New Mexico Finale

On our last full day in New Mexico, we got to the Crane Ponds at Bosque del Apache for our last fly out. The sunrise was brilliantly red and pink looking toward the east

And the colors were only a little muted reflected of the clouds in the west.

It seemed like there were not as many birds on the ponds – although the ducks seemed to be very active with their morning feeding.

The sun came up and I got a last picture of some Sandhill Cranes in the golden sunshine.

We went back to the hotel for breakfast and packing the car to head back to Albuquerque. After lunch, we walked around Petroglyph Nation Monument. We did the three short trails at Boca Negra Canyon. There were petroglyphs of spirals,

And birds (one looks like a duck to me…the other a macaw).

The signage and a book on petroglyphs said that the human figure with the lines flowing downward between the legs is a ‘transition to death’ symbol. I wondered how the ancient peoples depicted birth.

At the highest point on the Boca Negra Canyon trails – there is a view of a Albuquerque housing development! The architecture is quite different from what we see in Maryland.

There were some ruins (low walls) on the highest point as well. Someone had made a cairn in one of the 'rooms'. The stones are volcanic.

The saltbush along the trail was full of seeds.

We drove to the Volcanoes area on the other side of the monument and hiked to an overlook of the Rio Grande Rift Valley – that included a view of downtown Albuquerque.

It was a good way to finish our New Mexico vacation. We headed to our hotel and woke up early the next morning for our flight. The weather surprised us: a gentle rain on the way to the airport.

Desert Arboretum at Bosque del Apache

I spent some time in the Desert Arboretum at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our last full day at the Festival of the Cranes. Almost immediately I spotted a dragonfly that wasn’t sitting still but would pause long enough to be photographed. I was glad to have the extra power of the digital zoom on my new camera.

I also spotted some white-crowned sparrows which I had been told about on one of our tours…but hadn’t seen. They nest in the far north and are only in the US during the winter. They have very distinctive black and white stripes on their heads.

Rather than take pictures of whole cactus plants, I decided to look more closely at the spines. At first, I looked for color.

Then I looked more closely about how the spines were attached to the fleshy part of the cactus. I did a series that zoomed in more and more and discovered that the spines almost look like they pierce the flesh rather than grow out of it!

The image below are some prickly pear spines.

Some spines look sharper than others…or maybe it is the golden color of the spines that make them look more menacing. Again – there is a grayish mass (like a blob of putty) where they go into the cactus flesh.

Enough about spines. There was a gall on one of the plants that reminded me a little of the cedar apple rust gall I’d seen at Mt. Pleasant Farm last spring (described in this post).

The only bloom I saw was a tiny plant that looked like the top had been eaten.

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the yucca pods. Yucca pods have always been one of my favorite seed pods. There are some I harvested about 40 years ago in a dried arrangement at my house!

Elephant Butte Lake State Park

On the Friday morning of our trip to New Mexico, our tour was on a houseboat at Elephant Butte State Park. We were glad that the high winds from the day before had died down – although once we were out on the lake the breeze made for a cold time photographing birds! The movement of the boat also presented a challenge too. We saw Western Grebes near the dock and out on the lake; the picture below is near the dock.

The picture below is of a Clark’s Grebe (there is white in front of the eye and the bill is brighter yellow). Note that the water is a lot rougher in this picture….it was out on the lake.

There were American coots near the dock as well and some were close enough to photograph while the morning sun was still coloring the water.

Brewer’s Blackbirds frequented the dock area too. This male posed on gate – making it easy to photography him calling and staring at me!

American White Pelicans were out and about on the lake. They were very far away so I was using the zoom on my camera to photography them.

After I got back to hotel and looked at my pictures on a larger screen, I noticed one of the ‘pelican pictures’ had cormorants in it!

There were cormorants on one of the mounds of tires used as breakwaters around the docks. Note the Clark’s Grebe in the picture too.

After returning to the dock and having lunch, we headed out to the park below the dam. Evidently the area is usually teaming the birds but all we saw the day we were there was a male Pyrrhuloxia – and I was frustrated that this was the best picture I could get. He definitely was not posing for us.

