VA Shenandoah National Park: Nature Diary - October 2020

 From my week roaming the trails of the Northern District of Shenandoah National Park...

I took my phone and a small sketchbook with a tiny watercolor set and pencils/pens. The longer I hike, the smaller (and lighter) my materials become. I carry compact 8 x 21 Pentax binoculars with a close focus setting for observing insects and flowers within half a meter. The birding was great in the thick of fall migration! 

Eastern Towhees in a migration flock at Indian Run Spring.

I witnessed a large flock of migrating Eastern Towhees at Indian Run Spring and found myself surrounded by Wild Turkeys at Snead Farm. Some of my sketched observations were done sitting very close and still near my subject, like the Timber Rattlesnake. I sat with the Towhees at the spring and sketched all their antics in and around the water. The bears, however, were done quickly from memory as there was no time to retrieve my materials from my pack without alerting Amos to their presence and besides, they came and went quickly. 

The fungi were really prevalent this week, despite there not being a lot of rain lately. All the different kinds of fungi represent biodiversity of all those species they depend upon.  The more fungi, the more stable an environment tends to be. It was interesting to think about the past century of Shenandoah National Park as a hundred years of rewilding from when the mountains were heavily logged, cultivated, cleared, and grazed. The presence of many types of fungi represent an environment rich in ecological process and diversity. 

Dyer's Polypore - a great dye for yarn - pick now!

A speaker at the The North American Mycological Association stated in a recent conference that we have only named less that 5% of all fungi on earth! Whoa. I'm not a big consumer of wild mushrooms - I let my cousin Molly handle that - she's an expert. But I did observe how many mushrooms were bitten into, tasted, browsed, chomped on, and chewed through. I noted where entire patches of mushrooms were gobbled up and the ground all around disturbed. I didn't know if SNP is plagued by wild boar, but the amount of ground disturbance to get at those tasty fungi reminded me of hiking the Piedmont in South Carolina where boar are a big problem in some places. This time of year is so important for animals that need to store up body fat for winter so maybe these were bear patches or places where deer have dug.

Clustered Bonnets

I met up with a local hiker who was carrying a basket. She was collecting bracket fungi of different types and showed me a bunch of bright orange-y brown polypore she had pulled off a stump. All of the fungi in her basket were for dying wool. This is time to collect them while the colors are bright. She pointed out a clump of Dyer's Polypore for me to photograph that were too small to collect. She was only collecting a few pounds specimens four or more inches across and just a few pounds.  

Brittlestems

Oyster Mushroom

Spotted Wintergreen, Lands Run Road

The presence of Pines together with Oaks meant the soil was really acidic and this was when I found acres of Spotted Wintergreen, Chimaphila maculata. The flowers are long gone but the creepy eyeballs are everywhere. This was an important plant for indigenous people and still has widespread medicinal use across the Appalachians. The bracket fungi lady also had some of this in her basket.  I didn't take her picture because I wasn't sure of she was permitted to collect in SNP, but she was being very careful about only collecting small amounts of things and only had a few rhizomes of wintergreen in her basket.  Wild collecting is still an important aspect of Appalachia culture and I know it is allowed in many national and state parks with permission. 

Sunroot (Appalachian Jerusalem Artichoke), Dickey Ridge Picnic Area

Another item she had in her basket was very recognizable and she collected it right off the roadside at the Dickey Ridge picnic area. She called it Sunroot - the Appalachian name for Jerusalem Artichoke - which isn't from Jerusalem or even an artichoke. She'd collected only the tubers from the spent plants, however, and not the still-flowering plants. She was going to plant these in her garden, she said. I did that once and now I have Sunroot all over the place, I replied. The tubers of this sunflower are edible but I've never acquired a taste for them. I found them later when I went down to the Visitor's Center to get wifi for a meetint. I also found where she'd dug a few tubers from a frost nipped patch. 

