people find do have the virus.

White nose syndrome has killed many more bats than rabies.  Information I’ve read puts the death toll at 6-7 million in North America. White nose syndrome is apparently caused by a fungus, and with no known treatment the mortality rate is about 95%.  The syndrome thrives in cooler temperatures, and apparently is adapted to attacking hibernating bats.  Infection wakes the bats up during hibernation and they often starve to death.

This time of year, the little bat that I saw probably doesn’t have to worry about white nose syndrome. I just hope that in another month or so, when it goes into hibernation, that it doesn’t have to worry about it then, either.

 Hawk Mountain's Common Room, now known as the Irma Broun-Kahn Education Building

I spent most of Saturday at Hawk Mountain, near Kempton PA, attending Laurie Goodrich’s annual Kittatinny Roundtable.  Laurie is Hawk Mountain's senior monitoring biologist.  The event brings together site leaders from hawkwatches in PA and NJ to discuss results from the previous season of raptor migration, hear about new research and generally give us something hawk-related to do in midsummer when migration really isn’t underway yet. (Yes, I know Waggoner’s Gap and a few other hawkwatches start their fall seasons in early August, but this past Saturday it was raining, so no one had any excuse for sitting on a hawkwatch).

This year the roundtable was held in the newly renovated Common Room.  The new Common Room also has a new name, the Irma Broun-Kahn Education Building, named after the wife of the sanctuary’s first curator.. The old Common Room was the site of educational programs for school kids and was used for volunteer parties and other events.  The new Common Room kept the lovely stone fireplace, the hardwood floor and the ceiling beams of the old one, but the rest is modernized and high-tech.

At our session on Saturday, we heard a talk about threats to the Jacks Mountain hawkwatch in Mifflin County from proposed wind farms.  The projects, which are still in the early stages, would likely end the watch there, as the proposed wind farms would likely level the top of the mountain by 100-300 feet in order to build a shelf on the knife-edged mountain for the wind turbines. More information about that is on the Facebook pages for the Friends of Jacks Mountain and SOAR (Save our Allegheny Ridges).  Jacks Mountain has upwards of 20 years of hawk count data in the national database, HawkCount.

We also heard the details of a Broad-winged Hawk nest study done at Hawk Mountain this spring where the young birds went from birth to fledging in 33 days and that the young birds were fed mostly short-tailed shrews and chipmunks, with one unidentified amphibian as their “baby food.”

The last presentation was from Dr. Michael May asking hawkwatchers to help the Xerces Society document dragonfly migration during our fall hawkwatches.  Dragonfly migration studies are so far not well documented, and Dr. May is interested in just about any information we can provide.  A sample data sheet has been developed, and using that sheet this fall is considered a pilot project to work out any “bugs” (pun intended) we may find with the process.

Friday camp roundup

Rain stopped mid-morning yesterday, so the kids from Adventure camp were able to enjoy an afternoon of catching crayfish and minnows down at Beaver Creek.  I worried that the rain would have the creek so muddy that the kids wouldn’t be able to see anything, but that turned out not to be the case. They caught many minnows and crayfish, found a water penny, saw a water snake (to much screaming) and generally had a good time.

The water penny was a tiny one, more like a water pea or perhaps a water lentil.  It was so small I don’t even know how the girl saw it but she did.  Water pennies are quite sensitive to pollution of any kind and can’t live where rocks are covered with algae, fungi or other inorganic stuff.  Finding one in this little creek is a sign of its good water quality. 

The snake was an ordinary, though quite small,l water snake.  It poked its head above the water during a time when the biggest group of the day was at the creek, prompting a lot of screaming.  I tried to get the kids to calm down, but by the time that was accomplished, the little snake was in hiding, where it remained through the rest of the day. 

The last group found a large millipede and that proved to be a huge hit with them.  I never know what’s going to strike their fancy.  Some groups get fixated on the crayfish, others don’t think their time is a success unless they’ve landed one of the lightning fast minnows.  This group liked the millipede.  The group before them liked the ebony dragonflies—some groups totally ignore dragonflies.  I’m just happy when the kids find something to catch and have a good time.