(Mostly) Identified Flying Objects

In the skies this week:

Yes, this is a pine tree (Virginia pine, to be precise), but the serviceberries are ripe and the cedar waxwings know it. This photo only shows nine birds, but we've had flocks of 200+ attracted to the berries. I thought it was interesting that the waxwings were almost always in pairs. I guess that means that they are not incubating eggs or attending to hatchlings.

A closer look at three of these beautiful birds. If only they had a voice to match. Their high-pitched squeaks are not particularly pleasant to listen to.

Most days we see at least one great blue heron flying overhead as they travel between their rookery on the Jackson River near Low Moor and the Clifton Forge reservoir.

Two small-ish moths were near the front door a few days ago. The left one is obviously dead (no head!) and is a short-lined chocolate moth (Argyrostrotis anilis). The moth on the right is most likely an orange-patched smoky moth (Pyromorpha dimidiata) - because it's most common in May. But it might be the similar-looking, but unrelated, black-and-yellow lichen moth (Lycomorpha pholus), which is most commonly seen in late summer.

OK - this isn't a flying object, but it is in the sky. Our oldest grandson (age 5) was using his iPad to take photos of the nearly full moon. I wanted to make sure I could take a better picture with my fancier (but honestly, not that much more expensive) camera. It took years, but I've finally figured out how to properly expose the moon.

Faces on the Trees

It all started with a Christmas gift in 2007. We installed two "gnomes" on trees, and by 2021, they had weathered into old familiar friends. When I dug out old photos, I was surprised to see how much they had changed.

December 2007 on the left - May 2021 on the right. It doesn't look like the red maple it's installed on has grown, but we know it has because the screws holding the pieces to the tree have to be backed out about 1/4" every year.

Again, December 2007 on the left and May 2021 on the right. The mossy extras have fallen away, and the tulip poplar died about 4 years ago. The vine is Virginia creeper.

We liked these tree faces, but hadn't come across any more. When I was on Etsy last week, I decided that Etsy might be a good place to search for such things and found "Tree Peeple". (You can also find their website at treepeeple.com or genuinetreepeeple.com.) I ordered four of their tree folk and installed them over the past week. It takes time to select the right tree!

First up was "ShadeMaster", aka John Lennon, in our shade garden. The chestnut oak is a bit small, but it's less than 20 years old. As the tree grows, the face should fit better!

Next up was "Mr & Mrs Who". We thought they would make a nice addition to our "owl tree" - so named because a logging scar looks remarkably like a large owl carved into the tree (left photo). But from even a short distance, the owls just looked like dark brown spots on the tree. So we moved them to  our property entrance (right photo). When we finish our deck addition and remove the building permit, we may move them closer together.

Next up is "Old Man Winter" - I think of him more as a "whistler" (but Tree Peeple has a different whistler). He found a home on a nice oak near our property entrance.

Finally, we found a suitable perch for "Sylvan" on a tulip poplar - it's much easier to drill a hole in poplar than in oak! I think of him as the "tree king". After looking at the King, I think I'm going to have to move the pieces closer together.

The only issue I see now is having to back out screws on five faces rather than just one. (Dead trees don't grow.)

Douthat State Park

Yesterday the Monday Morning Hikers returned to our favorite (and closest) location, Douthat State Park. We hiked up the very familiar Beard's Gap Trail, but then turned right onto Brushy Hollow Trail. (Usually we turn left and take one of several routes back down in the northern part of the park.) This is probably the easiest 1100-ft climb around - a steady but bearable 2-mile uphill.

Near the highest point on Brushy Hollow Trail is a nice view of the Cowpasture River valley to the east. There are several stone benches for resting, and this point is affectionately known as the "Zen Cafe".

Zooming in on the mountains in the distance. (That's the pre-2020 meaning of "zoom".)

A foggy morning would complete this little "fairy house" in the base of the tree.

A closer look at the entrance. I should have brought some sort of small figure to place in the door!

