Day 11: Carl and the Beavers

Last night was an exciting excursion with my advisory from graduate school, Carl Brett. Carl is visiting to give a talk this week for our Evolutionary Studies seminar on Monday night. I picked Carl up at the airport in Albany and we grabbed a bite at Denny's before we headed back to New Paltz. When we got home I gave Carl a pair of my old boots and we headed out to the pond. We looked for fish a bit and we found a number of bigger and smaller crappie. After a few yards we spotted another fish but this one was a nice pickerel. It was about a foot long or a bit more and I got some good pictures of it. It seems it was sleeping in the shallow water in some longer pond grass. I touched it with a stick and it didn't move so I moved into grab it and it darted away as fast as could be.

From here Carl and I continued around the pond to the outlet and the out to Black Creek. We didn't see any frogs or toads but we did hear a number of peepers across the creek. I am figuring it has been a bit cold for the last week or so and when it starts to warm up again I'm hoping they will come back. Carl was quite interested in the potential of seeing some of the beavers that live out in the creek so I suggested we continue down stream to see the beaver lodge that I had seen from my kayak last fall. This is a bit farther than I'd gone along the stream before and it was worth the slog through the mud.

We saw a number of what I call the beaver canals that head into the wooded edges from the

main creek. We saw lots of nice beaver footprints and heaps of beaver-chewed sticks. Eventually we came right up to the lodge and, boy, it's a big one! The lodge is about 10-15' in diameter and at least 4'high above the creek. There is a deep inlet along the north edge of the lodge that we dipped a stick into and it went down at least 5' before it touched the bottom. Carl and I inspected the lodge and it was very well built and quite strong. As we continued downstream we saw a number of trees the beavers had tried to eat a while back and the trees' bark had grown over the beaver scars.

Finally, we got down to where the abandoned road crossed over Black Creek. It seems my road, South Riverside Road, used to connect with Ose Road to the east and the concrete bridge is still

there along with some slumped macadam paving. I have always like to walk down abandoned roads as I like to imagine what the world would look like if one day we were just all gone, sort of a Postman situation (one of my favorite Kevin Costner movies, yes I know it's just Water World on land, but I still like it...Tom Petty has a sweet cameo). We walked down to the bridge which is still in pretty good shape and then back towards my place. Turns out there is a very nice stone wall in the woods along what looks like an old driveway into our little complex. All in all this was a fun night and it was great to have Carl along, he is a good spotter of wildlife and knows heaps of stuff. Again, if anybody else ever wants to come along for a walk, just let me know.

Day 10: Long Island, a mouse and some scat

Again, sorry for the delay in writing, I was down on Long Island this week for a conference and didn't have much of a chance to write/get out and see stuff. This is not totally true, however. On the way down, I spotted a number (>5) woodchucks along the NYS Thruway. It seemed to me that as I went south they woodchucks got redder and redder in color, ranging from a dark brown up in Ulster Co. to a nice reddish-chestnut color down in Rockland Co. I also had the distinct pleasure of visiting a colleague of mine who teaches Geology at Hofstra University. He very kindly invited me over to his house and the family has a nice little pond/waterfall set-up with three turtles (two Red Eared Sliders and a Chicken Turtle, a southern species they got from the Herpetologist on campus), a number of koi, Sunfish, and Largemouth Bass, and some Green Frogs. After some fun games with the kids and a wonderful dinner, I got to meet the pet Corn Snake, Ella, and the pet Guinea Pig as well. My friend then took me back to the hotel where I fell asleep by 10:30pm; the earliest I've gone to bed in months.

Last night Toph (see Day 5) and I visited another colleague of mine from New Paltz and searched for stuff in the woods behind her house. Supposedly there had been a stream down behind her house a few days ago and she had heard some frogs down here, but it seems that it had dried up by the time Toph and I got there. Immediately upon exiting the car, we saw a White Tailed Deer run across the road and down into my friend's neighbor's yard. We eventually made our way down into the woods and found a number of dark, almost black colored slugs crawling in the now mostly dry stream-bed. Additionally, we found another terrestrial flatworm, these guys seem to be EVERYWHERE in our area. Finally, we made our way back up to the house and perhaps the best thing we saw all night was Tex the Cat. Tex has a nice little Tuxedo-like coat and was quite interested in why two random guys were under his porch at 12:30am on a Wednesday night...obviously Tex doesn't know me very well yet.

Tonight I went out by the pond at my place again and I was rewarded with some new sights and sounds. First off I saw a couple of biggish Sunfish in about 1' of water along the edge of the pond.

