Short and Oh So Sweet!

I only had time to take my niece and nephew on a ninety minute hike. As it turned out, that was plenty of time for them to bombard me with questions, and for me to saturate their little heads with information.

I parked on Nelson Road, and moments after stepping out of the car I got my first reward: Dylan reminded me of the inchworm on my dashboard. I'd seen it when I first got into the car, and made a point to say that I'd take it out when we got to the trail so that it wouldn't die in the car. I took it out and thanked Dylan for reminding me. It's gratifying to instill in kids a respect for life.

The act of depositing the caterpillar on a plant turned out to be a conversation starter. It fell off the leaf, but then dangled in the air on a strand of silk that it must have anchored on the leaf as it skidded past. I told the kids that caterpillars spin silk like spiders spin webs, and one of the kids asked about caterpillars turning into butterflies. I told them about chrysalises, and when Abby asked if all caterpillars turn into butterflies, I said I didn't know. I must remember to follow up on that question; it's important to teach the kids a dual lesson of admitting when you don't know something, and educating yourself about what you don't know.

We started walking east, and I was pleasantly surprised that we didn't have to turn around. I hadn't been hopeful about continuing far on this section of trail, because it's usually thick with blood-sucking insects. But somehow we got lucky. I explained this to the kids, and took the opportunity to give them a sense of one small piece of the food chain: where there's water, there are insects; where there are insects, there are spiders; and where there are insects and spiders, there are birds.

As usual, the first thing I noticed along the trail was a folded leaf. After years of training my eye to see them, they leap out at me. The folding agent is usually a spider or a caterpillar, and on this trip I only saw evidence of the latter. I kept unrolling leaves and finding either a caterpillar and its feces, or just the feces.

I saw a butterfly, and Abby asked if that was the caterpillar we saw! I explained that caterpillars take months to turn into butterflies, and repeated that I don't know whether all caterpillars turn into butterflies.

Before we got far, we noticed a peculiar blanket of fluff on the trail. I didn't recognize it, so I started wondering out loud what it was. Dylan asked if it was milkweed fluff, and I told him that milkweed plants don't release their seeds until around October, so it couldn't have come from there.

Soon I found a strand of half-open seed pods on the trail. I couldn't recall seeing anything like it before. Clearly the fluff was coming from pods like these, so I took it as an opportunity to give the kids a lesson in deductive reasoning.

I told the kids that there were no other low-growing plants in sight that were releasing fluff, so I was looking higher. I saw some fluff on a small tree near the trail, and for a moment I thought that was the source. But when I compared the branching structure of the pods I found on the trail to that of the pods on the tree, I saw that they were very different. So the fluff couldn't have come from the tree either. This gave the kids a quick and dirty introduction to taxonomy.

Since the fluff didn't seem to be coming from any of the shorter trees, I had to look higher still. I saw maples, elms and poplars along the trail, and I knew that maples and elms didn't produce fluff. So I began to suspect that it was raining down from the poplars. I tried to convey this process of elimination to the kids.

A few minutes later, I found a branch on the trail that confirmed my hypothesis. It had both poplar leaves and a strand of the same fluff-bearing seed pods. Mystery solved!

As we continued east, I taught the kids about some of the flora along the trail. I showed them Jack-in-the-Pulpit and trillium, and pointed out that though the leaves look very similar, the trillium leaves are radially symmetrical but the Jack-in-the-Pulpit leaves aren't. I showed them a huge vine and pointed out how high into the trees it climbed. And I showed them the light green patches on a rock, and told them about lichen.

As I kept unrolling leaves and finding only caterpillars or caterpillar leavings, Dylan asked a very good question: "Why are there no spiders?" I used this as an excuse to tell him about the spider life cycle, and how other organisms need building materials with specific qualities, just like humans do. We weren't seeing spiders for two reasons: first, they won't be laying eggs for another month or two, so they're not building shelters for their egg sacs; and second, they can't just use any leaves for their shelters, and there don't seem to be many of the berry bushes they like along this section of trail.

