Look at the big spider!

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

I had promised Dylan that I’d take him on a hike this weekend, so it was the highest-priority item on my list of things to do before I left town on Sunday. I had been wanting to fill in my trail maps with pictures from the Canastota end, but Dylan’s mom had said that he wanted to go to back the quarry. So I engaged in a bit of subversive redirection. I asked him if he remembered the bridge over the stream where we threw sticks in and watched them float downstream, and asked him if he wanted to go back there. Thankfully he was excited about that prospect.

Either Dylan remembered me rubbing alcohol on his legs after last summer’s hike through a section with lots of poison ivy, or his mother reminded him to avoid it, because on the trail through the woods near the cemetery he kept pointing to plants and asking me “Is that poison ivy?” I assured him that I’d tell him if I saw any.

After passing under the tree trunk growing horizontally over the trail near the cemetery, Dylan turned around and watched me make my way under it. Laughing, he pointed out how he didn't even have to duck his head. Oh, kid, it’s not lost on me. The years are flying by so fast that I fear you’ll double in size if I blink once, and lose all interest in what I have to share with you if I blink twice. So believe me, I’m savoring the moment.

Before reaching the path back to the old reservoir we saw the first white trillium of the day, and the first of several cute and colorful birdhouses that someone put up since last fall.


On the path we enjoyed seeing the violets that were popping up everywhere. I pointed out the massive poplars to the left of the trail and, when Dylan asked what the concrete structure was, told him that it used to be a reservoir. That, of course, led to the question “What’s a reservoir?” I love it when kids ask questions. As we mounted the staircase he asked about the notches in the log steps, so I explained about traction.


As soon as we reentered the woods I encountered an excellent photo opportunity: a beetle on a trout lily blossom. Unfortunately my holding still and snapping shots also represented an opportunity for insects to land on me and start sucking my blood.

We continued on through scads of mayapples and white, pink and black trillium. There were also a lot of what I think was false Solomon's seal, but I didn't think to get any shots of it.


I also started to notice a curious plant within the leaf litter: shiny pale stems that seemed to have sprouted from the earth and plunged right back in again. later, after I got home and talked to Grace about it, she indicated that these sprouts are quite common. They must be one of those things that I never noticed before, but I'm sure my eye will catch them from now on.

We descended the staircase amid a slope sprinkled liberally with trillium. As we walked along the path of 4x4s that skirt the stream, Dylan asked why the crosswise slats were there. As I got some more shots of trillium I explained again about the importance of traction on otherwise slippery wood.


Just as we reached the bridge, Dylan said “Look at the big spider” and I said “Where?!” He pointed, and there was a large brownish grey spider clinging to the Canastota Creek sign on the side of the bridge! While Dylan threw sticks into the stream I got a few hundred shots of this beautiful specimen*. See the “boxing gloves”? Those are pedipalps, and the fact that they’re swollen means that it’s a male. Believe it or not, they’re copulatory organs. Check this out.**


At some point while Dylan was playing around on the bridge and gathering sticks to throw in the water, he got a sliver in his finger. He was rather distressed but agreed to let me dig it out. I thought of my knife, but then remembered the teardrop corsage pins I'd put in my camera case as size reference for photographs. Their first use turned out to have nothing to do with photography. I poked and teased at the sliver as Dylan's distress intensified, manifesting itself as a high keening noise. I have to give him credit, though: he endured it with minimal squirming. Eventually I got it out, and the keening subsided.


We headed back through the ravine and up the stairs amid the blanket of gentle green sprinkled liberally with white and pink trillium blossoms. Dylan did a bit of tree-climbing while I snapped shots of violets.


The sun came out and I got some very satisfying shots of shiny young poison ivy. I showed Dylan how the leaves grow in clusters of three, and told him that the waxy shine comes from the oils that rub off on your skin and give you rashes and blisters. I believe I took the opportunity to drill into him the old mnemonic "leaves of three, let it be". I also reminded him that Virginia creeper is shiny but not poisonous, and that older poison ivy leaves are not very shiny but they are still poisonous. The point is that poison ivy is best identified by its clusters of three leaves.


