Scariest Bug Ever

This huge bug (2" long not counting the tail and antenae) scurried rapidly across the trail at Trout Brook Valley in Easton/Weston today. He was so big I thought he was a crayfish at first, although he scurried more like a big cockroach. I forgot my camera so I put him in a container and brought him home for identification. I'm no bug expert, and had a hard time figuring this one out. My husband suggested he looked like an earwing on steroids. By looking at the general descriptions of the various insect orders, I found some unexpected similarities with crickets. But look at those claws! Reminded me of a mole or a grizzly bear. So I Googled "crickets" and bingo, I found the "mole cricket."

He made such racketwith those claws trying to get out of the tupperware my husband thought it was our puppy digging around under the couch.

They say the mole crickets are actually pretty benign and don't bite, but I didn't test it out. And they say some can fly (oh, dear God, we could have these things flying around?!!).

In addition to the crazy bug, I found five letterboxes that had been planted six years ago in the park and were still in great shape.

Painting Letterboxes

I finally got my act together today and spray painted all my letterboxing containers at the same time. For those of you who don't go letterboxing and have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, letterboxing is a hobby where boxes containing a hand-carved rubber stamp and logbook are hidden along trails for people to find. It's common to try and camouflage letterboxes with camo tape or spray paint. Lock n' Locks are by far the best plastic containers available, holding their water-tight seal even after repeated rounds of freezing and thawing.

Black is the color of choice for spray paint since boxes are hidden in dark holes. This was about 25 boxes and it took me five minutes to spray paint them once everything was laid out on the paper.

I use a very light coat, since you need just enough to conceal the container (not actually give it a good coating) and a light coat is less likely to chip off. I leave the stickers on while painting and remove them after the paint is dry to create a clear window into the box (in case some park police think it might be a bomb or something).

OK, now I've got lots of boxes all set to go. Time to make some stamps and logbooks!

Shelton Canal Wildlife

Some people have assumed that the Shelton Canal has little or no wildlife value because when the hydroelectric plant was built in the 1980's, the flow to the canal was reduced, and there simply wasn't enough oxygen in the water for fish to survive.

Today my husband and I were nearby at Riverview Park checking out some recent trail work when he mentioned he saw kids fishing in the canal the other day. I peered over the concrete wall, and sure enough, there were lots of good-sized sunfish for the kids to catch. (Note this is NOT a place to take the kids fishing - there are train tracks alongside the back of the canal).

And then I saw the circular sunfish nests along the bottom of the canal. Lots of them. Sunfish don't need as much oxygen as trout, but they are more sensitive than carp (I've accidentally killed pet sunfish more than once while the goldfish in the same water were fine).

Speaking of... an 18" carp did start rooting in the weeds below us. He made quite a commotion. I wondered if there were any bass. Usually if there are sunfish, there are also bass, often in some very tiny, skeegy ponds. I did finally see one small bass. Then a duck flew in, swam around, and climbed ashore.

Bonus! A cute little muskrat swam came by. Not bad for a canal with no wildlife value!

Milford Point Mudsnails

I needed some scum-cleaners for my reef aquarium and, being too cheap to buy the pretty kinds of snails that actually live around reefs, I headed to the Sound to grab a few of the millions of mud snails there. Yes, there are millions (billions?) of these in Long Island Sound. I bet there are a thousand in the photo above. See all the black bumps protruding from the mud and water? All of those bumps are mud snails.

I've kept mud snails in various aquariums for years. These snails are a lowly marvel of nature. Black and nondescript, they can survive out of water for long stretches, can handle water as warm as a bath tub, and even quick changes in salinity. They eat everything, including scum, but are especially attracted to chunks of fish, and it's amazing how fast their little sniffer tubes will shoot up and start sniffing if you drop some fish nearby. In no time at all the dead fish will be just covered with the snails. After being in my reef tank for a while they'll be coated with purple coralline algae and be a lot nicer to look at.

The worst part about these snails is they carry swimmer's itch, which I discovered one day after cleaning my aquarium in which I had recently stocked lots of mud snails. I soon had big round horribly itchy welts all up my arm where microscopic flatworms had mistaken me for waterfowl, crawled under my skin, and promptly died. The flatworm's first host and carrier is the mud snail.

The Point was beautiful as always, but much of it is closed off for nesting birds (more than usual I think) and I didn't want to get anywhere near those areas with my puppy. And then the no-see-ums suddenly came from nowhere and attacked mercilessly. So we grabbed a bunch of snails and retreated.

Shelton Lakes Greenway Slideshow

Here's a slideshow of the "Shelton Lakes Greenway from Bridge to Bridge." It starts at Pine Lake then passes the school campus, Silent Waters, Hope Lake (Nells Rock Res.), Eklund Native Species Garden, the Nells Rock area ("the Wilderness" - which is why I put mostly pictures of animals there), Huntington Woods, and the Lane Street Meadow. It ends at the Huntington Street Cafe, where the volunteer usually congregate after an event. Letterboxers might note a feature towards the end of the slideshow that's referenced in one of my Shelton mystery boxes.

The first 1.25 mile is an "improved" handicapped-accessible path and the remain 2/3 of the route follows regular hiking trails. You start on the yellow-blazed Shelton Lakes Recreation Path ("Rec Path"), turn left onto the orange trail just after crossing Shelton Avenue, then turn right onto the yellow once again in the Nells Rock area. Bring a map! See www.sheltontrails.org.

