The Raleigh Naturalist

January 21, 2008

The Volkswagen boulders and winter findings

Filed under: East Raleigh, Greenways & Parks, Nature Lore — Tags: , , , — raleighnaturalist @ 3:47 am

At Buckeye Trail’s beginning there is a strange hill hump meadow thing that looks very out of place.  It is an old rather small landfill that must have served Raleigh a very long time ago, but recently enough to be mowed and monitored as landfills now must be.  It swells at the base of a ridge coming down from Peartree Lane across Milburnie Road into the Crabtree floodplain and diverts the waters coming down from Longview Lake into a deeply carved creek that parallels Milburnie and strikes Crabtree just north of the Bow Tie Club, where a very dubiously placed parking lot has been scraped out right next to the creek and seemingly in the water’s right of way.  Anyway, this landfill meadow hides a local kids’ landmark on its wooded northern slope: two huge boulders that must have been unearthed in the landfill’s operation. I mean huge! You know how big they are? Check the title!

 They sit in the middle of this woods in east Raleigh like alien monoliths. There just are no big rocks in this part of Raleigh – it’s either red clay or sand, but no rocks.  Before the greenway got built, I would go every few winters and make a ritual of being able to locate, once again, these well hidden icons of my childhood woodcraft.  Now, the cross-country trail which begins at the top of the landfill meadow takes me down the ridge to a spot where I can hop off and find them in minutes.   Which is cool, and I still go.  But only in winter.  There are large number of sewer line cuts and various off-trail adventures which poison ivy forbids from me most of the year.  But in the dead of winter, I can explore these spots with impunity – as long as I don’t grab any vines while hopping ditches!

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 This stretch of greenway shows Crabtree slowing down and deepening as it winds through the marshy joining with Marsh Creek.  The quiet stretch below is just before turning at Milburnie to slide under New Bern Avenue and curve with the beltline toward the Neuse River junction at Anderson Point.  Another touchstone on this walk (available at all times of year, right next to the greenway) is the largest oak gall of which I know.  These red bugs (and I mean true bugs for those in the know) come swarming out of it dangerously early in the spring some years.

There are all kinds of nifty finds on this easternmost stretch of greenway.  Below are two interesting types of fungi: shelf mushrooms and slime mold.

January 19, 2008

Draft Ideas

Filed under: About & reflection — raleighnaturalist @ 12:27 am

This post is an artifact of when this blog was a parallel draft blog for Raleigh Nature at it’s original url. This url became the home site on June 29, 2008.

 

Initial welcome topics: 

1/1/08 Here at the draft blog (If YOU are here thank you so much for exploring my site) I will throw out some upcoming topics:  1) Yates Mill Pond – big topic with history, dam failure, park, tree walk, NCSU. (posted) 2) Pigeon House Creek and downtown wildlife, with a few nesting sites thrown in  3) Lions Park and its geological strike point  4) Hemlock Bluffs “exotica” portrait   5) Person Street’s history as “business US One” and the true spine of the city  6) Mordecai House, Raleigh farming history, and city springs, 7) Mills Across Raleigh: How did you think those roads got their name?  8) Where Have All the Pigeons Gone? –  including the Peanut Man Who Peddled Drugs out of his hot box and free city birth control for birds  9)  Raleigh’s growing hawk population: where some of the pigeons went and man, I love those big birds  10) Dix resolved? we will see.

More 1/18/08

Sustainable farming, heritage agriculture, local farm-food systems, urban food gardening.

invasive species and native expansions. kudzu, stilt-grass, hydrilla and coyotes. don’t start me on the pond-bred trout.

 Daily Coyote

Long leaf pine at Falls

 

 

January 18, 2008

Yates Mill Ponderings

Filed under: Greenways & Parks, Nature Lore, Raleigh History, Raleigh mills, Southwest Raleigh — Tags: , , — raleighnaturalist @ 2:03 am

The park at Yates Mill Pond is in the purview of this blog – just over a mile from the beltline – but partakes of rural Raleigh and Raleigh history in a profound way that few other sites in that purview do.  The watershed, the mill history, the flood history, the facility and its wonderful homage to all of the previous: here is a nature experience with, truly, something for everyone.  The new center has marvelous open beam vaulted ceilings  and huge window walls that look out on the pond – you feel like you’re in a Biltmore hunting lodge. There is a large set of multi-media displays that give a rich sense of the mill’s multi-family, multi-disaster history.  Back outside, the fishing deck is usually in use, but there are lots of private corners of the pond to explore.