Before we got too far, Dylan started finding railroad spikes. He's quite fascinated by the iron artifacts from the old railroad, and I'm encouraging that fascination. So I started finding spikes for him, as well as a reinforcing plate. I made a throwaway comment to him about how one could make some strong armor from plates like these, and a bullet would just bounce off it. He got curious, asking "Why don't people make armor like that?" This led to a conversation about medieval armor, and protection vs. speed in medieval warfare. Thus I laid the groundwork for introducing him to some educational programs.

Soon after we reached the scenic slope down to Canastota Creek, a big black fly with a brilliant yellow thorax landed on my right hand. It was nearly the size of a horsefly, so I suspected it might be about to painfully draw some blood. But as I told the kids, I really wanted to get a shot of the thing. I kept my hand still and asked Dylan to grab the phone out of my pocket. I got some great shots, I didn't get bit, and I taught the kids a lesson about risking some pain for the sake of intellectual curiosity.

On the way back, one of the kids spotted a curious-looking little grey mass with two narrow tubes sticking out of it. At first I thought it was a piece of a carcass with a long worm running through it. It took us a few seconds to figure out that it was the rear end of a mouse: one end of the "worm" was the mouse's tail, and the other was a strand of its intestines. There was a slug a few inches away that appeared to have been feeding on it. Dylan said that a fox must have eaten the mouse, and I thought that sounded about right. One of the kids asked what ate the fox, and I said that there probably wasn't anything around here that eats foxes. It occurs to me that I was wrong; coyotes probably eat foxes. I'll have to look it up and follow up with the kids.

During the hike, I had several opportunities to educate Dylan about arachnids. At one point he saw a "big spider" and I came to look. It turned out to be a daddy longlegs. I told him that daddy longlegs are arachnids but not spiders, and that they are ancient, like sharks; fossils of daddy longlegs that lived hundreds of millions of years ago look like daddy longlegs of today. I also had an opportunity to show him the "boxing gloves" on a spider, and tell him that those are pedipalps, which means the spider is a male.

I saw a large insect on a low leaf, and tried to show the kids. It dropped off just before Dylan got there, but it turned out to be a lesson in following your curiosity and being open to what you find, instead of what you expected. As we looked for the insect, we found a slug, and then I saw a spider crawling right over it. I believe it was Enoplognatha ovata, the same leaf-folding species I'd been telling Dylan about!

Here are a few more tidbits I got to teach the kids: those squiggly whitish lines on the leaves are from tiny leaf miners tunneling between the layers of the thin leaf with their little mouths; we can't walk on this side trail because it's private property as opposed to public property; that slope is bare because of erosion, which means wind and rain wearing away soil; leaves with this particular shape are touch-me-nots, whose seed pods we'll be popping in a few months; and the water running in that stream fell as rain miles away a few days ago, and trickled down plants and through the ground before ending up in the stream.

All this, in an hour and twenty minutes. I'm a lucky guy to have a nephew and niece who are receptive to my enthusiasm.

Time Capsule from July 4

For many, many, MANY more pictures from this hike, see the Picasa web album.

After Grace and I got back from the work hike on the morning of July 4, we took Dylan on another hike. Unfortunately I've not had the time to document it until now. But perhaps February is an appropriate time for a July retrospective: I know that looking back on the light and colors of summer makes me smile.

---

Dylan was very excited to get back to the Link Trail. It's times like this when I feel like I could stop counting my blessings at one, and still consider myself lucky.

I started to present him with his choices for places to hike, and at first I didn't get beyond "We could go back to the bridge over the creek where you threw sticks in, or we could go to the quarry..." He interjected that he wanted to go back to the quarry, but I said "Slow down, you haven't heard all the choices yet!" I continued, telling him that there are some parts of the Link Trail he hadn't seen, that go along a pretty stream. Immediately he changed his mind, saying he wanted to go to the part where he hadn't been!

