A Year in the Forest

  As promised here is the view down into the valley today.  I noticed today that in some areas of the forest, especially under the aspen the forest floor is covered with fallen leaves.  In other areas, dominated by other trees the forest is almost bare – the leaves have not fallen there yet.  Looking down into the stream bed you can see an area where the leaves have not fallen very much.  You can see a little color starting to show.  The most color is the maple and sumac on the edges of the forest.

Yesterday, I saw lots of mushrooms coming up and it was still moist.  Today it is dry and the animals have harvested most of the mushrooms.  I was able to gather enough of various varieties for dinner tonight though.  There was not enough of any one kind left.  I don’t have anything to base it on but my gut feeling, but the efficiency of the animals in harvesting the mushrooms and other edibles in the forest makes me feel this is going to be a harsh winter.

I started out the day by going a different route.  I went down the ravine to harvest a Bear’s Tooth Mushroom I have been eyeing from the ridge top.  While going down the ravine I spotted something I have been looking for for quite a while, a fox den.  We have several foxes and I have always seen them going toward one area.  That is where I spotted the den.  Here is a couple of pictures of it.  One from afar.    And another closer up.    Foxes usually have several dens that they wander between.  This one looks active right now because of the well worn path going to it.

Going further down the ravine I did find the Bear’s Tooth Mushroom.     I also found a ripe paw-paw.  The only one this season.  A paw-paw tastes like a super sweet banana.  The black walnuts are falling with so much rapidity that I almost got hit twice. 

It is getting to be more fall every day.  The aspen trees have lost almost all their leaves.  The other trees are starting to turn and should start loosing their leaves also.  To document the transformation, I plan on taking a picture looking down into the stream bed everyday for a while.  Here is the first.    As you can see most of the leaves are still on the trees, but it shouldn’t be long.  A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I seldom saw birds down in the woods.  I don’t know what has changed, but I have started seeing birds flying around and in the lower branches.  Different seasons bring out different things.  I saw another Box Turtle today.  It was making quite a bit of noise pushing through the leaves.    As usual he was not very happy with being discovered and disturbed.

I was expecting the last rain to make the mushrooms pop out again, but it didn’t.

No sooner had I started on my walk than I ran across a fresh deer leg.    I looked in vain for the rest of the deer – even my nose could not tell me where it was.  Doesn’t look like too big a deer, probably one of this years batch.

I have been meaning to take a picture of a strange tree that I have noticed.  It looks like a limb is growing out of and back into the trunk.    There is another tree tha looks like two seperate trees growing next to each other from one side and is actually one tree you can see from the other side.

I mentioned a couple days ago how something is tearing up the old stumps and logs, looking for bugs or mushroom mycelia I guess.  So I took some pictures to illustrate this.  This first picture is of a stump that a week ago looked like any other old stump.  It had some Jack O Lantern mushrooms around it earlier.  Now about 1/2 of it is gone.    This next picture is of a log that was earlier covered with Stump Puffball mushrooms.  Something harvested the puffballs and tore up the log in the process.    Here is a picture of the same log a week or so ago.    And lastly here is a log that a few days ago was all covered with moss.  Now you can see that a big portion of it has been scraped/chewed?? off.    This process continues everyday I find more and more places like this.  This is probably a normal process, but I have never observed it before.