One of the joys of macro photography is getting the pictures home and seeing things that you had no idea were there when you shot them. And in my experience, spider webs are number one in that category of retrospective joys. Those little suckers are spinning their webs everyhwere, and this is never more apparent than when I examine shots that I thought were just of plants and insects. Click on the photo above and look at the top. See the web leading down to the broadleaf toothwort next to the poison ivy?


Likewise, I never saw the webs strung between these two poison ivy plants (look on the left)...


... or the delicate strands on this garlic mustard plant.

*I looked up the spider later and found out that it belongs to the genus Dolomedes, also known as fishing spiders. I had no idea that fishing spiders were so widespread! I believe this one to be a Dolomedes scriptus.

**If you're really interested in the subject of spider mating, find a copy of the following article.

Studies on the Habits of Spiders, Particularly Those of the Mating Period
by Montgomery, T. H., Jr.
Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Vol. 55 (1903), pp. 59- 149
Published by: Academy of Natural Sciences

Not exactly a Link Trail hike, but we can dream...

For many more pictures, see the Picasaweb album for this hike.

Grace and I met Kathy, Kathy, Mary, Dawn, Sigi and Horst at the Canastota thruway exit at 9:00 as scheduled. Our caravan made its way through Rome and north toward Pixley Falls. We parked at the southernmost trailhead, piled into two cars, and proceeded to our starting point: the Boonville Nice N' Easy.

We were lucky to have a sunny, cool day. We walked past a beautiful mural painted on the wall of an old building, and over the footbridge. From there it was a simple matter of walking southward along the path on the eastern bank. I enjoyed chatting with Dawn about travel and wildflowers.


Before long I fell far behind. You probably won't be too surprised to hear the cause: a picturesque patch of Cladonia fungus. I think it was Cladonia pyxidata but it could be any of a number of similar-looking species on this list.



I caught up with the group while they were pausing at an old piece of machinery that was presumably put there to control the flow between the main canal and the connecting stream.



We moved on, crossing Route 46 and pausing to view the lock just beyond...


... and to admire the work a beaver had done on a tree across the trail from the canal...


...and the pussy willows glowing in the spring summer sun.


Over the next few miles we saw several locks, one of which had a fairly new-looking footbridge crossing it.


Once again, I fell behind as I lingered on an irresistible photo op: a community of red-topped fungus on a post. These were also Cladonia, but a different species: my best guess is Cladonia didyma, but it could have been Cladonia magyarica.

At one point I got to talk to Mary about the work that she and other have done to make the Link Trail a reality. It took years of work just to get the State Parks Commission to talk to them, let alone allow them to build the trail. But after more than ten years of work, the trail between Cazenovia and Canastota was completed. Then, immediately after that was finished last summer, New York State allowed horse traffic on the trail, ignoring the misgivings of those who made it. It's no wonder that, as Mary said, the folks who worked so hard on the trail are "feeling ill-used".

I think that the Link Trail is a gem. I feel lucky to have such a beautiful, secluded trail so close to my old stomping grounds, and I'm glad to be able to contribute to it. I thought of all this as I walked with Mary, and as she pointed to the bluffs off to the left. She's working on a way to extend the Link Trail northward to connect with the one we were walking. That's an exciting prospect.


These old structures look like buttresses, but what they used to buttress is anyone's guess.


We left the main trail to have lunch near the falls north of the park. A few of us descended the steep trail to explore the area where the two streams cascade over waterfalls, converge, and flow southward.


Between our lunch spot and Pixley Falls State Park, the grade must steepen, because it seemed like there was an old lock every time I looked. Along with the locks, there were recurring companions of the day...


...such as marsh marigolds...


...trillium...



...and more beaver work.

We reached Pixley Falls and made our way down to the bottom of the falls. I used the timer to get the group shot at the top of this entry. Then we hiked the last two miles or so, which was steeper than the rest.


We got back to the cars parked at the trailhead and shuttled back to Boonville.

A quick followup

For more images see the Picasaweb album for this hike.