It was a good day trip – and very different from our experience at Bosque del Apache.

The VLA at Night

Two weeks ago today, my husband went back to the Very Large Array for an evening of photography (see earlier post here for out tour of the VLA during the day). The class was double the usual size because one of the previous nights had been cloudy – i.e. the whole point was to get stars in the photograph and that couldn’t happen on a cloudy evening. They had a short lecture to explain the process and then headed out to position themselves around the same radio telescope that we saw during the day.

They took pictures with 30 second exposures so that the stars were still points of light rather than trails…and the dish was ‘light painted’ during that time so it would be clearly visible in the pictures.

The sky is very dark in that part of New Mexico and the Milky Way looked more like I remember it as a child. My husband was pleased with most of the pictures he got and he picked his favorite for me to include with this post.

If we go to the Festival of the Cranes at Bosque del Apache again, he’ll take the advanced version of the course!

Third Day at Bosque del Apache

High winds were forecast for our third day at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge Festival of the Cranes. We had signed up for the ‘Walk Out to Fly Out’ bus so we were up at 4 AM again and at the refuge shortly after 5. The bus left at 5:30. It took us to a parking area on the wildlife loop and then we walked back into a managed wetland on dikes…not normally open for hiking. Everything was quiet when we first got there and we realized that we’d be facing the sunrise rather than having it at our backs like it was at the Crane Ponds.

Something (a coyote?) startled the snow geese and many of them flew up prior to sunrise. I liked this picture of their silhouettes and the curly clouds from the winds – high aloft and at ground level.

Some cranes flew over a little later. Note how different they look from the snow geese and how the feathers at the tips of their wings splay.

Somehow the bird in the center of this picture reminds me of how primitive birds are depicted. Cranes have a long lineage…and they are big. They may have more in common with early birds like robins and chickadees.

What not to like about cranes backlit by flaming colors of sunrise!

We drove around the wildlife loop after our tour wondering how the brisk winds would impact the cranes. There were some feeding in the fields. The light was right to see a lot of feather definition in these birds (click on the image below and see a larger version).

We saw mallards in one of the canals. I chose the best picture I got of the male – with the glossy green head.

And then we went back to the hotel for naps since the wind was brutal and we knew we were going to have a later evening because we’d signed up for an Owling Expedition.

When we returned to the refuge in mid-afternoon, we discovered that the location of our lecture and dinner had been moved from the Expo Tent to a Refuge building. The tent had been closed because of the wind! It had calmed down a little by that time and we hoped it would stay calm for our evening outdoors. After an interesting lecture and a hearty dinner buffet, we headed out to 4 vans. We were looking for three types of owls: western screech, great horned, and barn. The one we saw most clearly was a Western Screech Owl. My husband got this picture! I was used to seeing the red morph of the Eastern Screech Owl (Belle, the owl at the Howard County Conservancy’s Belmont Nature Center) so I was surprised at the coloring being most grays and browns.

We saw the great horned owl in a tree top – just before it flew onward.

The Barn Owl we heard…but didn’t see.  The wind had picked up again and we declared ‘success’…headed back to the Visitors Center.

Ten days of Little Celebrations – November 2016

So many little celebrations – it was hard to choose just 10!

There is always a lot of good food in November:

Thanksgiving was celebrated with our tradition of brisket cooked in the crock pot…but I enjoyed two new sides even more: a slaw made with Napa Cabbage, beet noodles and crystalized ginger (homemade cranberry relish and olive oil dressing) and butternut squash mousse (following the recipe for pumpkin mousse found here – sort of…I substituted unsweetened coconut for the banana).

Graham crackers have become my ‘comfort food’ for my afternoon snack or in the evening. I like the ‘originals’ the best and celebrate that they are still available!

Pomegranates are in season. They are so beautiful and their season meshes very well with Thanksgiving and Christmas. They have become part of my tradition in those big celebrations.

Being home again after travelling was worth celebrating too:

A red-tailed hawk visited our backyard after we returned from New Mexico and I managed to get a picture when the bird sat for a bit in our tulip poplar tree. I celebrated my new camera’s ability to get the picture…and that the bird was around. But I don’t want it to stay around all the time because I like the little birds that come to the bird bath and the feeder!