Knapweed, Indian Run Spring

White Turtlehead, Traces Trail

Great Blue Lobelia, Elkwallow 

Blue Wood Aster, Sugarloaf Trail 

Canada Goldenrod, Radio Tower Summit, Hogback Mountain

Silverrod, Hogback Mountain

Common Witch-Hazel, Keiser Run Road

False Solomon's Seal, Overall Run Road

Bluestem Goldenrod, Beech Mountain Trail

Zigzag Goldenrod, Keiser Run Road

American Chestnut, Sugarloaf Trail

Marginal Wood Fern, Sugarloaf Trail

Virginia Pine over Jeremy's Run and Neighbor Mountain

American Salmonfly, Lands Run

If you see someone lifting rocks in a stream with a curious coonhound looking on, it's probably me. We found this handsome American Salmonfly, Pteronarcys dorsata, under a stone and I was pretty stoked about it because this is a prime insect indicator of pristine waters. We actually found several  more nearby. A couple of hikers from Columbus, Ohio, soon joined me and they were amazed by all the aquatic life to be found. We were very careful to lift and replace the rocks gently, but the Salmonfly is known for playing possum so I did poke this one and it dramatically flipped off the rock "dead" into the water and floated to the bottom belly-up before scurrying back under its home rock. 

Caddisfly, larvae encased, Lands Run

More rock lifting revealed entire Caddisfly towns, but I don't know which species these were. Very, very tiny. Amos and I had bushwacked to the headwaters of Lands Run about a quarter mile up the mountain before it tumbles through and over greenstone cliffs into the ravine below.  There had been little rain this week so the headwaters was more like a seepage with some small puddles and that's where we found these tiny constructions. Lands Run would be a great little creek to follow from its headwaters near Skyline Drive to its joining with Gooney Run in the valley and then with the South Fork of the Shenandoah. Of course, flipping rocks the whole way...

Timber Rattlesnake, Overall Run Trail

This was one of the best sightings of a Timber Rattler,  Crotalus horridus, that I had all week (2 more but crossing the road at night). It was just shy of  three feet and while the air was still cool in the early morning it was sitting on the warm, rugged trail to soak up some heat. I asked Amos to lie down and be quiet (treat involved) while I sat down on the trail to study it. We visited for a while. This is when my close focus Pentax binocs are great. I was able to study its scales and eyes and flicking tongue from eight feet away while it was gentle and calm, even turning towards me to "taste" my space. Only three full buttons on its tail so a younger one. 

My sit-down-and-visit-awhile approach to snake observation has worked well since I was a kid. I've "visited" with Hognose, Eastern Kings, Pygmy Rattlers, Copperheads, Black Rat Snakes, Pine Snakes, and Mud Snakes over the years and have had the opportunity to really do some nice life sketches. (The only snake that doesn't permit portrait-making is the Northern Watersnake which thinks the fast moving pencil or pen is worth a strike.)  All snakes know when harm or calm is present and how they react to us is entirely dependent upon our reaction to them. A guy from New York came down the trail and saw me sitting there with the snake and soon he was sitting too. "This is absolutely amazing!" he said. "What a beautiful, beautiful creature!" (Dave M. - he was your stunt double.)  After a half hour the Rattler slowly moved to the side of the trail and curled up under a log invisible to any more hikers coming this way. We all said our goodbyes and continued on with our hike to the falls. 

Hickory Tussock Moth (cat), Overall Run 

I know that these guys will give an itchy prickly rash if handled, so I just took its picture and let it go on its way. It'll become the Hickory Tiger Moth, Lophocampa caryae. Interestingly,  this was the only moth I saw flying in the cool mountain air for the entire week and I came across the caterpillars on every day's hike. 

Northern Two-Lined Salamander, Overall Run headwaters

Amos and I had a lot of fun lifting rocks in the headwaters section of Overall Run to look for "sally" before our steep climb down into the ravine. This Northern Two-Lined Salamander, Eurycea bislineata, squirmed out of a rock-covered puddle and ventured on across some gravel to a pile of leaves where it not only blended in instantly but it chose the yellow Tulip Poplar and Maple leaves to hide under rather than the brown and red leaves nearby. These guys love Appalachian springs and headwaters - anywhere there are tiny pools and rocks. The males have tiny teeth to nip the females with to encourage mating. They do migrate in breeding season, but not very far, so are basically homebodies. We saw a Red-Backed Sally too, but I didn't capture the picture before Amos stuck his nose under my phone to sniff at him. So I have a picture of Amos' nose instead. 