On the previous day I forgot to get size references for the bloodroot and the moss, so I took Grace on a quick hike in from Quarry Road. I got my size reference, but the tape measure was very awkward. There must be a better way, and after this hike I spent lots of time pondering what that might be. I need something that will hold itself in place next to the subject - perhaps something I can stick in the ground? I don't want to go poking large holes in the ground, so something narrow such as a hatpin might be just the thing. I haven't found a hatpin yet, so I've stuck two of my mother's old white teardrop corsage pins into my camera case. As I was typing this it occurred to me that I should take a small file and score millimeter markings into the shafts. This should give me an excellent size reference for flowers or insects on the ground, or even insects on trees or wooden structures.

My first hike with Morgan and Ben

For many more pictures from this hike, see the Picasaweb album.

We had an hour to spare before getting Morgan and her boyfriend Ben back to Ben's house, and Morgan asked if we could take a hike to the quarry. The dilapidated structures along that section of trail fascinate her, and she enjoys photographing them. I was particularly quick to say yes because I'd just gotten a new camera: a Canon EOS Rebel XSi with a Tamron 90mm macro lens. I was eager to get the new rig onto the trail and find some small subjects.




We hiked in from Quarry Road, and almost immediately I got a pleasant surprise: a wee bloodroot poking up through the leaf litter blanketing the south side of the trail. Apparently I haven't seen them this early in the year before, because I never knew that the leaf wrapped itself around the blossom stalk like a slender woman wrapping her cloak around herself for warmth. But what surprised me more was the fact of its location: I've never seen a bloodroot growing in such a dry and sunny spot. This was my first hike with Ben, so I took the opportunity to tell the story of how native Americans used the red sap of the roots to dye their clothes, and how it's illegal to pick the plant because it's endangered.



The patch of moss shown here is about 3" wide.


The patch of moss shown here is about 3/8" wide.

Minutes later my eyes landed on the melange of greens and browns in a small patch of moss. Then I saw the tiny stalks sprouting up through the mat, and I was hooked. I got myself into macro mode: kneeling, crouching, bracing my elbow on whatever was available, and exhaling smoothly in calculated intervals, I started snapping away.

Three days before, when I got the camera, I didn't know a thing about SLR photography. During those three days I gave myself a crash course. Between my friend Karen's uncle Joe and various internet resources, I gained a theoretical understanding of apertures, shutter speeds and ISO settings. That's sort of like saying "I gained a theoretical understanding of juggling." It takes a long time and a lot of work to go from understanding it to being able to do it well. This was the first step on that path.


The little heads on the moss sprouts are between 1/8" and 1/4" long.

The depth of field of this new macro lens is stunningly shallow, so I kept refocusing on different clusters of the little capsule heads nodding on their slender stalks. I also experimented with different F-stops*. I wanted to get a sense of my aperture limits for handheld shooting, so I didn't use the tripod yet. I didn't bother going above F8 because I figured I'd get nothing but blurs if I narrowed the aperture too much.



It wasn't long after I tore myself away from that first subject that I was captivated by a trio of them. A pair of bloodroot stood in front of one of the many remnants of the old railroad: a rusty spike jutting from a tie that was slowly being overcome by moss. This time I set up the tripod and used the two-second timer so that I wouldn't be touching the camera when the shutter went off. I wanted to see what my effective aperture limits are for tripod-mounted field shots.

I started with the two bloodroot, moving all the way up from F/2.8 to F/32 while focusing on the nearest one, then moving the focus to the farther one and going back down to F/2.8. I see that the shot I chose to show both flowers in the same frame was taken at F/16. I'll have to review my original shots to be sure, but this may confirm the claim I read that this lens starts to produce softer images once the F-number goes higher than 16.




I moved on to the railroad spike, again trying different F-stops. These two shots show the dramatic difference in mood between F/14 and F/2.8. I particularly like the F/2.8 shot because I find that having everything blurred but the spike, the tree trunk, and the narrow strip of tie, gives it a feeling that's intimate, even lonely.