The Modern World, Part Two is the Coursera course I am viewing this month. I’d taken Part I way back in 2013! I celebrated when I found this one in the Coursera catalog because I’ve always thought my basic knowledge of history since 1900s was patchy.

The trip to New Mexico had so many celebrations…but I managed to pick just 5:

Birds that I had not seen (or maybe had not noticed) before worth celebration: Grebes and Brewers Blackbirds and Pyrrhuloxia to name a few. I should count each new (to me) bird is a little celebration all by itself!

Sandhill Cranes silhouetted by the sunrise…the image, the luck to catch it, just being at Bosque del Apache.

Wild Turkeys in action. Turkey being stately is one think…turkey running down the road to catch up with their cohort…I celebrated their quick analysis of their situation and seeing them move in hurry!

Macro Photography of Cactus. I haven’t gotten around to posting the pictures yet…but I celebrated how well my camera worked in the small botanical garden at Bosque del Apache.

Petroglyph National Monument. I had read a book before I left for New Mexico about petroglyphs in the southwest and celebrated being the place (near Albuquerque) to see some. They’ll be a topic of an upcoming post as well.

The Very Large Array (VLA)

On our second afternoon in New Mexico we drove out to the Very Large Array (radio astronomy observatory). It is located about 50 miles west of Socorro, NM where our hotel was located. It took us a little over a hour to drive there from the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge where we had been in the morning (see yesterday’s post about the morning’s activities). It was a scenic drive through the Magdalena Mountains. We had opted to make the trek when we did because the forecast for the next day was for high winds.

As we drove into the parking lot – there was a sign telling us to turn off any cell phones or electronic devices. The first picture I took was of a tile in the bathroom --- a stylized image of a radio telescope disk.

The VLA is made of 27 25-meter radio telescopes in a Y-shaped array. They radio telescopes can be moved along a Y shaped track. They were not in the tightest configuration while we were there so it was hard to get more than one at a time in a picture. During our tour, the telescopes were running a maintenance protocol and the dishes moved.

I was surprised how some of the equipment was in boxes on landing under the dish!

A few days later, my husband went back to the VLA at night and got some excellent pictures of the stars with a radio telescope in the foreground. I’ll post about that some other time.

Second Morning at Bosque del Apache

We signed up for and early morning ‘Bosque del Apache Hot Spots and Elusive Birds’ tour that started at 5:30 AM on our second morning at the Festival of the Cranes. That meant me had to leave our hotel before 5…and it was cold. The tour participates and our guide climbed on the bus and were at Crane Ponds before 6 – well before dawn. The goal was to see the sandhill cranes and snow geese ‘fly out’ of their roosting area (in the water) to feeding areas in the fields in and around the refuge during the day. The action took place in less than an hour. The slide show below includes the time ordered images – once it got light enough for my camera to work reasonably well.

There was almost no wind so the reflections were good. I photographed a cottonwood tree repeatedly. The two pictures below are about 25 minutes apart…the pinks before dawn and the yellow light after.

There were other birds on the ponds too. The two pictures below are a female and male Northern Shoveler. The female is peeking out from behind pond vegetation…in the orangey reflections after sunrise. By the time I photographed the male about 30 minutes later, the magic of morning light was gone.

There were Canadian Geese on the ponds too – a familiar bird to us and not as numerous as at Bosque as where we live in Maryland.

A last picture at the ponds before we headed back to the Visitor Center for breakfast: the mountains reflected in the Crane Pond. If you look toward the top of the image, you’ll see the moon peeking out from behind a cloud.

After warming up while we ate breakfast, it was back on the bus. The Great Blue Heron we saw in one of the irrigation canals is so consistently present that the refuge staff has informally named him: Hank. The herons are not as prevalent at Bosque del Apache as we’ve seen in places like Conowingo Dam in Maryland…but another familiar bird to us.

Another familiar bird was surprise for me: an Eastern Bluebird. Evidently there are both eastern and western bluebirds on the refuge but the Eastern ones are more common in November…and this one looks more like an Eastern Bluebird to me!

