I originally didn’t have a plan for what tree I was going to search out among the many on my site, but after spotting a paper birch down by the water I figured I would use it for identification. I’ve always like Paper Birch. When I was younger I would harvest the peeling sheets of ‘paper-like’ bark and use charcoal to try and write on it. I would crumple it up and start little fires, bursts of flames that crackled like a hungry inferno and then burnt out in an instant. I still like to cut kindling from birch, I find that it makes the first steps of building a wood fire easier and more enjoyable.
This particular Birch stood by itself among a variety of young Maples and Beach trees. I could tell that it wasn’t a yellow Birch because… welp… it wasn’t yellow. I could tell it wasn’t a River Birch because mature River Birch is much darker and ‘scaley’. Gray Birch was the last “lookalike” I had to rule out to make sure it was indeed a Paper Birch. After some research, I found that, unlike paper Birch, Gray Birch bark doesn’t peel off in sheets. After making sure that my tree wasn’t one of its lookalike species, I took some pictures for my iNaturalist post and continued to explore my site.
It was fun exploring the rest of my site. The river was frozen over for the first time so I walked around on the ice. I found some Grey Fox tracks (or maybe Red Fox) and spotted a cool Northern White Cedar on the side of a cliff.