Brushy Hollow trail ends (or begins from another perspective) at the swinging bridge. The bridge definitely needs some repairs/maintenance, but it remains a safe passage over Wilson Creek. Today the water was low and it would have been easy to wade across the creek, but that's not always the case!

More Miscellany

 When you can't find a suitable topic, just file under "miscellaneous". No matter what I'm working on, I seem to have more "miscellaneous" than anything else.

These feathers were in a circle radiating out from a small rock. A quick look at my Feathers book (Bird Feathers, Scott & McFarland, Stackpole Books, 2010 - highly recommended if you are looking for yet another field guide) found them to be from a mourning dove - mostly tail feathers. I can't think of what predator might be on the ground during the day when mourning doves are out. We don't have a domestic cat and it seems unlikely that our resident bobcat(s) and coyotes were out in the daytime. Maybe a hawk? Or maybe a snake? (See below.)

That's not dirt on the lens, but gnats. Ugh! (This photo is from my "Picturepost" series.)

More gnats - looking straight up.

I hadn't thought about snakes until I found this 5-ft long (at least) shedded skin while watering our new winterberry plants. We have a healthy population of black rat snakes - for the last two years we've found hatched eggs in our compost. This is the longest skin we've seen. A snake this long would clearly be capable of eating a mourning dove. I wish it would feast on the mice in our shed instead!

The head portion of the snake skin.

Late Spring Flowers

 Summer is just around the corner, and the flowers of late spring are in full bloom.

The columbine native to eastern North America (Aquilegia candensis) is red and yellow. I planted a patch about 12 years ago, and it has spread by self-seeding.

A couple years later I tossed some mixed columbine seeds into the garden and I now have a variety of colors - blue, yellow, purple, orange. Columbines hybridize fairly easily, each year brings a few new color combinations, along with the old faithful popping up from established roots.

I've been growing pitcher plants for a 12+ years as well. My original "bog barrels" sprung leaks, so last week I combined them into this old copper kettle Lon found while cleaning out an old shed. (So old that the supporting timbers are round black locust logs.) I still need to trim back the plastic sheeting that keeps the kettle water-tight. Pitcher plants like "wet feet" and poor soil - a mix of plain peat moss and sand.

I think pitcher plant flowers are really interesting - they are unlike any other flower.  The pitchers are modified leaves that collect rainwater and trap insects. This is a yellow pitcher plant, Sarracenia flava.

Red pitcher plant, Sarracenia rubra.

Our woods are filled with mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), which is just beginning to bloom.

On our walks I've been collecting seed pods from trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) - waiting until the leaves were wilting. The flower stalk bends over and touches the ground as the pods develop. As my collected pods dried, the seeds were ejected. The seeds were larger than I had expected. The photo above shows the pods (of many different sizes) and seeds on 5mm-grid paper (that's roughly 5 squares to the inch). Today I tossed the pods and seeds into my shade garden. According to my sources, it will take about 4 years before I find out if my efforts were successful.

Oliver Mountain Trail

A little-traveled gem of a trail can be found near Lake Moomaw. While we just hike the first two miles up to the forest service road (and then return), the trail actually continues for several more miles. There are no views, but the woods are pleasant, and there are usually a lot of wildflowers to be seen.

Online information about this trail is mostly inaccurate, but the trail is accurately mapped on USGS topographic maps. You'll need both the Falling Spring and Rucker Gap maps. I use the iOS app, "Topo Maps for iPad", which is also available for the iPhone. Once you get the app, you can download as many maps as you need for free. (These are the un-updated "historical" maps.) It also has some GIS capability. The only tricky part of this trail is finding the trailhead, which is marked, and behind the second stretch of guardrail near the southern end of the Fortney Branch boat ramp parking lot. The Forest Service charges a fee to park here.

The first bit of the trail is along a small creek and can be quite wet. Last year it was soaked, this year it was quite dry. The trail was lined with large patches of wild ginger (Asarum canadense). The flowers were past prime, but I don't recall seeing so much ginger in one place.