And I got a picture of the legs on the Yellowlegs in one of the ponds.

There was a red-tailed hawk in one of the snags. It is a little too far away to be a ‘good’ picture but the distinctive patter on the breast make it good enough for identification.

There was a coyote watching Sandhill Cranes feeding. The predator was keeping its distance from the big birds.

I couldn’t resist some more zoomed shots of cranes. The red color on their head is such a vivid mark.

Our guided tour took us down a refuge road that is not part of the wildlife loop; the road was called ‘turkey road’ and we did see turkeys! They were come out of a path onto the road. As soon as they noticed the group of people taking pictures – they ran in the opposite direction! The turkey further back in line ran the hardest when they got out on the road and realized their ‘friends’ were so far away.

Then we turned around and saw another group of turkeys behind the bus. We must have seen about 50 birds just from that one vantage point.

It was quite a morning. We had excellent barbeque sandwiches from a food truck for lunch then headed out to our afternoon adventure...that’s the topic for tomorrow post.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 26, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Unlock a New Way of Seeing the World as a Master Naturalist – I became a Master Naturalist in Maryland a few years ago and enjoyed the process and the aftermath of activities. This article was written by someone in training to be a Master Naturalist in Oregon. She is having a similar experience. The honing of the training by each state translates the broader textbooks to a local level – things that are where we live.

Can you Trust Calorie Counts? – Evidently calorie counts on food labels or on display in restaurants are not monitored…it is an honor system…and they are chronically low! Yet another reason to prepare and it mostly whole foods.

Well-Being at Work – An infographic about the components of an ideal day….inserting physical activity throughout a work day.

Paleo chocolate pudding – This looks yummy – and easy to make – with an avocado, cocoa powder, honey, and vanilla. I’m going to try it as soon as we finish off the butternut squash mousse I made for Thanksgiving.

A Better Treatment for Insomnia – Cognitive Based Therapy for Insomnia can be delivered in several ways….and has been endorsed by the American College of Physicians for initial treatment of chronic insomnia. This article has good links to find out more about it.

Colds: 14 Expert Answers on Prevention, Relief, and More – It’s the time of year that colds become more prevalent. My husband and I are pleased that we got to and from New Mexico without getting a cold. We used hand sanitizers….and were not sitting near anyone that was obviously sick!

Dementia on the downside, especially among people with more education, study finds – A positive trend!

Owls: A Guide to Every Species in the World – We enjoyed the owl lecture and field trip at Bosque del Apache…so I was glad to see this post from National Geographic when I got home.

Searching for Whoopers: New Report Showcases Gulf of Mexico Migrants – Maybe we’ll go to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge next fall…I’d like to see whooping cranes!

Photography in the National Parks: Focus on the Eyes, Focus on the Light – Two areas to think about during photo shoots. I always count a bird photo as ‘good’ if the eye is in focus!

First Day at Bosque del Apache

We made a leisurely tour of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge on our first day (November 13) – not trying to get there in time for the fly out which happens at sunrise. We’d arrived at our hotel after dark the day before and took in the scene of the Magdalena Mountains to the west – and the moon -  from our hotel parking lot as we got ready to go to the refuge for the first time.

After a quick stop at the refuge’s visitor center, we drove around the wildlife loop. There were flooded fields and one of the first birds I saw was a yellowlegs – a bird I’d also seen on the west coast.

Cattails were also prevalent.

There were lots of crows that moved around together as we took a short hike.

A train came through.

I was so focused on photographing the train that I was startled by two javelinas coming toward me! After they crossed the path, I managed to get a picture of them as they continued to move away.

We saw sandhill cranes feeding in the field. The sometimes raise their necks and heads straight up and make lots of noise…and they ‘dance’ too.

I was close enough to zoom in to get a picture of vegetation through the nostrils of a sandhill crane (nostrils are on the upper part of the bill)!

