September 6, 2026: The Magnificent Bryozoan

On one paddle around the lake this week I discovered enough items of interest to fill four journals, but I'll restrain myself to just a couple. There were pretty flowers and ripe berries along the shore, fish surfacing to catch insects, turtles sunning themselves on logs, but the most unique was a large, round bryozoan community clinging to the end of a long submerged branch.

Blob on a Stick:  Magnificent Bryozoa (Pectinatella magnifica)

I've seen these before and always think they're an amphibian's egg mass - frog, salamander - before remembering no, it's the wrong location and the wrong time of year for eggs.

The colony formed at the tip of a long, submerged branch.

Slowly it comes to me that it's a colony of hundreds of thousands of microscopic organisms called Bryozoa.  These are filter-feeding organisms that have tiny cilia that reach out to capture algae, phytoplankton, and other organic debris which helps keep clear the water.  But they also require clean water to survive, so their presence is a good sign in a waterbody.  Early on my paddle I did find a small accumulation of cyanobacteria.

Cyanobacteria, likely Gloeotrichia echinulata.  (Thank you MT for help with identification!)

My research on whether magnificent bryozoa reduces blue-green algae is mixed.  Some references state bryozoa do take in cyanobacteria, but also found that they expel much of it alive.  [Ref:  SébastienAutret,MariaInesMoreiradeGouveia,AudreyVanhove,SéverineAllegra,FrançoiseGirardot.Assessmentofthecyanobacteriarisk,consideringtheinvasivebryozoanPectinatellamagnifica:methodologicalapproach.AquaEcOmics,Mar2025,EvianlesBains,France.,2025]

Most of the glob is a gelatinous sphere which supports the colony - all the living organisms are on the outside where their cilia can reach out to grab their prey. 

Note they are also expanding down the branch.

Though they look creepy, they're completely harmless to the point you can touch them, but if you do, be careful to not damage them so they can continue to perform their work.  

The second item of note was much larger, and though just as interesting, not as exciting.

A large floating mat of organic material.

I found these large mats of floating organic material in several shallow areas with low waterflow.  They  show the process of the eutrophication of a lake.  When organic material - mostly aquatic plants - dies where oxygen levels are low, it decomposes at a slow enough rate that it accumulates faster than it decays, which results in these large floating mats.  Once they form, they can grow quickly as more organic material collects along the periphery. 

Over time they thicken such that plants grow on them, pulling out water and dropping more organic materials. 

Pickerel Weed taking up residence on a floating mat.

Eventually they become thick and firm enough to support trees, and that one can walk on them without sinking down into the water on which they float.  In the not too distant future - perhaps in my grandchildren's lifetime - one may be able to walk to some of the islands in Lake Wicwas that are currently separated by shallow marshes or bogs.

A great local example of this process, where you can actually walk on a lake now covered by these organic mats, is the Philbrick-Cricenti Bog in New London.  

A boardwalk on the Philbrick-Cricenti bog.

I highly recommend a visit if you've never been there - it's quite an experience.  You can find more information about that bog here.

Early this year we had a skunk visiting the yard on a regular basis.  This week, it's been a porcupine!  It seems to really enjoy feasting on clover and other plants in the yard.  It truly is not concerned with with its safety as it just continued dining as we stood there and took pictures. 

And when we decided it was time to shoo it away, it was very reluctant to leave its dinner table, but after we made enough racket, it finally decided to vamoose.

I'll end with a few other sights from my morning paddle.

Painted turtles collecting solar rays to strengthen their shells for winter hibernation.

Bladderwort

Crows, just hanging out.

An osprey soaring overhead, looking for breakfast.

September is a beautiful time on the lake.

August 30, 2026: Jack Pine

On a recent hike to Mt. Chocorua I passed through a rare natural habit, so rare in fact that it's recognized by the N.H. Natural Heritage Bureau as a critically imperiled (S1) natural community due to its small population and limited habitat.  It's the Jack Pine Rocky Ridge Natural Community, dominated by the Jack Pine tree (Pinus banksiana).  

Jack pines set root in soil held in small crevices in rock scraped bare by glaciers

In New Hampshire the jack pine is a remnant from the colder climate of the last ice age.  Because it can tolerate cold temperatures and harsh growing conditions, it was a dominant species as the glaciers melted.  As conditions improved over time, warmer climate species were able to take hold and crowd out the jack pine in most of New Hampshire and the Northeast. 