We found lots of cancer-root (Conopholis americana) all along the trail. The plant parasitizes tree roots, especially oaks. It is a vascular plant, not a fungus!

The colorful green-and-gold (Chrysogonum virginianum) was common. 

Lots of mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) were along the lower stretch of the trail.

A closer look at the mayapple flower. In a few weeks there will be a yellow "apple" here. All parts of this plant are quite poisonous, but the ripe fruit is apparently edible.

The bicolor form of the birdfoot violet is common here. Its distinctive coloration and un-violet-like leaves make for an easy identification.

Pine-oak gall rust (Cronartium quercuum) on a Virginia pine. When the rust gets to the point where it encircles a branch, that branch will die. The life-cycle requires an intermediate stage on oak leaves.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the hike was finding a hidden veery nest only a few inches from the trail. We never would have seen it if the bird hadn't tried to distract us with an "injured bird" move away from the nest - both on the way up the mountain and on the way back down.

Five speckled eggs were visible in the nest.

Miscellany

While tromping through the woods looking for azaleas, Lon flushed a bird that turned out to be a whip-poor-will. We hear whip-poor-wills every evening after dusk (and early morning before sunrise) - they are LOUD. And I've "spot-lighted" a few in the evening, but this is the first time we've seen one in the daytime. They're ground nesters, so Lon probably came too close to the well-camouflaged nest.

If Lon hadn't seen the bird land on the log, and it hadn't been "fluttering" trying to distract us, we never would have noticed this bump on the log indicated by the yellow arrow.

I was able to get some shots with a telephoto lens. It's much prettier in the day than it is at night when it is just a dark shadow with a reflective eye.

This small bear cub wandered by our game camera one evening. It's considerably smaller than our dog, so it's probably only about 30 to 40 lbs (14 to 18 kg). Mama bear never showed up on the camera, but with a cub this small, she must have been very close by.

Spring is the time for controlled burns - using fire to manage the build-up of leaf litter and small understory trees. The left side of this road (Bear Loop Trail on Nature Conservancy land on top of Warm Springs Mountain) was burned about two weeks earlier. The right side was untouched - excellent control of a controlled burn!

More Spring Botanicals

The trees are approaching full canopy and spring is rapidly becoming summer. But before the last of the dogwoods fade, here are some items of botanical interest - and mostly they add to the beauty of spring in the southern Appalachians.

Bellwort (Uvularia, species not determined).

Dwarf iris (Iris vernal). Unmistakably an iris, but only 4 inches (10 cm) tall.

The pink azalea, aka "pinxterflower", (Rhododendron perclymenoides) blooms for only a short time. It goes from tight buds (left) to spent flowers (right) in about 10 days.

Interrupted fern (Osmunda claytoniana). Here you can see new fiddleheads emerging at the base, while the larger fronds are also showing the development of the spore-bearing leaflets (dark green and light brown) about 2/3 of the way up the frond.

Several of our Virginia pines (Pinus virginiana) have this fungus encircling branches - the Pine-Oak Gall Rust (Cronartium quercuum).

Wildflowers along the Jackson River Scenic Trail

 Monday, 3 May 2021

The Monday Morning Hikers went to the northern end of the Jackson River Scenic Trail this week. We hoped we'd still be able to see late spring wildflowers, and the trail did not disappoint.

Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)

Another patch of columbine.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) is one of my favorites. It is well-camouflaged and easily overlooked.

Large-flowered trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) was found in large patches along the trail. Most commonly the flower is white. There is some disagreement among experts whether the pink flowers are just a variation or are formerly white flowers that turned pink after pollination or as the flowers age.

Viburnum nudum is a small tree in the honeysuckle family (Caprifoliaceae). It is also known as "possumhaw" or "witherod". These were once considered to be two separate species, but have now been collapsed into a single species.

A closer look at the Viburnum flower.

Wild ginger (Asarum canadense) has distinctive glossy heart-shaped leaves.

The flower of wild ginger requires a deep look underneath the leaves for a purple-to-brown cup tucked away on the forest floor.