While I was watching them something darted past my peripheral vision and I turned to find a cute brown-gray mouse with dark little eyes running into the grass. I followed the mouse around a bit and snapped several good pictures. At one point the mouse ran right into the water and swam for a few feet along the edge of the shore, too cute! It was also a bit of a windy night and the big Willow tree next to our pond was making some nice creaking noises. Tonight was a great night to listen to the wind in the reeds/trees/grass... very soothing and a good lesson in being quiet to hear everything you can. Oh, and I saw what I think was a little Box Turtle near the outlet of the pond.

Eventually I made my way out to the main stream and found some fresh evidence of beavers along the banks. There were lots of gnawed twigs and branches along with some nice little 'canals' off of the main stream the beavers are making to access the trees that lie some distance away from the stream. Beavers are known to enter and exit the stream at the same spot each time and often dig little lateral canals to ease bringing tasty branches back to their dens. Finally, I spotted some nice scat along a log going down into the creek. After trying to figure out just what animal had happened by here, I have come to the conclusion from the picture that there were probably 3 animals here, at least one was a Raccoon, another was probably either another Raccoon or a Skunk maybe, and the third was maybe a Mink. I am totally not sure of this but I'm trying to do my best here. In closing I would like to thank the student who asked me in the hallway today if I was going to post something new on my blog soon, it's nice to know someone reads this stuff!

Above: Top Left-Beaver sticks; Top Righ-Beaver canal; Bottom Left-Scat; Bottom Right-Mouse

Day 9: Night Hike up Overlook

I have been rather remiss with this the last couple of night, but there's a pretty good reason. Saturday night I went for a night hike up Overlook Mt. just outside of Woodstock, the same hill I hiked a week or so ago during the day. This hike is a lot different during the night, just as fun, but different. I got to the trail head at about 10:30pm and found out that I only had the smallest of headlamps with me, one that clipped onto my hat consisting of one LED. Since this light didn't put out too much light I figured I would try and do the hike in the dark, and let me tell you it was pretty dark, no clouds to diffuse city lights to the east and no moon either. The trail up the hill is as wide as a single-lane road so the going was relatively easy and I could see the sky over the trail and there was very little chance of tree limbs poking me in the eyes.

It was a BEAUTIFUL night for a hike and I'd tried to invite some friends along but no one was up for it. This was a bit of a downer at first, but in the end it was quite nice to take a walk like this on my own for a number of reasons...quiet contemplation, self-awareness, no need to talk, time to do what I wanted, etc. I set off at a pretty good clip for an entirely uphill walk and made

only two real rest-stops, each of about 2-5 minutes. Today I read that these are the perfect length of stops to take on a hike as you loose about 70% of the lactic acid built up in your muscles in the first 5 minutes of your rest. The first big stop I made was when I reached the abandoned hotel near the top of the mountain, about 2 miles from the trail head. I took several pictures of the outside of the hotel here, but I didn't go inside. Going inside the hotel can be a bit dicey at night and since I didn't have anyone with me I decided against it.

From the hotel I made my way around the side and continued on up the trail to the Fire Tower, about 0.5 miles farther on. This part of the hike is fun as you can see the lights of the Hudson Valley off to the east. I made it up to the Fire Tower, which is 60' tall and in quite nice shape, at about 11:50 pm. I have never been here during the day when the top of the tower is open, but you can still climb up the stairs to just below the observation platform. I went up the tower and the view was excellent as it was a totally clear night. I could see all the way from Albany to the north down to Newburg in the south with Catskill, Saugerties, and Kingston right out in front. It was a bit windy but I managed to take a number of pictures of the city lights in the valley below.

Eventually I climbed down and decided to take some pictures of the stars that were absolutely beautiful. I had brought my tripod for my camera and set the exposure to 15 seconds, the limit

of my camera. I got some nice pictures of the Big Dipper as well as several other stars. At this point I had been up here for about a half an hour and decided it was time to start my trek down the mountain. I decided that I would not make any stops on the way down and I am happy to say I did just that. I always think this is a longer walk down than it is up the hill on this hike, which is normally not the case. I believe this is because the trail is quite twisty and at nearly every turn after about halfway down I think I'm going to get to the car. In any event I did make it down and got to the car at about 1:10 am or so. All in all this was a great hike and I highly suggest it to anyone, be it during the day or night...in best case, do both.

Finally, the reasons I haven't written in the last day or two are the following: Saturday night I was just too shot to write when I got back around 2 am. Additionally, I have since then developed a rather nasty case of poison ivy from crawling around by the creek in shorts and I haven't gone out in the last two nights. I just didn't feel up to writing since I hadn't been out and I decided not to write until I finished this post about the Overlook hike.