We drove to Bingley and parked in the little area at the end of Emhoff Road. While looking at wildflowers right next to the parking area, I got excited at seeing a small toad. Unfortunately I lost it before I could show it to Dylan. We went north a few hundred feet so that we could write in the trail register, and then headed south. As we descended the small gravel switchback trail to Bingley Road I explained to Dylan the concept of a switchback, and how we were walking gradually downward and across the slope rather than trying to go straight down. Then, after climbing the staircase, I explained to him that the fence with the door is there to let people through but keep four-wheelers out.

Before we got far, I got excited about photo ops and Dylan got excited about construction equipment. His most excited exclamation of the day was "WOW, FRONT LOADER!!!" Having a quarry and a few private businesses with construction equipment along the trail is a huge bonus for hiking with a small boy.



Snail on plant

This snail was the first photo-op of the hike. This photo represents the state of my macro photography skills. The tail end of the snail, along with parts of the plant it's climbing, are in focus, but its antennae are little more than a blur. Yes, this gives a sense of intimacy and focus on the rear shell patterns, but I would like to be able to choose to have more of the critter in focus, and for that I need to spend more timer jiggering with F-stops and exposures and ISO settings.



Deptford pink

This species has been a favorite companion ever since around 1992, when I began my wildflower hikes. It's an elusively narcissistic little bugger: it doesn't deign to show its face at my parties very often, but on those occasions when I catch a blast of saturated pink from the side of the trail, I always stop and smile. How could I do otherwise?



Forget-me-not

Here's what I wrote after my first, erroneous attempt to identify this flower.

Wow. I just had one of those frustrating experiences where I thought I knew something and then I spent the better part of an hour having Google and Wikipedia teach me otherwise. This looks like what my mother used to call "baby's breath" but, as it turns out, that's about as definite as saying "That's a Queen Anne's lace". There are over 70 species of what people call Queen Anne's lace, and as it turns out there are about 100 species in the genus Gypsophilia. If anyone could tell me what species this is, I'd appreciate it.

As it turns out, I made the mistake I always make: confusing baby's breath with forget-me-not. This looks like a Myosotis laxa, or tufted forget-me-not. It also looks like Myosotis nemorosa, or possibly like several others on the Wikipedia page for the genus.



Harvestman

I can never resist a good shot of one of these fascinating creatures. For more on the ancient order Opiliones, see the Wikipidea entry.



What my father used to call a "water-skipper"

Sigh. I thought the term "baby's breath" was vague, but that's nothing compared to this insect's genus. Gerridae contains "around 500 known species, commonly placed in around 60 genera". Good luck figuring out which species this is. I know enough from the hours I've spent on BugGuide.net that I'd need much more detailed pictures than this in order to get even close to identifying them.


We saw a fairly well-traveled trail coming in from the left that looked like private property to me, so I took the opportunity to tell Dylan about the importance of respecting private property and staying off it. Then we saw a big trail that led down the slope to the right. It was clearly a public fishing access, so we headed down to check it out. It turned out to be an ideal place to take a kid, and to take pictures. I tried to explain to Dylan how the steps beneath the culvert slow down the stream flow so that it hits the downstream pool as gently as possible and so minimimizes erosion. I don't know how well I did.



Unidentified arthropod on rock


Identified anthropoids on rocks


Buttercup

This is probably a common buttercup, or Ranunculus acris, but it could be one of a few Ranunculus. It's impossible to say for sure because I didn't get a shot of the stem or leaves.

We crossed the slippery, tippy rocks while holding Dylan's hand, and I got some great shots of flowers and arachnids and water-skippers. Grace got some shots of me and Dylan on the culvert, and we made our way back across the stream and up to the trail.




Fragrant bedstraw, or Galium triflorum

My first guess was wild madder because I remember that one from my old wildflower walks. But after looking it up in my Peterson's I think this is fragrant bedstraw. Note that the lower leaves are in whorls of six and that the stems appear to be hairless.



Tiny spider on leaf



Grace spinning Dylan

I'm grateful to Grace for being such a cheerful companion to Dylan, because it gives me some leeway for lagging behind and snapping away with the camera. She kept him busy while I got many shots for the Link Trail wildflower guide that I'm hoping to start compiling soon. And of course there were the lucky finds of bees and spiders and such on some of those flowers. When I caught up with them, Grace was swinging him around like a giggling whirligig - a whirligiggle?





