northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's another reminder of how dry the summer was. It was taken at Washington Valley Park, and is usually a small stream that flows into the Washington Valley Reservoir. (It's not the larger West Branch Middle Brook.) Usually you need to do a little rock-hopping to get across it [1]. But at the tail end of August (and probably almost all of August) it looked more like a puddle with rocks in it. The rocks are still lumpy enough that you needed to cross with care, though falling today would be more of a painful than wet experience. Fortunately the water level has returned to approximately normal levels with our autumnal rains. Still, we did have one of the driest summers I've seen down here. [1] On one occasion I watched a mother attempting to coax a small boy to cross it, but he found it too unsafe.

Two of the soggier places in my area are Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and Lord Stirling Park, the latter being a county park that's part of the same ecosystem as Great Swamp. Both are about as dry as I've ever seen them. Great Swamp has a boardwalk that normally takes you through some pretty swampy areas; this month it mostly looked dry as I peered over the sides. As expected, Lord Stirling Park was no better; below is a picture of their Lily Pad Pond. Admittedly it still looks muddy there, but usually water would be covering this whole area. (I never appreciated just how shallow this pond was, though I suppose the abundance of lily pads should have told me that it wasn't very deep.) Lily Pad Pond August 3, 2022 at Lord Stirling Park Here's another sign of the drought. Upon entering Duke Farms you'll usually see a small waterfall. There are plenty of times in a normal summer when the waterfall becomes more of a water trickle, but it's rare for the falls ...