While visiting Upper State New York for a few days we checked out a few nature/natural areas. Places visited were Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, Red Barn Preserve, Indian Creek Nature Centre, Stone Valley Trails and Harrisville
This was our third visit to Montezuma, but the first in August. As expected it was very quite with few birds.
A family of common gallinules, juvenile on its own in second picture
A juvenile pied-billed grebe and an adult
A very few mallards, some in the air and some bottoms up for feeding
A few cormorants in the distance and song sparrows
While not a lot, there seemed to be more ring-billed gulls than anything else.
Sowthistle, great bindweed, bottle brush, rain drops on grass, rose mallow, sweet gum tree seed pods and knapweed.
The large bald eagle sculpture overlooks the NY State thruway
The Red Barn Preserve mentioned it had a heron rookery. Knowing there would be no active nesting, we decided to check it for future possibilities.
The nests were there, but a long way off. The 600mm lens brought them in, but it wouldn't have been good enough if there were birds on the nests.
While walking one of the trails we came across a fairy "village"
Late summer/early fall flowers (Scroll over for identification)
Impatiens/Touch-me-not/Spotted jewel weed
Fall aster
Queen Anne's lace
White meadowsweet
St John's wort
Boneset
Turtlehead
Little robin
Hawkweed
The berries on several plants were maturing (Scroll over for identification)
Buckthorn
Glossy buckthorn
Nannyberry
Dogwood
Climbing nightshade
Jack-in-the-pulpit
Sunlight targeted a flower stem and partial spider web
A slightly out of focus common yellowthroat warbler was busy with the joe-pye weed and doing its best to avoid being photographed
And there were mushrooms......
Indian Creek Nature Centre had a number of trails through the woods as well as a boardwalk alongside a pond
It quickly became evident that a black bear had used the boardwalk as well. Fortunately we never bumped into it.
There were a number of flowers along the trails - in bloom, in seed/berry or in between (Scroll over for identification)
Fall aster
Bumble bee on aster
Burr Weed
Devil's darning needles
Purple false foxglove
Nodding beggar-ticks
Turtlehead
Plus mushrooms of course
I recently discovered that some Queen Anne's lace in their seed making stage host Carrot seed moth caterpillars. So I checked it out here too
Stone valley has a number of longish trails, not as close to the rapids filled river as I would have liked.
There was a dam at trailhead which presented a chance for "frozen" vs lengthened shutter speeds
Red baneberry and silky dogwood berries
Mushrooms
The west branch of the Oswegatchie River runs through Harrisville
I had never seen pale jewel weed before
