Our third Weekly Walk took place during the fifth week after the autumnal equinox.
Before we went to the trailhead, we read the chapter about wooly bear (Isabella moth) caterpillars in The Beginning Naturalist by Gale Lawrence, but we didn’t see any wooly bears during this week’s hike.
We did see this fellow, though:
This chipmunk was tough to photograph, and I had to make use of my camera’s less-than-optimal zoom.
Between last week’s hike and this one, we had a freeze, but the day we went the temperatures were back up to where we didn’t need a coat and gloves.
We were surprised at how much things changed in just a week. For one thing, the colors were different.
And there were many fewer leaves on the trees.
We also discovered several new things, like these yellow leaves (maybe aspen? although the lack of a point at the top is kind of throwing me off), these nuts (which we think are from a mockernut hickory), and the green leaves in the background of this photo, which were blanketing a section of the trail.
Mockernut hickory still in its outer casing:
And here are the rest of the photos—three views of the creek and one of the rock overlooking a very marshy part of the river—in a handy gallery:
Imperfect Happiness 