I finally tore myself away from the flowers and the spike when Morgan and Ben came back, Morgan excitedly telling me to come look at what they'd found. It was the same stone structure Mary and her fellow hikers wondered at two weeks ago. I put a mental star next to my mental note to research it. I should have taken a picture of it! Oh well... next time.



While the youngsters hung out by the quarry I went ahead to where the trail reenters the trees. This is where, during the summer, we found lots of snails and a few tiny frogs. I didn't find any frogs or occupied snail shells, but I was very pleased with the closeup shot of a shell that turned out to be empty.



Right after I left the shell I saw rabbit remains of a fresher sort than the coyote droppings Grace and I saw a few weeks ago. It seems likely that coyotes were responsible for this too.



On the way back I got some shots of one of the coltsfoot that are sprouting near the quarry, and some of the first bloodroot I saw. Then I snapped away at the lovebirds. There was smooching. It's good to know that a hike with dad doesn't kill the romance.

*To see the camera settings I used, click the "more info" link to the right of any photo in the Picasaweb album.

The humble origins of yet another obsession

This is the first in a series of entries about my fascination with a spider found on the Link Trail. If you're not interested in population genetics, give this one a miss.

Up until July I'd never heard of Enoplognatha ovata. Now I'm not only reading research articles on the little suckers, but getting ready to contact some of the folks who wrote those research articles so that I can better understand the population genetics involved. Oh well, anything for a weird life.

Back in July I saw a lot of spiders on the section of trail south of Freber (aka Hodge) Road. At the time I thought that most of them were the same species. After taking a look at the macro shots, I saw the differences in coloration and laughed at my silliness. But after I spent some more time looking at the shots and trying to identify them in BugGuide, I was startled to find that I was right the first time: they were the same species!

Since the female E. ovata shelters her egg sac in a rolled-up leaf, her species only lives near foliage that it can curl up just so. Those kinds of leaves grow on the blackberry bushes along the Link Trail - and in the hedgerows of Nidderdale, a town on the far side of England in Yorkshire. As it turns out, researchers as far off as Nidderdale and as nearby as the Syracuse University research station in Lafayette, New York have been puzzling over E. ovata for decades. And the reason they're so interested is the same reason I thought I was seeing different species.

E. ovata has a striking color polymorphism, which is a pretty way of saying that a spider can have one of several distinct color patterns that are determined by the color genes it got from its parents. Most of the spider's body is a creamy white, yellow, or greenish color. The Lineata morph has no additional color. Redimita individuals have a pair red stripes running down their backs, and in the Ovata morph there's no gap between the stripes: the entire back of the abdomen, i.e. the dorsal opisthosoma (god, I love saying "dorsal opisthosoma") is red. The individual in the lower right corner of the composite image above is Redimita. The other two are Lineata. I didn't see any Ovata, and I'm not likely to: none of the researchers found any in this part of New York State.

Now here's the hook: Although the gene for Ovata is dominant over that for Redimita, and both of the red morphs are dominant over Lineata, percentages of the three morphs in natural populations are the inverse of what one might expect. Most surveys show somewhere around 70% Lineata, 25% Redimita, and 5% Ovata. And these proportions are remarkably stable within almost every local community sampled. This piqued my curiosity. It did the same to a lot of researchers. In the posts to follow I'll be telling you about their findings.

An Early Spring Trip on the Link Trail

A day like late June in CNY, even though it's really late March. All snow is gone from the trail, even in the hedgerow from Ingalls Corners Rd. to the old rail corridor.

Six people from the Bullthistle Hiking Club (from Norwich, NY) and two guests from the CNY Chapter of the North Country Trail Association started hiking about 9:30 am after having spotted cars at Mt. Pleasant Rd. parking area--our destination.

I'm out to just enjoy the trail after having spent the last 10 years building trail, but I can't stop myself from noticing that Steve and Mike's brute work on creating stone steps from the edge of the escarpment down to the old rail bed have held up well over the winter.

We turned north past the abandoned quarry and paused to wonder over the stone structure looming over the taril---what was it for? Lime kiln? Support for a (wooden) water tank for the steam locomotives?

