The snowberries (Symphoricarpos albus) in the underbrush along the sides of the trail caught my attention, and I snapped a number of photos of them.
When the kids were small, there was a very large snowberry bush / thicket in the neighbourhood, and the kids were delighted at the popping sound the berries made when stepped on. I guess those fond memories are one of the reasons I kept two snowberry bushes in our yard, which popped up on their own, even though they sucker terribly, and I keep wondering why I keep them. (Actually, I had 3 originally, but the one in the center of my upper yard became unmanageable, and a year or so after removing it, I am still chasing down suckers and removing them.) So when we reminded the kids today, they rediscovered the joy of popping the berries, and we had a hard time stopping them from collecting berries once they got started.
Finally, I reminded them that this is a food source for birds in winter, and we'd better leave some for the birds. They respected that. The start of the rain also helped to focus our attention on getting back to the car.
There were also a noticeable number of red osier dogwood, their leaves turning yellows and reds (sorry, no photo), and these bright red rose hips:
I had taken only my daughter's Kodak Easyshare camera, since it fit in my pocket, unlike our Canon EOS, and anyhow I expected it to start to rain while we were there (which it did, but only as we were leaving). Then we encountered some chickadees along the path, and I suddenly wished I had brought the Canon.
Later when I heard an eagle's call high up in the cottonwood trees, I really wished I had the Canon. So I did my best, but the zoom on the Kodak was quite inadequate, and these are the best I could manage, of the pair of bald eagles:
I was lucky that as I was snapping photos, they flew off, and I caught this one as it took flight:
I hope you all had a relaxing and reflective Remembrance Day or Veterans Day today.
5 comments:
Thank you for posting the snowberry photos. We do not have snowberries here in the Ozarks. They do not grow this far south. However, we do have Snowberry Clearwing Moths. Here their caterpillars feed on a related species, Coralberry -- which is wine red and appears to have a much smaller berry. I don't know if coralberries make a satisfying "pop" or not -- probably not since they a so much smaller, but I'll have to investigate.
Marvin @ Nature in the Ozarks
I've never heard of snowberries, very pretty!
p.s. I love my Canon too:)
Looks like a fabulous hike. I wonder if snowberries could hold up in a dry garden such as mine? Good luck with the garden project. I love those sort of endeavors so I hope you're having lots of fun with it!
Thanks for the comment! My bottle tree does hold up pretty well in the wind because I have it braced with a bunch of bricks and it is partially buried in the ground. I enjoyed clicking around your blog!
I too want to thank you for this post, I didn't know what these berries were called, they grow wild here - looks like you had a wonderful walk - peace
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