Wild basil, or Satureja vulgaris

I spent an hour or two identifying this plant. For most of that time I was in the blue/violet section of my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers. It's not the first time I've made this mistake. A lot of flowers I think of as primarily blue, Peterson obviously thought of as primarily red. Also, judging from some of the botanical plates I found online, this particular species seems to have a blue variety and a pink variety.

So I was on the verge of pulling my hair out, thinking this was in the genus Mentha but not being able to find anything closer than pennyroyal. But the two were structurally different in enough ways that it seemed impossible that they could be the same plant.

I actually started to wonder if it was a speedwell but the blossoms looked much more like a mint than a speedwell. Finally I noticed on page 352 the note "See also pink and lavender species on p. 252." Once I started looking in the red/pink flowers, it was only a matter of time before I discovered the wild basil. I gave myself a mental forehead-smack just now as I noticed the following words at the front page of the "Violet to Blue Flowers" chapter.

We repeat the warning here that it is not always easy to separate some lavender or reddish-purple flowers (treated in a pink-red section, which starts on page 212) from some violet ones, shown here in the following pages. If in doubt, look in both places.

I won't forget again.



Hop clover, or Trifolium agrarium

When I looked at the nodding head on the left I thought "hops". Imagine my delight when I found the following entry on page 150 of my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers:

...When flower heads (1/2-3/4 in.) wither, florets fold down, become brownish, suggesting dried hops.

Black-eyed susan, or Rudbeckia hirta



Heal-all, or Prunella vulgaris

If you have a Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers take a look at pages 350-351 (which unfortunately aren't available in the Google Books preview). I think that the general appearance of the flower head, combined with the near-toothless leaves, allows us to unambiguously identify it as heal-all.






Rough-fruited cinquefoil entertaining a guest

I've always gotten a smile from this very common species, and that was before I took these macro shots. That last shot is the best photo I've ever taken. I jumped up and down and squealed when I saw it on the screen. See a larger version of the shot here.




Yarrow, or Achillea millefolium.



Wood strawberry, or Fragaria vesca



Leaf miner tracks





Purple-flowering raspberry

This is a Purple-flowering Raspberry, or Rubus odoratus. Note the insect on the flower in the second picture. Don't see it? That's OK, I didn't know it was there when I was taking the shot! See the closeup in the third picture. That's one of my favorite things about nature photography: the surprises waiting for me when I look at the shots on a computer screen.

After about two hours browsing Bug Guide I believe that I've unambiguously identified the critter: Tarnished Plant Bug (Lygus lineolaris). If my image submission gets moved by one of the experts, I'll know I was wrong.



Cow vetch

I believe that this is cow vetch, or Vicia cracca.



Midges(?) swarming against a rock(???)

On the way back I saw one of those things that makes you stop and wonder just what you're looking at. The sun picked out a seed pod or somesuch suspended in midair between a tree and a rock, so I went to check out the spider web. As I approached the boulder a cloud of insects scattered away from it, some colliding with me and some zipping past me. But much of the cloud remained, swarming around the shaded face of the rock. They appeared to be battering themselves against it, although the motion was too frenetic to be quite sure what I was seeing. All that I know is that I've never seen anything like it. Take a look at the shots and tell me if you know what I saw.



Closeup of cinders from the old railroad bed

I asked Al Larmann about the material found on old railroad beds, and he said that gravel or other small stones were used, and that this was called ballast. I replied...

Thanks Al. I think you've led me to the answer. The Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_ballast says that...

A good ballast should be strong, hard-wearing, stable, drainable, easy to clean, workable, resistant to deformation, easily available, and reasonably cheap to purchase.[2] Early railway engineers did not understand the importance of quality track ballast; they would use cheap and easily-available materials such as ashes, chalk, clay,[3] earth, and even cinders from locomotive fireboxes.[4] It was soon clear that good-quality ballast made of rock was necessary if there was to be a good foundation and adequate drainage.[3]

So am I correct in thinking that this material that covers parts of the Link Trail is cinders? It does seem like something that came from a furnace, because it seems far too light and porous to be unprocessed stone.