There were many Northern Pintail Ducks on the ponds

And American Coots

And Northern Shovelers (male and female)

And Buffleheads which are notoriously hard to photograph because they go under the water so frequently

And turkeys

And two morphs of snow geese (white and blue, they are distinguished from the Ross’s goose by the dark mark on their bill).

The cottonwoods were still full of yellow leaves since the weather had been mild until the later part of the week we were there.

It was a lot to see in one day!

Coyote Gets a Duck

On our last full day at Bosque del Apache (last Saturday) Festival fo the Cranes, there was quite a drama as we drove around the north loop at midafternoon. It started with a scene that looked peaceful in one of the farm fields with cranes and ducks enjoying the bounty.

Then, off the right we noticed a coyote heading into the taller vegetation toward the back of the field. He disappeared into the small ditch and taller grass.

Suddenly, the ducks panicked and rose all at once off the ground

Leaving the coyote standing where they had been a few seconds earlier. The cranes were still nearby – all turned toward the coyote.

The coyote put his catch on the ground and shook away the water and

Then turned his attention back to the duck – seemingly a little surprised at his luck.

A crow confronted the coyote…but had no luck getting closer to the duck. Perhaps if there had been a lot more crows they could have convinced the coyote to share...but the one could only do a bit of harassing.

The coyote picked up his prey and headed back to the taller grass.

The cranes and the crow – continued to watch while the coyote ate.

And the ducks returned to the field to continue their feeding as well.

Stay tuned for other Bosque del Apache posts in the days ahead.

Home Again

We returned home yesterday after a week in New Mexico at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge’s Festival of the Cranes. So many photographs….they’ll come out in blog posts over the next few weeks. We had early mornings at the refuge to see the cranes and snow geese take off from wetlands where they roost as the sun came up…and a few programs that were in the dark at the end of the day to see owls and for my husband to make a side trip to the Very Large Array Radio Telescope for stars and radio disk photography. We stayed in Socorro, NM and flew in and out of Albuquerque.

We drove from Socorro to Albuquerque on Sunday because our flight on Monday was early. I was reminded again of how much I like the ‘highway art’ of the area with the mountains, buttes and arroyos….the blue and terracotta of the overpasses…a Kachina themed sculpture… and a rabbit pebble mosaic on an embankment.

The airport is New Mexico specific too with sculpture and Black Mesa coffee.

The theme continues with the tile in the bathrooms…and I appreciated that they seemed to be cleaner than most airport bathrooms and that the stall doors opened outward (easier when you have roll aboard luggage in tow)!

We got home by mid-afternoon to a cold and breezy Baltimore. Today is grocery day….to buy all the fixings for our Thanksgiving feast!

Zooming – November 2016

November is my second month with my new camera (Canon PowerShot SX720 HS). My earlier posts this month have used a lot of zoomed images…but I’m sharing 7 in this post that are new. The first is an immature milkweed bug. See the stubs where the wings will be in a later instar? In October, I thought they would gone by November but the weather stayed reasonably warm and there were still green milkweed pods well into the month. Some of the bugs probably didn’t make it to maturity before the first frost.

November included the brightest fall color this year. I like the light shining through these maple leaves.

The Bald Cypress cones were more obvious against the rusty brown of the foliage being shed this time of year.

Ferns have sporangia on their underside; these reminded me of the dots on dominos.

Inside the conservatory at Brookside the banana plant had maturing fruit.

I’m not sure what this is…but it is growing (and blooming) in the Brookside Gardens conservatory.

I discovered Virginia Creeper growing on the brick in front of my house. It is turned red with the cooler temperatures.

Gleanings of the Week Ending November 19, 2016

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

The past, present and future of the food we eat – Short…interesting…dystopian future from my perspective and one that a good number of people are trending counter to.

Open Parks Network – A collaboration between Clemson University and the National Park Service to digitize materials from our national parks, historic areas and other protected areas.

Learning in the Age of Digital Distraction – Thought provoking. Has our ancient food-foraging survival instinct evolved into an info-foraging obsession? An interview with neurologist  and professor at the University of California, San Francisco that is one of the authors of a new book: The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World.

High hospital profits hurt medicine, expert argues – Yet another reason our medical costs are spiraling upward…and our healthcare not improving.

