Backyard Wanderings

We wanted to see what new things are popping up for spring, so we took a short walk in the woods behind our house. We saw a few bright green leaves just starting to emerge, and it's early days, so there will be many more exciting things to post in the weeks to come. Here are some pictures of our adventure! 

The young gentleman was very excited hopping about the rocky stream bed. 

To his credit, he didn't get his feet wet!

 We saw some evidence of benthic macroinvertibrates, like this muddy home.

 Awesome snag!

 This tiny cave is under a muddy overhanging bank. I liked how the water dripping down gave a miniature, less-permanent example of stalagmite and stalactite formation.

 We tried to see if we could place the wood chips we found on the ground back in the woodpecker holes.

 The young gentleman and a GIANT white pine tree

I did see one excellent example for tree ID. I found a white birch (also known as a paper birch) with its characteristic peeling bark:

And right next to it I saw a yellow birch, with its...characteristic peeling bark:

I asked the young gentleman if he thought the trees might be similar. I mentioned how one tree was white, and the other was yellow. "If the white one is a white birch, what might the yellow one be?" "Yellow birch!" "Bingo!"

The branches were all too high for me to show him one of the nicest defining characteristics of a yellow birch - the wintergreen smell when you scratch the bark on a live twig. You can also find that scent on black (sweet) birch, but not on white birch or grey birch.

It was a very fun short walk, I can't wait to see how our little woods change as spring continues to emerge!