Al's reply goes into some interesting history of the railroad.

Hugh--
I concur--The original Cazenovia and Canastota RR was built about 1870. Although their surveying skills were good--given the manner in which they were able to find a way around the Perryville area falls and cut into the hills as you approached Cazenovia, I am sure that the basic ballast used was cinder based.I do not recall where I saw the comment, but there was some industry locally that generated a large quantity of cinders. The engines were small in size and limited in power output. I do remember that the original bridge in Cazenovia spanning the creek was tested by placing the steam engine upon it--it passed, an empirical solution.

Daisy fleabane

I believe that this is daisy fleabane, or Erigeron annuus.



Tiny flies on oxeye daisy, or Leucanthemum vulgare






Yellow avens (Geum aleppicum) with aphid (nymph?) on blossom

The top picture shows the whole yellow avens plant. The second shows a cute little aphid on the blossom, and the third shows the distinctive fruit. Look closely - here's another example of spiderwebs being everywhere!


Bee pollinating oxeye daisy, or Leucanthemum vulgare



One last parting shot of Deptford pink

A short hike with the young'uns

For more shots from this hike see the Picasaweb album.

Thrilled that my four-year-old nephew Dylan was anxious for more hiking with me, and that my sixteen-(going on thirty)-year old daughter Morgan was happy to join us, I hiked in with them from Ingalls Corners Road. They were both in shorts and sandals, so we were quite careful about identifying the plants growing over the trail throughout the hedgerow. To the best of my knowledge there was no poison ivy.


With a little help from me the sandalled youngsters enjoyed the climb down the stone stairs. Then the real fun began. A flash of motion drew my eye to the tiniest frog I've ever seen, but I lost it. While searching for it my eye caught a moving speck of white. It turned out to be an egg sac on the back of a spider that was smaller than a peppercorn. I lost her while utterly failing to find the frog. But then we saw a snail, and after that we couldn't stop seeing snails. They were vigorously foraging about in the rain-dampened leaf clutter. Dylan enjoyed allowing a few of them to explore his hand while I told him about the snail's foot and the way it uses its protective slime to move around safely.


My goal was to show Dylan the quarry because, like most four-year-olds, he's almost terminally fascinated with construction equipment and anything associated with them. I held Dylan on my shoulders so that he could get a better view of the quarry, while Morgan took some pictures with my camera. She favors black and white photography, and she thought the tree and the old concrete structure made a good composition. I have to admit that it wasn't until I saw the shot in black and white that I saw exactly what she meant.


On the way back I once again saw movement, and this time I didn't take my eyes off the wee frog. It was quite energetic in its sincere desire to be nowhere near us, and I fear we upset it quite a bit trying to corral it for a good shot. You be the judge of whether it was worth it.

On the way back along the hedgerow I got several more chances to explain things to my delightfully receptive nephew. I told him about the woodchucks that made the holes he was so curious about, and told Morgan about what good eatin' those woodchucks are. The raindrops highlighting the contours of funneled spider web gave me the perfect chance to tell my nephew how the spider hides in the tunnel until a bug lands in the web, and then jumps out, paralyzes it, and wraps it up in its web so that it can eat it later. And when we walked through the bloodroot patch I told how native Americans used the red sap of the roots for dyeing - and how I wasn't showing it to them because the plant is rare and protected.

I count myself blessed to have such opportunities to share the wonders of the natural world - a phrase that shouldn't sound like such a cliché - with two generations.

You want the short version or the long one?

Oh, this is just ridiculous. It's been two weeks since my latest hike and I've spent at least twice as long trying to write about it than I spent on the hike itself. So here goes.

Short version:
I walked from Nelson Road to Cottons Road and had a great time taking lots of closeup pictures of plants and insects and arachnids and such. I put my favorite shots in a Picasaweb album here.