There were a few tiny coltsfoot on the barren March ground and as we approached the Quarry Rd. crossing I noted with pleasure that the buzzards are back. All summer they spiral and float along the edge of the escarpment here, riding the rising air waves. There are usually half a dozen or more; today we see two.

There is a new wind generator right next to the trail. One of our member trail workers has installed it behind his house. Though we can feel no breeze at our level on the trail, the blades and turning fast and quietly.

Soon, the trail swings east and we are in the very bottom of a valley drainage, with wetlands and small streams on each side. The stream are the upper waters of Canastota Creek and we marvel how they (in the 1800's) built a railroad here, in a wetland, in the very apex of the valley's drainage. And the sky looked like a laute June sky...

East of Nelson Rd., at the base of the ledges, we found a few hapatica already in bloom. What marvels! We had lunch at the waterfalls on the outlet to the old Canastota Reservoir. Had to believe this was onece the water supply for the village. It'd almost filled with sediment now and is only a pond. Remnants of concrete conglomerate just belwo the dam, and traces of a wagon road on the other side suggest that a road once crossed on the earthen dam.

We were at Mt. Pleasant Rd and our cars before 2 PM, even with the liesurely lunch and stopping to look at marvels along the way.

Winter's last gasp

For more pictures, see the PicasaWeb album for this hike.

Grace and I had an hour or two before sunset, so we decided on a quick hike south from Perryville. At the Freber/Hodge Road trailhead, the white skein of clouds in an azure sky contrasted brilliantly with the brown desolation on the ground. The snow cover had all but melted, leaving the grit and scum of winter amid the remains of last year's wildflowers. The still-green grass had not yet regained its vitality, and this year's shoots had yet to poke up through the litter. Overall it seemed as though the landscape was spent from its exertions in enduring the winter; the promise of spring was certainly in the air, but first it needed a minute to lie, panting and damp, and catch its breath.

As we walked, we saw here and there a last holdout of snow and ice: to our left a strip of white traced the path of a small stream tumbling down through its rocky channel. To our right, the sun turned the occasional rivulet into a vein of flaming brass. An ice stalagmite still stood within the sluice of water pouring down into the ravine near Carey Hill Road. But the mystery of that day's hike lay beneath our feet.


Every few minutes we found a type of animal dropping we'd never seen before. Its shape was much like dog droppings, but its composition reminded me of owl pellets: it was composed mostly of greyish white hair. The more of these we saw, the more it became clear that it was rabbit hair. Then we began finding some with bones. Clearly a species that frequents the trail had been devouring rabbits more or less whole.

Several times during the next day we came back to the topic of the strange droppings: Birds and snakes swallow their prey whole, but there certainly aren't any around here big enough to swallow even a dismembered rabbit. What animal would be big, hasty, and indiscriminate enough not to bother stripping the desirable meat from the rest of the carcass? We were starting to think that it must have been a pack animal like a coyote, and then I did some Googling and found that we were right.

This site has a good picture that matches what we saw. This one mentions that bobcats, like the rest of the cat family, tend to scratch at the ground in order to cover their scat. Since we didn't notice any signs of scratching, this also points to coyotes. The following excerpt from an article on the Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve website further supports our conclusion.

Coyotes are opportunistic omnivores. They eat mice, rabbits, other small animals, insects, lizards, frogs, fruits, berries and along urban fringes, domestic livestock and/or garbage. Often the only sign a hiker sees of the local coyote population is the scat they leave along the trail. Coyote scat are difficult to recognize from fox scat. Coyote can be distinguished primarily by their size - those 3/4" or more and greater than 4" are probably coyote. Scat change seasonally -- during the summer and fall they have more berries. During winter and spring you will often find more small animal bones. Scat usually crumble apart in a few days. Finding scat on the trail indicates a coyote has been in the area recently.

Hikers often ask why scat are found on the trail. The rangers propose two theories. First, coyotes use the trails because they are easier to navigate; the same reason hikers remain on the trails instead of trying to go cross-country. Second, trails make excellent natural territorial boundaries. As such, coyotes use scat to mark them.