Today is Tuesday, July 5th at 11:30 in the morning. It is currently cloudy out at the moment but is sun on forecast for later today. In my first 15 at my spot there was something definitely new there. A piece of the rotten log had been removed by the rain last week to reveal a whole bunch of insect wholes that had been eating away at the inside of this tree. The holes look familiar to the kind EAB make when they first find ash trees to nest in. The stump however belonged to a box elder tree, which is common in Burlington, which mean EAB wouldn’t touch it. Thats when I pulled a little carpenter ant out of the whole. Luckily the tree had been removed a while ago but the little ants were still going to town on the leftover stump. My natural history mystery this week is when do squirrels start storing food for the winter? I’ve noticed over my spot that there are lots of little holes that are filled with old acorns or beach nuts and I wondered if squirrels use the same spots to store food and when do they start/stop foraging. The answer is that squirrels use the length of daytimes and the general temperature to decide when its time to store food or time to bulk. They also don’t generally use the same store sights for more than one year as most get raided by other squirrels anyway.
This was my first real time going out into the woods with the intention of taking photos. I’ve always had other reasons to be in the woods and would just photograph anything I though was cool or interesting. It also definitely changed how I viewed and looked at the sight. I was forced to get two perspectives on my surroundings, one through my eyes and the other through the camera which is hard to position sometimes to get the right shot. It was similar to sketching in the sense that you really had to focus but different in that you were way more flexible on what the finished product could be. In closing I definitely need to do some more just sitting in the woods and just observing. Every time I go to my site I am just amazed at how much can happen is such a small area.