Summer Yellows

Those of us who have more yesterdays than tomorrows usually don’t like to see time pass swiftly, but I’m glad to see this summer of record-setting heat and little rain come to an end. Come on fall!

Although all of our friends know that I dislike summer with its heat and humidity – and much prefer the cold and snow of winter – summer is not without its pleasures. One of summer’s most enjoyable aspects are the various yellows that abound.

It seems that as summer progresses the yellows get brighter and more common, so that now at the end of summer the season is saying “Good-bye” in a riot of yellow –

Blue-stemmed Goldenrod

Bur-marigold

Gray-headed Coneflower

Green-headed Coneflower

Wingstem

Yellow Jewelweed

Thin-leaved Sunflower

Sneezeweed

Not only summer flowers are yellow, various animals also display the color of sunshine: a banded garden spider -

And some timber rattlesnakes –

In this area the most abundant of summer’s yellow fauna are the tiger swallowtail butterflies –

Even late summer’s fungi show yellows –

Fly Aminita

Unidentified

Unidentified

Yellow Staghorn Fungus

Although I enjoy the cooler seasons much more, summer isn’t without its pleasures: lemon aide, long days, ripening crops in the fields and orchards, canoeing, and the yellows of summer.

Good-bye summer, see you next year.

At the Inlet - 2016

In 2016 the camera trap at the pond inlet wasn’t put in place until early June – much too late to catch many waterfowl. No excuse, just a combination of factors that kept me from getting it out. By the time the camera trap was in place the stream's flow was so low that it didn’t catch much at all. 

Last year there were two posts on the yield from this location, the photos can be seen here and here.

Herewith are some of the photos it captured in 2016 –

A few days after the first bear photo was captured, what was probably the same bear returned -

Then these two people were caught by the camera trap a couple of days before I checked the camera –

Whenever people appear among the photos from a camera trap I remove the camera for at least a month – there are just too many dishonest people wandering around. Eventually I put the camera trap back on the tree at the inlet and got a few more photos –

But then the last time I checked the camera the battery powering the control board had died long before it should have – A problem with the board? Bad battery? Short in the wiring? So I took the camera with me and checked it later – the almost new battery apparently was weak right out of the package. 

Since the earliest hunting season will begin soon - and between the facts that more people will be roaming about, and that the spot wasn’t too productive this summer, the camera’s not going back until next spring.

Miners Run

The McIntyre Wild Area of Pennsylvania’s Loyalsock State Forest occupies 7,500 acres on the Allegheny Plateau; four streams tumble from the edge of the plateau through steep-sided gorges. The streams fall steeply and contain waterfalls of varying heights.

McIntyre has an interesting history. Bituminous coal underlay the western portion and attracted investors, including Mark Twain’s father-in-law, Jervis Langdon. Serious mining began in 1870 and continued until the mid-1880s; sporadic mining continued into the 1930s. At its peak, the village of McIntyre had a population of 1,500, 300 houses, a school, church and numerous other buildings as well as an inclined plane to carry coal from the mines to the railroad along Lycoming Creek. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry acquired the coal company’s land in the mid-20^th Century; now all that remains of the mining era is the cemetery, stone foundations of houses and other structures, and old roads and railroad grades. A vintage map of the village still exists –

The eastern portion of the McIntyre plateau was owned by the Central Pennsylvania Lumber Co. and logged between 1913 and 1919 with the logs being removed over a system of logging railroads and hauled by the logging railroad to the long-gone town of Laquin. The old railroad grades can still be followed and make good hiking trails. These lands became part of the state forest system in the early 1930s.

Except for the road climbing the side of the plateau to the site of the village of McIntyre, the wild area has no drivable roads and warrants its official status as a state forest wild area.

On the plateau a group of wetlands and old beaver ponds are the source of Miners Run. From the most distant of those wetlands Miners Run flows gradually downhill for two and a half miles then enters the gorge it has created over the centuries and plunges downhill over a series of waterfalls; none extremely high, but all very pretty. Since the stream is best experienced by walking uphill this is the route to be followed here. The summer of 2016 has been hot and dry and the waterfalls are far from their best, but pretty nonetheless –

The Miners Run gorge is rugged, the wet rocks are extremely slippery, and extraction of a person with a broken leg, several broken ribs, a back problem, or other incapacitating injury would very difficult in several areas – and there is no cell phone service.  

During higher flows some of the waterfalls are spectacular –

Well worth visiting.