When I went for a walk in Naugatuck State Forest yesterday morning, we'd just had a couple days of rain, and even though the sun was coming out, everything was still soaked through. I happen to love the way the woods looks after rain, with the trees deep and dark and leaves glowing:
And now that fall is really setting in and the leaves are changing, the woods were looking especially showy. I just could not get over the colors on this (I believe) Sassafras tree, especially against the dark mostly-pine woods!
On soggy days, I tend to keep an eye out for amphibians, and I definitely wasn't disappointed during yesterday's walk. I always love getting to hang out with Red Efts (juvenile Red-spotted Newts), and a few of these brilliant little creatures were taking walks along the same paths as me. I hope they didn't mind my camera in their faces!
Efts are just too wonderful. I wonder why some are more shockingly orange than others:
Under a flat log, I found a little Red-backed Salamander, whose adorableness certainly rivals the efts' (although I don't think I could choose between the two):
And on the underside of the salamander's log was this group of European Sowbugs (Oniscus asellus) -- I'm sure I've encountered these creatures before (in the garden, most likely), but I never really stopped before to notice how crazily prehistoric they look:
Speaking of weird things on logs, I also found these pink bubbly growths, which turned out to be a slime mold (!) called Wolf's Milk (Lycogala epidendrum) -- I identified them thanks to a recent post on Saratoga Woods and Waterways:
(Looking at this picture now, I just realized that there are lots of smaller, brown spheres on the lowers parts of this log.... I wonder what's going on there.)
There were tons of birds flying around, but not many wanted to come in range of my camera. A Brown Creeper did come close enough, however, for me to notice how ridiculously large those feet and claws look -- all the better for creeping up tree trunks, I guess!
For whatever reason, I also saw quite a few Woolly Bear caterpillars crawling around on one section of the path. One was munching away at a big leaf on a Mullein plant, and it had already made a very respectable hole -- how appropriate, a woolly caterpillar and a woolly leaf:
Hooray for soggy days in the woods!
Today was another great day for a trip to the Naugatuck State Forest: clear skies, sunshine, and cool breezes; it couldn't have been nicer. The animals and plants were very active, so maybe they agreed with me.
I've seen Red Squirrels in these woods a couple of times before, but much less frequently than I see their larger gray cousins. So I was pretty excited when this little fellow scampered out of the undergrowth and then posed for a few pictures -- it even let me sneak a little closer before it ran the rest of the way up the tree:
This guy was just barely bigger than a chipmunk, and so much daintier than the more common Gray Squirrels. Apparently Red Squirrels prefer forests with conifer trees, so maybe that's one reason why I never see them around my apartment. In any case, getting close to this adorable creature today was a real treat.
And speaking of treats, I've always wanted to see a slime mold (yes, I'm aware of the strangeness of that statement), and I'm pretty sure I found one today! Behold:
Isn't it magnificent? I had just assumed that slime molds were a type of fungi (or maybe I had forgotten what I learned in my 7th grade science class), but it turns out they're actually an entirely different thing! And there's a lot of crazy stuff to learn about slime molds, if the Wikipedia page is any indication -- I wish I had time to learn more. If you click the picture to zoom in you can see the crazy texture on this thing -- it's even starting to grow over that leaf. So cool!
The rest of today's walk turned up some more cool new things, but in familiar veins: bugs and flowers.
There were more dragonflies than ever, but all of the individuals I got pictures of managed to elude my attempts at identification (this is not surprising). However, even though I couldn't figure out their species, I got to see some cool behaviors. This dragonfly, for example, just recently metamorphosed -- it's still standing on the skin of its nymph form (from which it emerged):
And this rather large dragonfly is munching on what looks like a (still wriggling) ichneumon wasp (a non-stinging insect whose larvae are parasites on other insects -- I'm not sure of the exact species):
That looks like a pretty big meal, even for such a large dragonfly. These guys are serious hunters.
The flowers were putting on a nice display as well. Here's a whole bank covered in low-growing plants of the blackberry family -- are these actually dewberries, or can I just call them "blackberries" like I want to?
This pretty (and very small) flower is Deptford Pink (Dianthus armeria), originally from Europe but not considered invasive (to my knowledge):
Finally, here are a couple of new flowers for me, whose leaves I've been seeing all winter (since they're evergreen). These plants were growing on opposite sides of the same path and they look very similar, but they are different species. First there's Round-leaved Pyrola, with its glossy leaves that are tinged slightly purple at the stems:
And then there's Shinleaf, with leaves that are not as glossy, and there are some differences in the flowers if you look closely, too (it's hard to see the leaves that go with the stem in this picture, but the leaves directly below the flowers are from the same plant):
Also, a side note: I mentioned in a post last week that a couple of people had apparently seen a Black Bear in the Naugatuck State Forest recently. Well, according to this article, the DEP captured a Black Bear that was in a neighborhood just north of the forest, so I'm wondering if this is the same creature.... It seems likely!