10 Weird Way You Could Be Spreading Invasive Species – The bolded text says ‘running shoes’ but the picture shows hiking boots…any outdoor gear needs to be cleaned after each outing…no weed seed hitch hiking allowed.

Interactive Periodic Table Reveals Exactly How We Use All Those Elements – A little chemistry lesson…at the elemental level!

Vibrant Maps Beautifully Visualize the Feather-like Flow of Rivers Across the World – Educational…and eye candy. Look how big the Mississippi river basin is!

How land use change affects water quality, aquatic life – Evidently static water levels in small lakes and impoundments…a goal of current approaches to dealing with excess water…fish production declines over time.

The Human Virome – Infographic. There are viruses almost everywhere in our body! Most of the time they help – just like the bacteria that we carry with us – but the can turn pathogenic.

One in six women diagnosed with breast cancer has a symptom other than a lump – That 17% - and some of these ‘symptoms’ were new to me. Why aren’t they publicized more?

Outside at Brookside – November 2016

On the day I went to photograph mums at Brookside Gardens, I also made my normal loop walk around the gardens. The first segment is the boardwalk between the conservatory parking lot and the Nature Center. The boardwalk was dusted with leaves. The ferns were still green but the thick undergrowth that blocked the view of the Cyprus knees further along had died and they were visible again as they will be until next spring when the skunk cabbage grows again.

I was there early enough that the sunlight cast a warm glow on the stones of the scent garden.

There were robins – looking a little scruffy – looking for food in the leaves.

I took pictures of single leaves on the ground all along the way and they are included in the slide show below. Can you identify the maple, several oaks, tulip poplar, redbud and gingko?

A gingko was dropping its leaves quickly and there were drifts of them along the path.

The Japanese tea house overlooks the pond – this time without geese or turtles around.

There were some surprise bulbs blooming - perhaps a fall crocus.

Many of the leaves had already fallen but there were some swaths of color.

Here’s a path that has an ‘icing’ of leaves (mostly maple) to top of mulch.

Some oaks have leaves that look very red in bright sunlight but brown on the ground. The light was bringing-out-the-red on this tree.

On the path – within sight of the conservatory again – a squirrel made enough noise in the leaves for me to notice and was still while eating an acorn….I took the picture.

The gingko near the conservatory seemed to have more leaves than the one I’d walk by earlier. Some were still tinged green.

In a pot – someone had stacked a small pumpkin on a larger white one…a little cairn like we saw a few weeks ago in State College.

There was some lantana blooming nearby and a skipper was enjoying a meal.

There is always something new to see at Brookside.

Photographs Through a Window – November 2016

November has been a good month for photography through my office window. The crows come to look for things in our gutters.

House finches come for water (this one is a male).

There was a purple finch (female) that visited too – seemingly very nervous.

There were bluebirds too – two days in a row. The second day was colder and the feathers are fluffed to keep the bird warmer.

The Carolina Wren is still around. The noises it makes in the fall are quite different than the spring song.

The bird I got the most excited about was a Northern Flicker (yellow shafted) that was in the maple tree long enough to get several pictures.

The blue jays have been around (very noisy)…but have not settled for long enough for me to photograph.

The squirrel has visited our deck several times and I suspect that the bird feeder is the attraction. It is supposed to be squirrel proof and – so far – has not been dumped. One squirrel figured out how to do it last spring….but so far the area under the feeder has remained free of large amounts of seed.

Usually we do have leaves on the roof --- but the leaves are swirling and it rained, so we have a few that are temporarily stuck: tulip poplar and maple. They dry out soon and be blown away (hopefully not into the gutter).

Mums at Brookside Gardens

The conservatory at Brookside Gardens is filled with mums – the flower of fall. I always enjoy photographing the vivid colors and curves of the petals. I try to go early in November because I know they’ll be setting up the model train in the same conservatory later in the month.

The spider mums are some of my favorite. Sometimes the petals remind me of fiddleheads (of ferns) because they unfurl from a compressed spiral. I like the space between the petals as much as the density of the center.

Sometimes the colors are so bright they are almost blinding.