Greenstone quarry, Lands Run Road

I love geology so this week was a great chance to get to experience hiking through ancient lava fields that are known collectively as the Catoctin Lava Formation, a widespread area that runs from north of Gettysburg, PA, to Lexington, VA. This formation is the result of the tearing apart of the old continent Rodinian and the opening of the Iapetus Ocean (the ocean that came before the Atlantic and the break up of Pangea). The tearing of the crustal plates ripped open the valley floors and flooded the area with  molten material. The rift valleys were buried under 1,500 feet of lava and now we hike through its weathered remains in SNP. 

Greenstone, Lands Run Road quarry

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Metamorphosed basalts became greenstone which was used by settlers and farmers extensively for building stone fences, roads, bridges, and foundations. Some historic homes still standing outside the park are built entirely of Greenstone and have withstood centuries of time. It's a mountainous landscape entirely born of fire but with uplift and weathering is at the mercy of climate and water. 

Overall Run Falls runs through a thick bed of Greenstone.

Lands Run Falls, incised lava bed creek.

Columnar jointing, Compton Peak - Catoctin lava formation.

The most amazing encounters I had with the local geology was hiking to and observing cool formations of columnar jointing. Basalt has this crazy way of crystalizing as it cools which results in six-sided columns. This is the same rock type that forms the Devil's Tower in Wyoming and the Sheepeater Cliff in Yellowstone. The formations in SNP however are millions of years older and have weathered a lot so that what you see are large boulder fields of crazy blocks and columns scattered all around. 

Fort Windham Rocks - Catoctin lava formation

The formation at Compton's Peak was a difficult climb down and back up to see, but well worth the effort. The formation at Fort Windham Rocks was an easy find along a trail and afforded plenty of opportunity to scramble around and over the outcrop. Viewing the top of Hogback from an overlook I could see the massively weathered columns broken by freeze-thaw and exposure but that displayed the characteristic six-sided symmetry.

Hogback Mountain basaltic boulder outcrop

American Oil Beetle, Little Hogback

This little American Oil Beetle, Meloe americanus, is best not handled because she can expel a powerful chemical oil that burns like heck. I know this to be true. So when Amos wanted to nudge it with his nose, I gave him a firm "No!"  These little beetles are clever too. When very small, they'll hitch rides on honey bees by staking out in flowerheads and latching on. When the bee returns to the hive, the baby beetle detaches and pigs out on pollen cakes packed into larval bee cells. No harm to bees except for stealing food. I know this to be true, too. 

Carolina Leaf Roller Cricket, Mathews Arm Fire Road

Ever see tender leaves of Spicebush or Witch-Hazel rolled up tight into a tube? Probably the work of the Carolina Leaf Roller Cricket, Camptonotus carolinensis. I had no idea what rolled leaves like that until this trip when I walked through a Witch-Hazel thicket and pulled a few rolled leaves apart, all of them empty except for one that had this incredible pair of hairs sticking out. Turned out to be antennae connected to the Leaf Roller Cricket inside! I left that one intact and found this one on a trail post preening her long, elegant antennae just beyond another Witch-Hazel thicket which I'm guessing is there leaf-rolling neighborhood of choice. 

American Cancer-Root, Compton Peak

I found American Cancer-Root, Conopholis americana,  just about everywhere because there were Oaks just about everywhere, but this parasitic plant was a ways past its creamy-colored phase. In fact, all of the Cancer-Root I found was brown and drying out. Still cool to look at, though. It has nothing to do with cancer treatment so I don't know why the name. It is purely a parasitic plant, thus no chlorophyll of its own and derives everything it needs from attaching itself to the roots of Oak trees. 

Eastern Crayfish, Lands Run

The coolest (and most heart-pounding) sighting I had was a rather close up encounter with a Momma Black Bear and her two cubs. I was taking a break with Amos on a very steep uphill trail and Amos, being tired from the long difficult hike, actually had his eyes closed laying down.  As we rested, the three bears crossed the trail only about 30 yards ahead of us and Momma noticed me standing there. I was praying Amos stayed asleep! His coonhound instinct to yowl and bay would have surely caused a scene. Luckily, he did stay snoozing and the bear moved her cubs quickly and quietly down the hillside. 

  Momma Black Bear and two cubs crossing the Beech Mountain Trail.