 Walk past the fishing deck and you have a choice of directions to begin a large loop: to the right you can explore a the wet meadow valley around a ridge from the main pond.This trail winds around by NCSU research farmland and then up the ridge to the Penny Road side of the facility.  Currently hurricane damage has closed the connecting segment, so that you are diverted back across the fishing deck to return to the center.

update 6-09 – all 3 trails are open

If you go left after the fishing deck, you are following a trail right beside the pond with twenty specimens of trees, labeled with numbers to go with a brochure available in the center.  There is lots of wildlife, such as the skink seen below. A great place we will return to soon!

Below, from a historical image is my drawing in The Natural History of Raleigh.
Yates Mill Pond

 

 

 

 

 

January 11, 2008

Oh, my! Here we go – and hawks in Cameron Village!

Filed under: About & reflection, Central Raleigh, Nature Lore — Tags: , — raleighnaturalist @ 1:07 am

This first “normal” post is late –  my own natural history took a sudden gust last Saturday when the huge spread in the News & Observer began a cascade of calls, messages and e-mails about everything from binding family Bibles to studio tours.  Wonderful, but hairy – and all I want to do is get back to the red-tailed hawk family who has moved into Cameron Village.  These guys are swooping down to roost sometimes right beside the library and the one on the left below looks like a juvenile.  I’ll start a series of observations and let you know.  We see these guys all the time – whereas you need to get near some flowing water and real country to see the slightly smaller red-shouldered hawk.

 

 

December 31, 2007

Welcome to The Natural History of Raleigh

Filed under: About & reflection, Greenways & Parks, Nature Lore, Southwest Raleigh — Tags: , , , , , — raleighnaturalist @ 5:35 pm

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Fall on the Beltline at Jones Franklin

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Our trees, almost without exception, show the succession process at work, with loblolly pines taking over abandoned land, maples and dogwoods peeking out from under as they age, and hardwoods like oak, hickory and tulip tree slowly rising out of the aging pines as disease and self-pruning clears the way.  This stand on the southwest corner of the beltline exemplifies this science idea and is also a “purty sight” – a common dual theme of this blog.  Look around, check back for weekly posts – thanks for coming!

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The welcome rain this holiday has filled (and muddied) area waterways.  in case you didn’t know it, quite a few sections of greenway flood temporarily on a regular basis.  Under Atlantic Avenue, between Centennial and S. Saunders, and west of Raleigh Swamp are just a few areas where mud will usually reign until the city bobcats come scraping through.  The re-shoring of the greenway deck off Capital Boulevard is still keeping that steeply edged section closed. Joe Miller wrote an excellent recent update on Greenway projects here.

photos of Crabtree creek levels after recent rains

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December 30, 2007

Dix Hill and the making of a world class city

Filed under: green initiatives, Greenways & Parks, Pecans & Mistletoe, South Raleigh — Tags: , , , — raleighnaturalist @ 4:11 pm

 

The oak grove above will probably survive whatever is to come, but the old “Dix Hill” where I went sledding has already been truncated by Centennial and the Farmer’s Market, and is now being fought over like a scrap thrown between dogs.  I realize there is going to be more development of some kind,and that the state will hold on to some space – as a matter of fact, the Dix hospital employees I talk to say they don’t expect to leave.  It makes sense for some portion – the juvenile part, say – of the mental health facilities to remain. I am not an activist but I’m glad the Dix group is working so hard to save what they can.  The truth is, the magnificent lower meadow, surrounded by majestic oaks, with Rocky Branch edging it, is the prettiest place inside the beltline.  A park here would go a long way toward establishing Raleigh as the true and enlightened city of oaks.

rocky-branch-at-dix_1_1.jpg

Rocky Branch above, Dix Hill pecan trees below

 

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