Day 8: Bats, Mice, and Worms

Today was quite a day. We had a very interesting all-faculty meeting at school today where we discussed some contentious issues and a quorum was called leading to the end of the meeting. After this I took a number of scouts from the local troop caving up in Kingston. In the cave we saw only one bat, but luckily it didn't seem to have the White Nose Syndrome that has infected so many of our local bats. It was a mighty fun trip and the boys seemed to have quite a good time. While I was driving home from school tonight a mouse ran in front of my car, it made it all the way across the road, it was pretty cute.

Tonight was a might colder than yesterday and a bit blustery as well. Walking outside at night for a week should have prepared me better for tonight's walk, but when the wind was blowing strong at times it was a bit unnerving, probably b/c I couldn't hear as well as I'd liked I believe. As with last night, I made my way out to the main stream of Black Creek but I didn't see as much wildlife as last night. The peepers were still out in strength, almost more them it seemed than last night, but the toads were noticeably missing from the chorus. Also, the Pickerel Frogs were out, but their call was slower and longer than last night when it was warm. The water had risen a few inches after the thunder storm we'd had last night so it was a bit harder going to get to the stream.

As it was colder than last night, I decided to call it an early night, but not before I stopped along the pond inlet-stream to check the shallows and the bank. I don't think I've ever seen so many worms in one spot! There were at least 50 worms in a square foot of stream bank. They were all quite small, but still that was a lot of worms. It made me think about how many worms there would be in the yard burrowing through the soil. I can now see why Darwin spent the last years of his life studying these amazing creatures. Just to try and contemplate the massive amount of organic matter that passes through these animals is beyond imagining. Along with the earthworms on the bank there was another of those great terrestrial flatworms. This one was bigger than the one I'd seen the other night. After a full week of taking night walks I have to say the only downside is that I have a number of bug-bites and perhaps a small case of Poison Ivy. I'd say that is well worth the opportunities I have had this last week.

Day 7: Snapping Turtles and Toads

Tonight is probably the last night of warm weather here for a while so I spent a little extra

time out and went a bit farther afield than normal, making my way out to the main channel of Black Creek. As with most nights, I started at the pond and looked along the shore while I went. I heard a few frogs and saw a bunch of mayfly larvae and an adult mayfly as well. I was extra excited to see a medium-sized turtle swimming down into the mud near the pond's outlet; I really like turtles. At this point I decided to go out and see if I could find some of the toads I was hearing.

Toads have a quite different sound from frogs. Frogs have a repeating croak with 'rests' in between whereas toads have a sustained, trilling note. It took me a bit to get out to the edge of

the stream, hopping from tuft to tuft of grass and walking on fallen logs to see if I could find any toads. I had to be quiet for a while to get the toads to start singing again, it took about 10 minutes or so. I also found that the frogs and toads would swim over to my light after a while. It was quite cute to see the frogs and toads swim across the stream right up to the end of the log on which I was standing. The toads were fun to watch when they were singing. They inflate their neck into a big skin-balloon and trill away.

While watching the toads I saw something moving in the water off in the periphery of my vision moving in the water. At first I thought it was a lily-pad underwater but almost immediately I saw that it was a rather sizable snapping turtle. I think it had either come over to my light or had come over following the frogs/toads that had swum over to me. In any event, it made me catch

my breath as it was only a few feet away. It actually swam a bit closer towards the light/frogs/toads. Now, I have heard that snapping turtle will not bother swimmers underwater but I wasn't sure about it snapping at me while I stood on a log. I realize this was probably totally unfounded, but the fear was still there. Anyway, at this point a toad floated/swam down right in front of the snapper and it started to slowly pursue this tasty treat. As sorry as I felt for that toad, I have to admit I was pretty excited about the chance to see a snapper eat a toad. Luckily for the toad, it happened to see the turtle just at the last minute and swam away rather fast. It was about now that I started to see some flashes of lightening off to the southwest and I figured it was time to head back. I walked back past the pond and saw a nice Pickerel Frog and some interesting amphibian eggs. It was a GREAT night. I love turtles and I got to see two different types along with a bunch of frogs and toads. This is turning out to be a really fun pass-time and I HIGHLY suggest it to people. Again, if anyone wants to come along they are more than welcome!

Day 6: A bird in the hand and noisy worms

Today was an interesting day animal-wise. First off, I will start with an event that happened while I was in the Geology Department this afternoon. One of the professors came by and told me there was a bird trapped in the computer lab. I ran down to see and sure enough, there it was, a little black Starling. I went down to the janitor's closet and got a step-ladder, and climbed up to the ledge where the bird was sitting. After a few minutes of chasing the bird from one end of the ledge to the other, climbing down and moving the ladder each time, I eventually corralled the bird behind one of the shades from where I was able to grab it. Before I let it out one of the little windows out in the hall, I snapped a picture of the bird in my hand. The whole incident ended on a rather funny note as when I let the bird go out the window, it took off and flew straight away from the building not stopping to rest in a tree or anything...it flew until I couldn't see it anymore at all. I guess it wanted to get as far away from the Wooster Science Building as fas as it could.

