What to See This Week

Only slightly larger than the chipmunks running around, this young squirrel has been spending a lot of time exploring the Bird Watching Garden. Squirrels typically have a second litter in late summer in addition to the first litter born in late winter or early spring.

We are excited to welcome back some winter birds to The Arboretum. This is a white-throated sparrow, a species that is only with us for the non-breeding season. They have a bright white throat and bright yellow lores (a patch of feathers between the eye and beak). You can find them scratching at the ground in search of food. While they are fairly quiet this time of year, as it gets close to spring migration their whistled song will be commonly heard across The Arboretum. 

Hen of the woods is a large and sought-after mushroom that grows only in the fall. You can expect to find hen of the woods growing at the base of oak trees and sometimes beech. They have grayish brown upper surfaces and a white pore surface on the underside. This is a popular edible mushroom, also known by the name maitake.

Ink caps are an interesting mushroom commonly seen throughout the fall. Pictured here is a specific type of ink cap called a shaggy mane at the very end of its fruiting. When they first pop up, shaggy mane has a very tall, white cap covered in scales. Like other ink caps, soon after emerging, shaggy manes will dissolve into a black liquid in order to spread their spores. Much of the spores of these two mushrooms can be seen in a black puddle beneath what is left of them. 

Bald-faced hornets build large, recognizable nests that are constructed using a mixture of wood pulp and their saliva. It is often mixed into a grayish color, but sometimes the color of the wood used can make beautiful patterns. They scrape wood from a variety of surfaces, sometimes fallen logs as well as manmade structures like fenceposts, picnic tables and other outdoor furniture. The type of wood and any paints or stains on the wood can produce interesting results.

Ginkgo trees across The Arboretum are all in different stages of changing color. Ginkgos always turn a bright, clear yellow. Many ginkgo trees on the south loop of the Auto Tour are the furthest along. Ginkgo trees are famous for their tendency to drop all their leaves simultaneously within a very short period of time, often triggered by a hard freeze.

Trees in the Bald-Cypress Swamp have begun to change color. Bald-cypress is a deciduous conifer. This means that each year, the needles will change color and drop off the tree, much like the broad-leaved trees we are familiar with in this area. Look for the rusty red color starting to peek through.

The Bald-Cypress Swamp is a vernal pool and is typically full of water between late winter and mid-summer then dries up. This year, the particularly rainy conditions led to the swamp being full much later into the season. Now, it has dried up until snowmelt and late winter rains fill it back up just in time for salamander migration. It is still a great time to walk over the boardwalk as the knees make for an interesting landscape.