HC Conservancy - September 2014

I took a walk around the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant farm before a volunteer naturalist training session last week. The walk around the meadow started out cloudy and the temperature was near perfect. I took a picture of the dogwood just beginning to turn to fall colors along the drive to the farm house as I walked from the parking lot.

The sculpture of the owl in the natural play area for children is taking on a darker patina as is weathers.

I took lots of milkweed pictures; the pods are maturing and beginning to split…and lots of milkweed bugs.

The meadow has some fall blooms. Purple is a popular color (thistles and ironweeds and poke weed)

But yellow of goldenrods are overwhelming.

There was a cut up tree trunk along the stone fence that had quite an assortment of shelf fungus.

Along that same stone fence were two snake skins - one hanging from a tree that seemed to be growing roots into its own trunk and another along a tree branch.

A tidy nest was visible in the very young tree - probably fresh from this summer but now abandoned.

And last but not least - a huge caterpillar of a cecropia moth! I’m glad one of my fellow hikers spotted it!

Robins’ Nests

Almost every year a robin nests on the cross beam that supports our deck. Our two cats look down through the deck boards from the half of the deck that is covered - with keen interest but unable to disturb the nest at all.

This year we have 5 nests! Maybe the second and fourth one look a little scruffy - might be left over from last year. But that still leaves 3 that look freshly constructed. The fifth one is the one is on the corner of the deck nearest the garden…so the robin frequently leaves in a hurry and noisy complaint whenever I am gardening.

We are quite a few robins in our neighborhood. The trees in the yards are now 20+ years old and the trees in the forest that extended down to the river behind the neighborhood has trees that are older still. The robins seem to increase in number every year but this is the first time I’ve seen the increase so tangibly: more nests means more robins in the next generation!