Nature Walk 5/5/12

This morning a light drizzle was falling so we saw lots of cool plants but few birds of interest.  Garlic mustard everywhere, so if you see some, pull it up!  It is an invasive plant and chokes native plants out of our ecosystem.




A couple of late toad trillium flowers were blooming along with some Jack in the Pulpits.  3 trillium leaves are arranged equidistant around the stem, whereas 3 Jack in the pulpit leaves form a triangle to one side of the stem. 

Tilt your head to the right, now repeat after me, sedges have edges!

Barb Smith was thrilled to find at least 5 different kinds of sedges blooming.  A sedge is a grass and if you feel the stem it has edges, hence the saying "sedges have edges." 

Carpentersville Carpenter ants busy at work in a dead tree stump.  A crane fly landed on my leg but I could not photograph it.  It had 6 very long legs, just like a crane (bird.)

Newly grown hickory seedling looks like a flower blossoming.  Next Library Springs Nature Walk will be June 16th at 9:00am, rain or shine.  Come learn and see the beauty in your own backyard!

Nature Walk 1/28/12

With temperature in the low 20's and a cold wind, we cut our nature hike short, but I did get some good photos of the previous night's snowfall.  Next Library Springs hike is the Bird Walk with Dave Poweleit for the Great Backyard Bird Count on Sat. Feb. 18.

Each weed had a cap of sticky snow -it was a highly crystalized snow.