Long version:
On my previous hike I covered thirty miles partly because I wasn't encumbered with a camera. On this hike I took over nine hundred digital photos but never got more than a mile from my car. Apparently I need to get the extremes out of the way before I can find a happy medium. I fall into the first extreme easily enough, losing myself in the ryhthm of pumping legs and heart as I strive for distance. It's harder for me to remember my need for hikes like this that are short on walking and long on looking - where I lose myself in tiny things. The camera helps.



I parked at the Nelson Road trailhead and walked west. The trail was full of bittersweet signs of seasonal change, reminding me that summer is old news and fall is around the corner. Late blossoms bloomed. Seed pods swelled where earlier blossoms had withered and fallen. Riots of vines twined around every standing plant, many giving up their strength to their reddening berries.








I'd intended to get five or ten miles of brisk hiking in, only stopping occasionally for some quick photos. Within ten minutes that plan had already gotten shaky. After failing to get a good shot of the dragonflies flitting about, I found a much more willing subject: a ladybug poised on a sumac leaf. Ten minutes later I got entranced by a weevil gathering nectar from a daisy fleabane blossom, and it was clear that the plan was in serious danger. Ten minutes after that the wheels came off the plan entirely. I'd already worked up a sweat trying to keep the camera steady while chasing and snapping away at the bees pollinating the white sweet clover. When my eye caught the snails climbing up those same plants - apparently to get to the choice leaves - I gave up on the idea of a long hike. I didn't mind too much. To explain why, I have to go back about fifteen years.

After college I spent lots of time walking along roadsides and through fields with my Peterson's Guide to Wildflowers. At first I just wanted to see some pretty flowers, increase my knowledge, and have a full journal to show for it. To identify a flower, though, I had to focus all my attention on it, and with that shift in focus came a shift in perception. One oxeye daisy stopped being one more white splotch among ten thousand other white splotches and became something singularly complex and beautiful. One moth mullein became a breathtaking dance of color, texture and form. One more periwinkle blossom became the first first periwinkle blossom I'd ever seen; after all, how could I say I'd seen it if I hadn't noticed that graceful spiral in the petals? In bringing my senses to bear totally on something outside myself I was bringing me outside myself: for a moment not everything was about me. I was seeing, and it was changing me.

Sometimes when I go on a walk I get lost in the act of finding and photographing subjects. After this last one I realized that it brings me the same sense of peace that wildflower identification brought me fifteen years ago. To take decent pictures I first have to slow down and look around for a good subject, so right off the bat I'm seeing my surroundings in a way I usually don't. Then in order to make the shot anything more than decent I have to figure out from what angle I want to view the subject, how I want to frame it, how the light falls on it and whether the lens barrel is shading it. Finally I have to hold my breath and pay extremely close attention to a detail on the subject as I turn the focus ring so that I can get the focus I want right down to the millimeter. Just like the act of identifying something, taking a good picture of something forces you to give it your complete attention. And I've come to understand that complete attention is not separable from love.




I moved on past the surprisingly acrobatic snails and came to another sign of the changing season. Two weeks earlier the small cluster of mullein had not begun to blossom, and the moth mullein right next to it were in late bloom. Now the yellow mullein blossoms were popping out of the stems and attracting ants, and the moth mullein blossoms had withered and all but fallen off while their seed pods had swelled and begun to split.





By this point I was beginning to think that good photo subjects were everywhere - if I looked closely enough at most any interesting plant I'd probably find some sort of interesting creature on it. I don't know whether I was right or I just got very lucky, but within moments I looked at some photogenically ripening berries and saw a daddy longlegs on the leaves right next to them. I'm afraid I aggravated it quite a bit, trying to coax it into position with my hand. Once I got my shots I left it in peace.

I moved on between the shrubs and vines, getting some nice shots of a fetching little bee I've not identified yet. Then I got the big payoff. If I hadn't spent the entire hike soaking up the tiny details of the trail I never would have spotted the fantastically well camouflaged moth that I just identified as a Virginia creeper sphinx.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to remember the joys of taking a long time for a short hike. I won't always have the chance to look so closely, but the next time I go on a thirty mile hike I'll have a better sense of the wonders filling every inch of those thirty miles.