Day by Day Throughout the Year - 4th Quarter

October is the middle of fall, a season of green turning to bright yellows, oranges and reds with a few pinks and purples mixed in and then gradually fading to drab grays and browns in November. The year’s fourth quarter can begin with summer-like temperatures and end with deep snow in December. It’s one of many things we like about living in northeastern North America – as has been said, variety is the spice of life.

The photographs from the first three quarters of the year can be seen here, here  and here. The year’s fourth quarter doesn’t correlate to a particular season since fall begins on September 1 and winter begins with December, before the fourth quarter ends. This series, as the other photo-a-day-for-a-year series that preceded it, was inspired by a similar project undertaken by a well-known nature photographer.

Here are the day-by-day photos from each day of the year’s fourth quarter, hopefully you’ll enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them –

                                            

 

In northcentral Pennsylvania it used to be unheard of for there to be active butterflies and salamanders in November, but on the 5th I saw three different species of butterflies in the air, on the 6th, under a short piece of a log, five active red-backed salamanders and on the 21st an eastern garter snake basking in the sun. The first snow flakes fell at the house on November 22, a month later than was normal 50 years ago. If you don't believe in human-caused climate change I have a bridge to sell you.

So here we are at the end of one year and the beginning of another, what will the new year bring? The weather is becoming more erratic, bird populations are in decline, more and more invasive introduced species are becoming established, the sixth great extinction is underway – things are not good in the natural world.

However, there are still beautiful things and processes to see, study and photograph. I’ll be out in the natural world, camera in hand and still be here posting weekly. Hopefully you've enjoyed viewing these photographs, and that they've piqued your interest in what's out there in forest and field.

Take a look at the wide natural world around you, the flowers and trees, the birds and bugs, the wind and rain and sunny days, it's worth protecting and will be if we each do whatever we can to save what's left.

In the Woods Around Us

For many years I’d looked up the hillside, far above the road I subsequently traveled almost daily for several years. There, far above, was a rock outcrop that looked suspiciously like an old quarry. It was quite a way above what was a much larger quarry which was itself far above the road. I looked and looked, day after day, and finally had the time and inclination to make the climb.

So I found a place where I could park off the traveled portion of the road (barely off, but the road wasn’t traveled much), and looked at the cut-bank left by road widening many years ago, up I went, an adventure in itself. Above the bank was a faint, very steep old road, partially blocked by fallen trees, heading uphill toward the large quarry.

Up the old road I went, up and up to the large quarry. Sure enough it was an old flagstone quarry to produce material for the sidewalks of rapidly growing cities, probably opened in the late-1800s or early-1900’s and abandoned a couple of decades later. But this still didn’t get me to the upper outcrop (quarry).

So I circled above the quarry and found a faint track leading steeply upward, up I went and walked into a yet older, smaller quarry. There, laying on a slab of flagstone, among the dead leaves and twigs and moss, were a number of hand-forged quarryman’s chisels –

When were they left there and why did a worker leave them? Was the man who used these chisels injured on the job? Did he sicken and die as a result of the infections or diseases so common before modern medicine? Did he find a better-paying, less laborious way to earn a living and bid his chisels good-riddance? We’ll never know.

I brought a couple of the chisels back, and left the rest in place. If I could ever get to that quarry again, an increasingly unlikely accomplishment, I’d return the chisels, otherwise the ones I brought back will wind up at the local museum. The rest may never be seen by a human again since it’s doubtful if anyone ever climbs that lonely road – or even know it exists. Gradually the road’s being restored by time and nature – the chisels will soon be covered by fallen leaves and moss.

Another day and on another lonely hillside our son and I came upon a spring seep that had been the water supply for a long abandoned logging camp. Leaning against an ancient sugar maple was the blade of a two-man crosscut saw. We pushed aside some of the fallen leaves and duff that had developed from decades of decaying leaves and found what had been the camp dump – a few broken bottles, the fragile remains of rusted steel cans, the head of a maul used to split firewood for the camp’s stoves and a few rusted and broken parts of one of those stoves.

The camp was near the grade of a long-ago logging railroad; from an old map it seems that the area was logged in 1916 when the hemlock was cut and peeled and it’s bark transported to a tannery. Contrary to popular belief, those hemlock logs were not left to rot. Bark could only be peeled in late-spring/early-summer, the logs were later shipped to a sawmill and made into lumber (see this post).

Our son took the splitting maul, which he still uses almost 30 years later to split wood to fuel the stove that heats their house. He says it’s the best splitting maul that he’s ever used – a big thank you to the long-ago blacksmith that made it.

His father took a piece of the broken stove – it’s embossed “Grand Times” –

Life in a 1916 logging camp would have been anything but grand although, if it was like most logging camps, the food would have been abundant and good. But the loggers would probably have slept two to a bed, sharing lice and flatulence, rising early and working harder than anyone does in the 21^st century.

The anonymous loggers who lived and labored there are long gone. Although an occasional hunter may walk the old railroad grade, it’s doubtful if anyone drops over the steep hillside to stumble upon the site of the logging camp.

How much more unknown history involving nameless and forgotten people remains in the woods around us?

 

Happy Holidays to each and every one -- see you in the New Year

October Above the Yard

In October the camera trap on the hill just above the yard captured fewer videos than in the past. There were videos with raccoons and opossums and white-tailed does but, with exceptions, those usually aren’t particularly interesting.

However there’s always something interesting in the natural world, and these are the most interesting videos from October.

They start with a gray fox with a kink in its tail, possibly from a broken bone; the fox then makes repeated appearances. The gray fox is followed by a red fox carrying prey; the red fox also appears again.

Some folks express difficulty in distinguishing red and gray foxes in black-and-white photos or videos: the gray fox is stocky with fairly short legs and a black stripe on the top of its tail; a red fox is more slender with longer legs and the front legs usually have a black stripe on the front.

The foxes are followed by the first of several striped skunks; the first has its tail upright, ready to spray its defensive scent, something must have startled it or an unseen fox got too close.

Late October is the height of the rut for white-tailed deer and bucks from away make an appearance as they pursue does that are local residents. It appears that seven different bucks spent time in front of the camera. Two young bucks are seen sparring, a real fight between bucks involves much more violent pushing and shoving and one of the combatants occasionally receives a mortal injury – as described in this post.

Here are October’s videos –

The bucks and the red fox were eating the apple cores and peels that we put in front of the camera, if they’d been put in our compost pile the same critters would have eaten them but you wouldn’t have seen videos of the “feast”.