We hadn't walked around the Dewberry Trail for a year at least so we headed over only discover it is closed. Likely some boardwalk sections are damaged. Based on the worn narrow path past the closed sign, it seems it is still functional. However we opted not to take the closed trail, but headed down the straight, wide path that eventually connects with Trail 51, on the west side of Anderson Road. But when the official trail turned west, we turned east along an unmaintained (informal) trail that follows the ridge above the peat bog.
The trail, while wide, is well covered by the tree canopy
False solomon seal is in it's berry stage, although many, not all, of the plants had lost their berries to passing animals (?)
As we found at the not far away Mer Bleue boardwalk, small green frogs were hopping about. The difference here was that there is no immediately close by water puddle/drains/ponds in the area we found them
Particularly along the first half of the trail, there are ferns everywhere, of many colours as they fade into fall/winter
The royal ferns seemed to be holding onto their green colour
Walking under the tree canopy there were plenty of signs of fall approaching
The canopy opens up at one of the several "drains"/creeks that go through the Mer Bleue Bog. A few years ago there was a large beaver lodge right off the trail, there was no sign of it now. The drain/creek itself had little water in it. Whether it was because of the very little rain we had this summer, or Hydro lowering the water levels further west to work at clearing tree growth in the right-of-ways, or a combination, I don't know. There were some tracks in the mud that could have been moose, but more likely a deer struggling to get through.
At the opening, looking both east and west, there was a line of trees with lots of colour. Shooting at noon is not the best so the colours don't come out as nice as they are.
That is a favourite spot for the chickadees as people stop and feed them there. We were no different
What I thought was a less than pristine monarch (only my second of the summer) also stopped for a respite.
But then I realized it was a viceroy butterfly - the horizontal bar across the wings gives it away.
Turning onto the "informal" pathway some fallen trees made it easier to photograph their fungus
But only a single pair of mushrooms seemed to be around despite this normally being a good spot for them at this time of year.
The light sandy soil on the ridge makes it easy for ground hogs(?) to dig their burrows. They seem to like to start right on the trail. One hole had been around for a while, the second looked very freshly dug
There is a very old disintegrating car just over the edge of the ridge. Obviously it had been dumped there before there were many/any trees. Time, weather and humans are all taking their toll on it. It was in worse shape than when I last saw it 3-4 years ago.
The trail ended for us with a freshly fallen poplar tree lying across and along the pathway. No one had made a new way around it yet and we weren't about to do it , so we turned back
A darner dragonfly and a grasshopper caught my eye
Before leaving the informal trail, no sooner had I lamented that no garter snake had showed itself. one appeared. The lighting was bad, but I photographed anyway.
A few indian cucumber plants were along the trail
The trail back was a tunnel with some breaks of colour
And a dead tree or two having been attacked by woodpeckers
Aside from the chickaddess there didn't seem to be other birds around except for dark LBJs darting in and out ahead of us on the trail. While the photo isn't great I did finally catch one. I needed some heavy digital processing to improve it, they turned out to be white-throated sparrows White-throated Sparrow
