American Redstart at nest

Here is one last photo from the Sugarloaf hike. Very early in the hike, we stumbled across the nest of an American Redstart. It was right next to the trail, but since the trail does not get much traffic, I suspect that the few people who get near the nest just walk on by, not even noticing it. We lingered for a few minutes, a respectable distance away, while I attempted to get a picture of an adult feeding a nestling. The adults, however, did not give me much time to take a photo (I imagine their priorities were a tad different from mine). They would bring in some tasty morsel, quickly give it to one of the nestlings, and then be off again in search of more food. The photo below is the best I could muster under the circumstances, factoring in that I did not want to linger too long for fear of distressing the adults.

Red Admiral

While walking up Keyser Run Fire Road (which, in some maps, is named Jinny Gray Road), it seemed like there was always one of these black butterflies with an orange stripe on their wings fluttering about. I managed to get this photo while one paused on a rock by the trail. Some searching on Google led me to decide that I had taken a picture of a Red Admiral.

Gypsy Moth Mayhem

While hiking the Sugarloaf Trail, Tammy and I kept getting tricked into thinking it was about to rain. The occasional clouds that obscured the sun, and being under the canopy of trees, caused the light to sometimes dim as if rain clouds were rolling in. And then we would notice the sound of what we thought were raindrops falling through the trees. But then the sun would come back out, and that sound of raindrops would persist. And we never felt a single raindrop.

So we focused on that sound and decided that it was like a really, really slow rain. Almost like the rain on the very edge of a storm. Since nothing was wet and it was really more sunny than cloudy, we knew it could not be rain. But that sound of something falling through the leaves was always there.

When we later stopped to examine some caterpillars on the side of the trail, we finally put two and two together. There were lots of caterpillars. At first, I was assuming these were Eastern Tent Caterpillars, but after some searching on Google, a bit of reading (here and here) and some picture comparisons, I have decided that these were Gypsy Moth Caterpillars. The Gypsy Moth is an introduced species in North America. We have Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, and his fleeting interest in entomology, to thank for this.

The caterpillars were happily munching on leaves. Everywhere you looked you saw caterpillars on leaves, and the leaves had holes in them or giant chunks missing from them. And when you examined the trail closely, you noticed bits of green leaves everywhere. Our conclusion was that the massive number of Gypsy Moth Caterpillars were chowing down on the leaves in the canopy, and an endless stream of leaf pieces were falling down to the ground.

Sugarloaf

As I mentioned a few posts back, Tammy and I recently hiked the Sugarloaf-Keyser Run Fire Road-Hogback Mountain loop in Shenandoah. It was a beautiful day, not hot, and very sunny. Here are a few pictures from the hike. The first is a view from Hogback Mountain, looking west over the adjacent valley. The second shows the lush undergrowth of ferns on Hogback Mountain.

A nice day for a hike

Tammy and I went out to Shenandoah for a hike today. We were worried that the heat from a couple days back would persist into the weekend, but the day turned out to be beautiful. It was never really hot at all.

So where did we hike? We went into the northern third of Shenandoah National Park (via route 211 and Sperryville) and hiked a five mile loop. The hike does not really have a name because it is actually a loop formed when you string together about five different trails: Appalachian Trail, Sugarloaf Trail, Pole Bridge Link Trail, Keyser Run Fire Road and Appalachian Trail one more time. One book I have calls it the Sugarloaf-Keyser Run Fire Road-Hogback Loop because of the trails you walk, and the fact that you cross over Hogback Mountain during the last part of the hike. Although the trails are not labeled, you can visualize the hike here via GoogleMaps.

The hike went through good bear territory, but no bears were seen. There were good numbers of the birds that usually hang around in the mountains of Virginia during the summer. There were tons of caterpillars, chomp chomping away at broad leaved trees (it was literally raining leaf bits). One even tried chomp, chomping away on my calf. And did I mention that it was a beautiful day?

[edit: corrected one spelling mistake and one instance of a trail name]