Stonybrook Wildlife Sanctuary

The Autumn colors of New England are at their peak now, and the intensity of the colors is phenomenal. I took Gabe out to view the foliage at Stonybrook "Farm", which isn’t a farm at all.

Every photo I took turned out looking like a post-card!













I am always a little sad this time of year. The plants are no longer growing, and the days are shorter. While I know that once it snows, I will be happy again, the thought of facing the cold and the dark again makes me melancholy.

But there is something to look forward to at Stonybrook: otters! I was told they are easiest to spot early on winter mornings.

On this trip, we saw a swan.

Cold-Blooded Critters

We are seeing the last of our non-furry friends for the year. While taking down the garden, Chris stirred up a leopard frog, rana pipiens



We had to catch it, of course!

On sunny days, we can now easily find garter snakes, thamnophis sirtalis basking among our rock piles. It turns out that by making rock walls and rock heaps, we have been building snake habitat. Rocks provide holes to hide in, plus the absorb the day’s eat and store it into the frosty night. Also, on hot dry days, warm air wafts into the crevices, and water condenses out onto the cool rocks deep inside, providing a water source. That moisture attracts other wildlife, too, such as crickets and slugs, which are perfect snake food.



Now that I understand all of this, I am building rock piles in the front yard to attract snakes there as well. I put the first pile on a patch of ground that remains dusty-dry even after days of rain, in the hope that the condensation will improve the soil there, too.

I also found a salamander hanging out in the remains of our dirt pile on the driveway, but I didn't take a picture, alas! I suspect the presense of an amphibian there attests to the good quality of the soil.



It must be a good year for katydids, because they are everywhere!

Shutting Down for the Year

Autumn put an abrupt end to tomato season. Suddenly, the nights feel cold, and the trees are turning glorious reds and oranges.

Because the bunnies keep infiltrating the garden, Chris decided to call it done for the year. The tattered fence came down, and the tired tomato vines went into a compost heap.





The asparagus fronds remain, as well as some basil and the Swiss chard. I think Chris was considering running the mower over the chard just to see it turn into confetti.





Even though the bunnies ate the tops off of the carrots repeatedly, we still got carrots! Perhaps because of having to regrow their leaves so often, they didn’t taste all that good, sadly. We processed this batch into baby food.



The raspberry bushes weren’t supposed to bear fruit until next year, but they didn’t get the memo. Chris and I are becoming frightened at the thought of drowning in a tsunami of raspberries. We will have to invite the neighborhood kids to eat all they want in self defense.

Squirrels

The kousa berries are turning more of a purple color. When I picked one, it squashed in my hands. And surprise! The pulp tastes sweet now!

For several days I have watched this eastern gray squirrel, sciurus carolinensis, helping himself to kousa berries.




The gray squirrels are as common here as anywhere else on the East Coast. They have been getting fat on acorns in the back yard this month.

We also have red squirrels, tamiasciurus hudsonicus.




These guys primarily eat conifer seeds, but that didn’t stop this one from raiding the suet birdfeeder last winter. Unlike the jovial gray squirrels, these pretty little things are solitary and feisty. They are highly territorial and want nothing to do with other squirrels or humans. During the winter I watched this one chase a gray squirrel almost twice his size away from the suet feeder, and I realized he was still living in our yard this past week when he scolded me, quite loudly, for being out on the deck.

Hey bub, the deck is my territory!

Visiting Photographer

Jen Gordy took this picture in our backyard earlier this month.




Meanwhile I took this picture of Jen taking her picture. This is what a serious photographer looks like!

Tragically Beautiful

What a lovely shrub this is.



It’s a shame that we have to kill it. This is the poison sumac, Toxicodendron Vernix, that hangs over the back lawn. I toyed with the notion of keeping it as a beneficial plant for the wildlife, because the berries fed the birds all last winter. But now that we have friends who bring their small children to visit, and our own child who will be mobile in another year, it has become an obvious threat. The bush hangs where visitors could easily touch it, and nothing about this plant looks remotely dangerous.









Right now the plant is somewhat distinctive because it has drupes of white berries, and the foliage is turning a beautiful range of yellow, red, and purple. But during the rest of the year it is deceptively plain and green. Nobody - and I do mean nobody! - knows how to identify this plant. Which is why, I suspect, the previous owners let it grow next to their lawn to begin with. They must have suffered from many mysterious rashes.

Although I have read nothing to suggest this is true, I suspect poison sumac comes in a male and female variety, because there is a second tree that appears to be poison sumac beside this one, but it has not produced berries. I wasn’t sure that the second tree was poison sumac at all, because it is much taller than this one – a good thirty feet, in fact. Poison sumac isn’t supposed to get more than ten or fifteen feet tall.

I’ll know for sure when I test it, assuming I can work up the nerve to test it.

It’s Terrible – Taste It!

I have been inviting everyone to taste the Japanese dogwood fruit. It’s amazing how many people will eagerly taste something when you tell them that it tastes bad.

Here is little Grayson’s reaction.





The neighborhood kids decided a more fitting name for the kousa fruits was “dingleberries”. For the uninitiated, “dingleberry” is slang for poo that’s left hanging from the fur of the rear end of a cat.

Marna suspects that the fruits simply aren’t ripe yet. I hope she is right!