Eklund Vernal Pool

Yesterday I was speaking the the Booth Hill School 4th graders, so I stopped at Eklund Garden in the morning and took a few swipes with a net in the skeegy pond down below to see what I could bring to show the kids. I already knew wood frogs breed there (quacking in the spring); spring peepers (peeping, of course); spotted salamanders (a breeding swarm were witnessed this spring); and the eastern spotted newt, which I had previously caught by accident while fetching water for the plants (I also caught a crayfish once that way).

That's the newt I caught yesterday (above). It's the same species as the red eft, which we find up in the garden. He was quite lively and is seen here trying to make a break for it.

In the photo above you can see a wood frog tadpole and the newt. There were lots of macroinvertebrates, too. At the top you can see a predaceous diving beetle larvae (these things get really nasty and actually eat tadpoles) and a hellegramite. On the right are a water strider (they walk on top of the water), a damselfly larvae (the long one), and a dragonfly larvae (the squat bug).

There's a close-up of the newt and damselfly larvae.

And here's the water strider and a backswimmer (top right). The backswimmers hang from the surface upside down.

Most people, when they see a scummy little pond without fish, immediately think it should either be filled in or perhaps enlarged and filled with fish. But ponds without fish are critical breeding habitats for amphibians like wood frogs and spotted salamanders. And there may be a rich ecosystem thriving in the pond. (Although you never know. Some promising pools turning out to be just mosquito larvae and scum).

Take a Break

If you force yourself to sit down and relax for awhile when hiking, you're more likely to take notice of the plants, animals, and rocks along the trail. Today on Shelton's Bridge-to-Bridge Hike I took a good break at the powerlines (long enough for my puppy to fall asleep on a bed of moss).

After a bit I suddenly noticed the birds twittering in the small tree nearby. They were making quite a commotion so I finally got up to take a look. It turned out to be a couple of fledgling birds out of the nest and singing for their parents. An adult chickadee flew in so that's probably what they were.

Then I noticed some tiny blue flowers along the trail, only about 1/4 inch long and about a foot high. Very easy to miss if you are walking fast. These are Blue Toadflax (Linari canadensis) and they are native to Connecticut in dry, sandy areas such as roadsides.

Here's one of the many species of Hawkweed, most of which are not native to North America. Another roadside species.

So take a break when hiking. You never know what you'll see.

Chestnut Blight

Chestnut trees were wiped out by a fungus many decades ago, but the same amazingly persistent roots keep resprouting, only to be attacked once again by the fungus as soon as they get an inch or two in diameter. They die back and resprout over and over. Here is a Chestnut sapling located on Dominick Trail, just north of Nells Rock Trail, that recently succumbed another round of the blight. There were still some brown leaves attached to the otherwise bare sapling, and the fungus had a fresh orange color.

Only a few inches away a much smaller Chestnut sapling, probably from the same root system, was untouched by the fungus. For now, anyway.

"Til We Meet Again"

Here's a mystery engraving along the Far Mill River off of Mill Street at the old dam near the sign kiosk and bench. XXX may stand for kisses, and "Til We Meet Again" was a very popular song in 1918. No idea what "RE IV" is, perhaps someone's initials.

Update 6/9/2009: A reader reports that a 20-yr-old committed suicide at that spot in 2004 and his friends commissioned the engraving. How sad.

Garlic Mustard Pesto

Garlic Mustard is an herb that was planted in America by Europeans for use in foods, but the plant has become highly invasive. The stuff grows everywhere, like dandelions. It especially likes roadways, but also grows in both wooded and open areas. The herb has a strong smell of garlic with a touch of onion, and there are plenty of recipes you can find online, but the most commonly recommended food is Garlic Mustard Pesto.

I decided to give it a whirl, fully expecting it to taste like crap, because stuff they say you can eat from the wild usually does. Dandelion greens, for example, I find simply revolting, but people have been eating them for ages.

This time around, however, I was amazed. The pesto was delicious, assuming you like garlic, especially spread over Triscuits, but like any pesto you can also put it on pasta or whatever. My teenage son and husband liked it. I took it to work and people loved it and wanted to know all about Garlic Mustard and where it can be picked.

I used almost the entire bag of Garlic Mustard in the above photo to make one batch of the recipe, which requires 3 packed cups of Garlic Mustard (it's more than you think) along with walnuts, olive oil, garlic, Parmesan Cheese and Romano Cheese, chopped up in the food processor. There are many Garlic Mustard Pesto recipes on the internet, but here is the one I used. Important tip: The pesto is better after sitting in the frig for a day.

Here's where I got my Garlic Mustard: Birchbank Trail, just in from the parking area on Birchbank Road. In the photo above, all the plants growing right along the trail are Garlic Mustard. Yes, there is an ordinance against picking plants in the open space but trust me, it's more than OK. You will be doing us all a favor by removing this invasive plant and you could be pulling it up for hours at Birchbank and there would still be lots more. In places it is smothering out Dutchman Breeches and Trillium, and that's just not right. And please, bare root the plant, but don't throw the remains on your mulch pile, or it'll take root. There are an infinitive number of other places Garlic Mustard grows (quite possibly in your backyard, for starters), but I don't recommend eating anything right along the roadway due to possible contamination of the soils with heavy metals.