Blog

On Sunday, Feb. 9th, a group of 20 people spent a couple of hours with us exploring the winter botany and animal tracks along the recently opened section of the Harlem Valley Rail Trail in Hillsdale. In this post, we will share some of our finds during this public “Winter Exploration”. We hope this serves as a nice review for the participants in the exploration, but also as a means for others to familiarize themselves with this public trail, aspects of its history, and some of the wild plants and animals now living there.

Before the snow covers the ground and changes the landscape to true winter, covering up many of the remains of our wildflowers, we would like to highlight the amazing beauty found in winter “flowers”. Although one can still find an occasional intrepid flower head of Dandelion, Aster, or Goldenrod full of colorful blossoms, most actual flowers have long wilted by Thanksgiving.

I’m not sure why I first noticed them. Compensation for my dulling vision? A momentary spat of decongestion that loosened up my ears? An entomological bumper crop mirroring the fruit season? In any case…. there they were. Or weren’t, as the case may be. Many sounds. Little to see.

Spring wildflowers are the most prominent feature in our forests at this time of the year, while cold-season weeds are most prominent in the vegetable fields. If you want to see images of the spring wildflowers in the forests of Hawthorne Valley, please go into the archive and find the blog we posted on April 30, 2011.

In 1847, Asa Fitch, who was to become New York’s (in fact, the USA’s first) state entomologist, published a paper entitled “Winter Insects of Eastern New York“, it was based primarily on his observation in and around his home of Salem in Washington County. The paper begins with this evocative introduction,

Winter is a great time to hone our skills in tree identification by overall shape. The shape of the trunk and the arrangements of the branches and twigs become much more prevalent when there are no leaves on the trees. And one can get a lot of pleasure out of closely observing and learning to recognize the patterns created by a tree silhouette against the clear blue winter sky…