Autumn reflections

I had planned on posting this a few days ago, but during some recent outings, the birds took priority, especially due to the presence of lingering shorebirds. So I will take the opportunity in this post, to highlight some of the reasons autumn is one of my favourite times of year.

Some folks have told me recently that autumn is not very interesting to them. The forests have lost their greenery and flowers are long gone. Reptiles and amphibians are quickly disappearing, going into their cold weather senescence underground. Birds are fewer and certainly quieter. Even people are not out and about as much, making the trails quiet.

In one sense, these are the exact reasons I look forward to autumn (aside from the fact that October is the month Marie and I were married 43 years ago :-).

Instead of the constant change of wildflowers, various shades of the green growth, and the natural areas being full of action that is sometimes hard to keep up with in spring and summer, autumn can be a time of reflection. We all need quieter times, not the continued busyness that dominates our lives. Certainly the colours change quickly from green to shades of gold, yellow or red before turning brown and then disappearing altogether. And then the colours are even more muted, with varying shades of gray dominating until the white stuff appears.

I had been up to the Sydenham River Nature Reserve not that long ago. It is a relatively recent acquisition by Ontario Nature and is located on the border of Lambton and Middlesex counties. It is a deciduous forest in a largely agricultural landscape, with both the Sydenham River and an unnamed creek going through it. I didn't get to a lot of it, as the boundaries are not well marked, and it is surrounded by private property with numerous No Trespassing/No Hunting signs, so I didn't venture too far this time.  The stream in the following photos is just of the unnamed creek, not the Sydenham.

There are some nice specimens of Common Hackberry here, certainly a Carolinian species that is not all that common even in the Carolinian Forest Zone of Ontario.

Closer to home, I have gone hiking at Rondeau on several occasions. The lake has been riled up from time to time, providing some good photographic moments along the lakeshore. There have also been some serious erosion problems, but at least at the park's south point, there aren't any human habitations under threat.

On occasion, the lake can be quite placid.

The grasses dominating the sand dunes have turned a golden brown. Little Bluestem is one of the most common grasses, and their backlit stems show the fluffy seeds.

On one of my hikes, I was on the lookout for evidence of a somewhat rare orchid. Orchids at this time of year, you ask? Well yes, at least in the case of Puttyroot (Aplectrum hyemale). Its leaves are most visible from November to April, if there isn't any snow on the ground. When it puts up its flowering stem in late May and early June, the single basal leaf has dried up and disappeared. This first image shows a very fresh leaf.

 Here, about a dozen leaves have emerged through some recently fallen maple leaves.

 Only a small percentage of plants will flower in a given year, typically around 10%. Here is a dried up stem with a few capsules.

 One one of my hikes, I came across an unusual sight. The green plant is Maidenhair Fern, a fairly delicate fern species. Most of them by the time of year I took this (Nov 7)  are quite brown and dried up. I guess due to the southern location in the park, and the lake effect which minimized any killing frost, this cluster was still green. It looked quite out of the ordinary to be so green, but with a bit of fresh snow on it.

Due to the temperature of the lake being warmer than the more quickly declining inland temperatures, this 'lake effect', results in the leaves being slower to change from green to gold to brown to gone. Even the south end of the park is delayed compared to the north end. Regardless, the changes throughout the park are fairly rapid in just a few weeks time. This next series of photos were taken along Bennett Avenue.

October 23

October 27

November 7

November 14!

For what it is worth, winter isn't officially here for another 5 weeks!

Middlesex moments

I've had the privilege of doing some fieldwork on some sizable private property in Middlesex County recently. It was a place where I had never spent any time before, but as a result of this field work, look forward to getting back next year.

There was a nice variety of habitats, including woodland, wetland and prairie. If you've been following my blog posts for very long, you will know that I have a particular fondness for tallgrass prairie, so coming across some of these patches was unexpected, and definitely a highlight.

What made this site interesting was the dominance of Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).

Little Bluestem seedhead

And one of the highlights, was to find an Eastern Hog-nosed Snake! This species is one of the most fascinating of our native reptiles. They are very rare, considered a Species At Risk in Ontario and Canada. They are named for their flat, upturned snout which enables them to dig in the sand searching for toads, their primary food source. They can vary in colour....this one is quite dark above, but I have seen them a mottled orange and black, brownish and also a whitish-gray. What makes them especially fascinating is their behaviour. When startled or threatened, they will vibrate their tail to sound like a rattlesnake. Other non-rattlesnake snakes do this as well.

If they are handled, they will excrete a very foul smelling substance. But if this doesn't scare away the potential threat, it will hiss and puff up like a cobra, and even pretend to strike. Which is amusing, since they don't have any teeth at the front of their mouth. (They do have teeth towards the back of their mouth cavity, but they point backwards and are important at deflating toads which will puff up as they are being eaten, so puncturing the toad will enable it to be swallowed more easily.) And if this doesn't scare away the potential threat, they will go through various contortions, writhing and eventually turning upside down to play dead. It is really quite well done, as when they are upside down playing dead, their tongue will hang out, and there will even be a drop of saliva at the tip of the tongue.

Another good species to find at this site is this Great Plain's Ladies'-tresses (Spiranthes magnicamporum) which is ranked as S3.

Spiranthes magnicamporum

A more common prairie plant of late in the season is Fringed Gentian (Gentianopsis crinita). It is certainly more common than the aforementioned Spiranthes, but not all that common and always a treat to find.

As mentioned, we also had the pleasure of surveying some woodland and wetland areas, including floodplain. Here one of my colleagues carefully manoeuvres his way across a small beaver dam.

Along the creek system, we came across a large Chinquapin Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii). It was approximately 80 cm in diameter. It isn't one of the more common oaks of southern Ontario, and is always nice to find. However it is typically found on more upland sites than this one was occupying. I had never seen one right at the edge of a creek system before! We also came across a large White Oak nearby, which measured almost exactly 36" diameter (~91.5 cm), a good sized tree indeed.

Chinquapin Oak

I hope to get back to this site next spring!

Elsewhere in Middlesex Co, I've stopped in at Skunk's Misery quite recently. Skunk's Misery is a large woodland complex in the southwestern part of the county. About half of it is privately owned, but fortunately for those of us who like to wander through natural areas, the other half is owned by either the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority or the county of Middlesex. The mosquitoes can be pretty abundant during the late spring and summer, but most of them have disappeared by now. I enjoy autumn walks through some of the trails.

This latter image shows a very large Tuliptree on the left. It measures 1.38 metres (54") in diameter! It is measured at a standard height known as diameter at breast height (dbh) which is 1.4 metres (4.6') from the ground level.