Fairy Rings

While looking for edible mushrooms I found several "Fairy Rings" in the woods behind our house. A fairy ring, also known as fairy circle, is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms.

Fairy rings are caused by fungi that feed on decaying organic matter (e.g., tree stumps, logs, leaves or roots) buried in the soil. Growth of fairy ring fungi begins in the center of the ring, expanding outward in a relatively uniform, circular pattern. Fairy rings can grow and reappear at the same location for years. The circle will start off small in size, getting bigger as it gets older.

The fairy rings I found were caused by strict coral mushrooms (Ramaria stricta), also known as upright coral.

West Hill Bears

Checking the game cameras at our West Hill property this weekend. It's not unusual for me to get bear photos with game cameras, but this time a bear cub had ear tags. This game camera is located a short distance from homes and corn fields. The ear tags indicate the bear cub had been trapped, most likely for being a nuisance bear around homes.

The bear cub was traveling with a much larger bear that must have been its mother. Mother bears will travel a home range of 6 to 15 square miles teaching their cubs where to find food sources, such as bird feeders, corn fields and apple orchards.

The Velvet is Off

During the summer I've been documenting the development of a yearling buck's first set of antlers. It was easy to identify this young buck due to a notch on his right ear. As a deer's antlers develop a soft, furry skin, known as velvet, supplies oxygen and nutrients for the antler growth. Here's a photo of the velvet covered antlers from late August.

In late summer/early autumn the blood flow to the velvet stops and causes the velvet to dry and start to peel away. This photo show the velvet cracking and starting to shed.

A day later and all the velvet was shed and the new antlers revealed. This buck has also shed his reddish summer coat and now has his dark brown winter coat.

Walnut Caterpillars

I noticed a large, white, fuzzy mass at the base of a walnut tree at our barn. The fussy mass was a grathering of walnut caterpillars (Datana integerrima) as they molt to shed their exoskeletons and leave behind a dense, fur-like clump of discarded hairy skins.

Some of the walnut caterpillars in the process of molting their hairy exoskeletons.

Firewood

As we move into the fall, the days are getting shorter and the nights are getting cooler. It's time to prepare for the winter heating season by stockpiling firewood. The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) has killed a lot of my trees, so I have a lot of dead trees to convert into firewood. I gather the trees during the year and store them near our barn where I cut them to length for the wood stove and split them with a hydraulic wood splitter.

Once the wood is split, it is stacked on pallets to keep the firewood off the ground and let it air dry.

I transport pallets of firewood to our house as needed using pallet forks on a tractor.

Blue Mushrooms

This summer's changing weather has made foraging wild edible mushrooms difficult. The hot/dry conditions in the early summer slowed or reduced mushroom gathering. The current late summer/early fall rains have restarted some mushrooms and I'm starting to find some nice Indigo milk cap (Lactarius indigo) "Blue Mushrooms". The indigo milk cap is a blue or blue-gray mushroom that exudes a dark blue milk when cut or damaged.

Indigo milk cap mushrooms are edible and we cooked these in butter, along with a couple of chanterelle mushrooms I found.

( Don’t eat any wild mushrooms without first checking with a local expert)

Stressed Out Potatoes

We planted four potato varieties in our garden this year; Russet, Red, White, and Fingerlings. All four varieties did very good, but some of the Russets had strange shapes. This condition is caused by heat and watering stress. We had long stretches of temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit along with extended dry spells which causes the tubers to stop growing. We then had multiple days of soaking rain that started the tubers growing new potatoes from the main tuber to give them a snowman shape.

Spaghetti Sauce

It's almost Labor Day and this year's garden is starting to produce lots of ripe tomatoes ...

The tomatoes are big ...

Our garden produced a lot of garlic ...

Lots of ripe peppers and other ingredients are ready in the garden ...

It's time to make a batch of spaghetti sauce. Canned 17½ quarts of spaghetti sauce from the first batch.

Counting Down Until Turkey Season

I recently had some road work done on a cabin property ATV trail. Yesterday I noticed a flock of turkeys in this area as I graded the trail and reseeded it with a mix of winter wheat and grass seed. Today I found the flock of turkeys on the trail eating the winter wheat seed. I was able to get within 10 yards of some birds as I completed working on the trail. It's only two months until the start of fall turkey season.

Penn's Cave

As this summer is winding down it's time to take grandson Reed and his cousins Liam and Neva on a field trip to Penn's Cave in Centre Hall, PA. A walk down to the cave entrance.

Unlike most tours of caves, this limestone cave tour is accessed by boat.

Some of the many limestone formations in the cave.

After the cave tour, we were off to a bus ride wildlife tour. It was a warm day and several of the animals were seeking cooler locations in the shade (except for the pack of wolves which had their own air conditioned shed). Bison located in a field directly over the cave.

A young elk and its mother.

"Cauliflower" the white deer.

A mountain lion waking up from a nap.

Time for the kids to burn up some energy in a maze challenge. Neva and her dad looking for marked checkpoints.

Barn Bats

Over the last fifteen years bat populations have dropped by up to 98% in some areas mostly due to white-nose syndrome, a fatal fungal disease for bats. A few years ago, grandson Reed helped construct a bat house which was placed on the side of our barn. The bat house was a success with the bats and one evening this week I counted at least 35 bats exiting the bat house. This week I found this bat in the lower level of the barn, hanging upside down from a mortise in a large beam. The common, highly descriptive, name for this bat is "big brown bat" (Eptesicus fuscus).

Big brown bats typically eat agricultural pests, like cucumber beetles and stinkbugs. A small colony of 25 bats can eat a pound of insects every night. A link to my blog post on constructing a bat house. Building Habitat for Homeless Bats, Oct. 2023

Bird Bath

A few years ago we remodeled our bathroom and then repurposed the old cast iron bathtub as a watering trough for wildlife at our West Hill property. All types of wildlife visit this old bathtub and this red-tailed hawk used it as an extra large bird bath.

Penguin Encounter

Grandson Reed has a fascination with penguins...

So his dad arranged a penguin encounter for him at The Wild Animal Park in Chittanago NY.

This penguin encounter allowed Reed to have very close access to some very friendly South African penguins (Spheniscus demersus).

Feeding big fish to small penguins. These penguins can eat a lot of fish.

After a large meal of fish the penguins needed some exercise chasing bubbles.

The penguins were very friendly and curious.

After a long day of entertaining guests, eating fish and chasing bubbles, the penguins needed some rest.

Bobcat

Checking the game cameras at our West Hill property this weekend and got this nice photo of a Bobcat.

Eastern Painted Turtle

Another turtle found in the road. This time it was an Eastern Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta picta) in the road to our cabin, not far from our pond. This turtle had a shell of about 5 inches and was most likely looking for a place to lay eggs.