The shape of these petals is rolled at the center – an open flared at the tips. It could serve as a design for a vase or a neckline.

Some of the very large mums seem to have petals that will unfurl for a long time. One of the great things about mums is the length of time the flowers last – looking great the whole time.

I always think the curly petals on the outer edge are the most interesting.

Centennial Park – November 2016

The walk at Centennial Park was full of fall color a week ago when I took these pictures. I took a lot of pictures with the reflections of trees in the water. The leaves on many of the tallest trees like tulip poplar had already lost a lot of their leaves but the maples and sweet gums – the reds – were still plentiful and the beeches provides some yellow. The oaks still had some green. My favorite of these pictures is the one that include the rocks that are beside the boat launch; they break up the reflection with their smoothed surfaces.

Then zoomed in on some leaves – maple

And oak.

There were also seed pods along the shore of the lake that I recognized – goldenrod

And Queen Anne’s Lace.

Every time I go to the park there is something to photograph….this time is was ‘fall.’ (Last time it was ‘birds’.)

Of Milkweed and Milkweed Bugs

Most of the milkweed pods have released their seeds over the past month. I enjoyed photographing them in the sunlight and

In a staged setting of cut plant (it was blocking the path for the trick or treaters to my front door). The seeds are tightly packed and are usually released a few at time with each little breeze. If it rains, the fluff often becomes so matted that the seeds are bound together and eventually fall to the ground near the parent plant.

The milkweed bugs are out on warm afternoons all during this time – feeding on the pods before they open and then on the seeds. This year they were plentiful in the first week of November – with all stages of their bug development. (Note: the small yellow critters are aphids....they seem to enjoy the milkweed at the same time as the bugs but are on stems and leaves rather than the seed pods).

And then they were gone for this season. The milkweed and the bugs are ready for winter.

Seeing Trees as Individuals

Often we see trees as a group – a forest…and not as individuals. There are three in my backyard that I see as individuals even though they are closely associated with other trees. I can see all three from my office window. The first is a red maple. The first picture was taken on Halloween through my office window over the roof of our covered deck.

The next was taken from the ground in our backyard about a week later. Its leaves had started to fall by that time. It is not a forest tree. Our neighbor planted it on his side of the property line before we moved into our house over 20 years ago. But the tulip poplars and beech trees of the forest provide a yellow backdrop to this trees red foliage. It survived a large grape vine that grew from the forest into its crown before I took my big pruners into the forest and cut the vine at ground level about 10 years ago, annual deer munching on its lower branches in the winter and spring, and being squished by some pines and an oak before they were cut down. It is a survivor.

I enjoy its shape and color…all through the year: the red stems of late winter, the tiny red flowers, the new leaves that start out red then turn green, the red samaras that turn brown and fly off the tree, the lush green of summer, and then the mixture of red and green leaves that fly off the tree in the fall – usually in one week.

The section tree is a tulip polar. It is at the edge our forest. It has never been as straight and many of the others of its kind in the forest. It never has been. I think I like it more for its imperfections.

This year the tree seemed to have many flowers in the spring and they must have been fertilized because there are large number of seed pods now.

The tulip polar leaves turn brown very quickly once they fall from the tree. I always feel lucky to find one that still has some green. The first year we moved into our house, on the first of November, the leaves were flying off the tulip polar with every breeze. They are at least a week later this year.

The last tree that I see as an individual in my backyard is the newest. It is a black walnut and a relatively recent addition. In this jumbled picture – it is in the middle with the stems containing multiple leaflets – yellow and green as it changes for the winter. It came up on its own, probably planted by a squirrel. I didn’t realize it was a black walnut until last year when it had two nuts on it.

About 5 years ago I had cut honey suckle and grape vines off a small tree in that area but I didn’t know what kind of tree it was at the time. Now the crown gets sun late in the day in our neighbor’s backyard and the lower part gets sun from late morning onward in our yard. Its tall enough now that the deer can’t hurt it very much. So – I am watching to see how soon it will perturb the forest around it. Black walnuts make space for themselves once they have a good start and this one is getting close to the size that it will have that impact.