Tonight when I got home I again grabbed my camera, net, and headlamp and trudged down to the pond to see what I could see. The water had gone down a bit more and some of the leaves that were previously underwater were now lining the shore. There was a distinct smell coming from these leaves; it smelled like fall. While walking down to the pond I saw some rather large rodent swimming in the pond. I stopped fast for fear it was a beaver and would slap its tail, but either it was a muskrat or it was a rather tame beaver. I found a few fish along the edge of the pond as well as a rather large dead one a few feet from the shore. Not sure what killed it. It definitely wasn't one I had caught in my net b/c I'd never caught one that big. I also heard a number of Pickerel Frogs calling and realized that it's call goes both up and down in tone, that clears that one up.

From here I decided I would walk around in the unmowed portion of the lawn. At first I noticed a number of little reflections down in the grass and figured they were from dew on the blades of grass, but then some of them started to move as I shown my light on them. Turns out most of them were spider eyes from a number of different types of spiders. Now, as I was crouching down in the grass looking at the spiders I started to hear a large number of small noises that were coming from the grass made by blades of grass and dry leaves passing by one another. At first I thought all these noises were coming from the spiders walking around, but it wasn't for

another 15 minutes or so that I figured out exactly what was making the sounds.

At this point I saw a little flash of reflectance down in the grass and I crouched down to move some leaves away to see what it was. As I had my hand down in the grass something happened that almost made me shout...a tiny little cricket frog or peeper jumped right onto my hand. I tell you what, that little fellow startled the wind right out of me! From here I walked over towards the main stream of Black Creek to see if I could find any tree toads. I was looking around and happed to see some reflecting dots rather high (~30') up in a tree nearby. After I sneaked closer up to the tree I realized

it was a rather large Raccoon. He was awake and was looking right at me as I moved around the long for the next 10 minutes or so. I was still in the grass and I kept hearing the little shuffling noises coming from the grass and I have to admit that it was really quite loud. It was at this point that I finally actually found out what was making the noises...it was earthworms! I never thought worms could make such a racket and I was quite surprised.

The last bit of experience tonight took place out by the inlet stream to our pond. Here I found

what I believe are two species of frogs: a large Mink Frog and a female Green Frog. The Green Frog I can ID as being female due to the special mottled markings on her lower sides. Along the stream I also saw a number of small snails and some more neat

spiders. I will check with my spider book up at school and come up with a list of what I think they were and edit the post later. In any event, one of the spider was a big one, maybe a Wolf Spider I think. This was a pretty fun night to be out and about my yard as it was quite warm and I got to see not only the pond life but the animals of the tall grass as well.

Day 5: Adventures around the 'Gunk

Tonight I went for a walk around the large pond on the SUNY New Paltz campus, know locally as 'The Gunk', with a my student Chris 'Toph' Gahn. The pond is named in honor of the mountain range near campus called the 'Gunks, which is short for Shawangunks. Toph and I both had cameras and I brought along my dip net. We must have looked quite the pair walking across campus at 10:45pm.

When we got to the pond it wasn't more than 2 minutes that we found the first of 5 large Bull

Frogs. These frogs ranged from quite large to medium sized. We found them all the way around the pond and it seems this is the most common amphibian in the 'Gunk. While we were walking around the pond we noticed a large swimming animal in the pond and tracked it to a pile of rocks under some bushes. This animal turned out to be a large muskrat and we didn't see it again tonight. Finally, there were a number of ducks on the pond at different times while we were there. We continued down south past the pond and walked along towards the alumni soccer fields and followed an outlet stream from another small pond. Along this stream we found what I believe is a type of Green Frog, though I may be wrong, but this is my best bet.

After we walked around the soccer field looking in the ditch around the perimeter, we walked

back over towards the Wooster Science Building. When we arrived at my car parked outside of the building, we stopped for a while and chatted a bit. After we had been there a few minutes I spotted a large insect flying around a light pole 30 yards or so away. Toph and I walked over and just then the insect hit the pole and flew down to the ground. At this point we both took a number of good pictures and when I got back I identified it as a Giant Water Bug. This is one of the biggest 'bugs' in the US and is a member of the Order Hemiptera. It is locally known in some places as a 'Toe Biter' and from some stuff on the 'net I guess it can deliver a rather painful bite. A fun night and nice to know what lives in the large pond on campus. As a final note, it was great to have Toph along for the walk tonight and people are welcome to come along any time, just let me know.