Short, sturdy needles retain moisture through dry, cold, windy winters.

Farther north in Canada's boreal forests where the climate is harsher and the growing season shorter, less hearty trees can't thrive, and jack pine continues to be a prevalent species.  But on the high elevation, wind-swept ledges of the Chocorua Range, jack pine is one of the few plants that can eke out a living in the thin acidic soils left after the ground was scraped bare by the glaciers. 

The barren landscape of Carter's Ledge on Mt, Chocorua.

Here, where less hardy trees can't compete, this rugged, boreal conifer is at the far southern edge of its present range.  The bent and twisted form of the jack pine on the Chocorua Range is testament to the harsh conditions and strong winds that can occur in the White Mountains even on mid-summer days.  

Jack pines typically have serotinous cones than remain unopened on trees for years until a forest fires with temperatures over 120 F releases their seeds. 

But jack pines in New Hampshire generally have semi- or non-serotinous cones that can release seeds on just a very hot summer day which keeps our small populations in place without fires.  However, according to Tom Wessels, the community on Chocorua has many more serotinous cones than the other New Hampshire communities.  [The Granite Landscape, Tom Wessels, 2001, Countryman Press, pg 99]  Wessels attributes this difference to the pines on Chocorua having migrated uphill from lower elevations that had frequent forest fires after the glaciers retreated.

An open jack pine cone with seeds dispersed.

Somehow, on these harsh, open ledges, jack pine continue to defy the elements, with each tree growing in the most precarious location, hanging on until eventually a strong enough wind brings its demise.

A Jack Pine clinging to the rim of Carter Ledge.

You can explore this rare community (there are only three known communities in the state) by following the Piper, Nickerson Ledge, and Carter Ledge Trails up to Carter Ledge.  You'll know it when you get there.  

Mt. Chocorua (left) and Middle Sister (right) seen from Carter Ledge.

More information on the jack pine and the jack pine natural community can be found in the book The Nature of New Hampshire by Sperduto and Kimball, or online in the Manual of Natural Communities of New Hampshire.

There's another interesting natural curiosity that anyone who's climbed Mt. Chocorua has probably noticed - this dramatic basalt dike that the Liberty trail crosses near the summit.

I'm not well versed in geology, so here's an edited version of what AI provided as a description of this particular formation.  AI referenced The Geology of the Percy Quadrangle by Chapman, and Geochemistry of mafic dikes in the Adirondack mountains by Coish and Sinton.

Hundreds of millions of years ago,  intense tectonic pressure deep underground cracked open the lighter-colored granite bedrock of the White Mountains.  Dark, molten basaltic magma was forced upward into these vertical fractures (this is called magmatic injection) and cooled relatively quickly to form narrow vertical sheets of rock known as dikes. 

As this ribbon of magma cooled between the granite walls, it shrunk and fractured at regular intervals, creating a pattern of horizontal fractures called columnar or sheet jointing.  These perpendicular breaks segmented the rock into blocky layers.  

After the glaciers stripped away the surface soil and exposed the peak, New Hampshire's weather and freeze-thaw cycles took over.  The dark basaltic rock is softer and more susceptible to chemical and physical weathering than the surrounding granite, so the dike eroded faster.  Rain and melting snow seeped into the dike's fractures, froze, expanded, and popped out blocks of the dark rock leaving the step-like features.

 Here's a close up view of the eroding dike.

The Liberty Trail crosses this fracture several times.  Just east of the summit on the Piper Trail is an area of basalt cracking where the rock is course grained and breaking away.

We spent this week north of the notches in Lancaster near the Pilot Range, which has its own interesting geology; I need to read more about that mountain range formation.  And right here at Lake Wicwas there's plenty of interesting geology to be found in the ledges and talus fields of Crockett's Ledge - maybe I'll dive into that someday.  Anyway, I didn't spend time on the lake this week, so yesterday I poked around a bit to see what's blooming here in late August.  I found the usual late summer flowers, and a couple of new ones including a foxglove and a meadow-rue.

Purple False Foxglove

A meadow-rue, perhaps King of the Meadow 

Self-heal

Yellow Wood Sorrell

Turtlehead, a fall favorite of mine.

I'll close with a sign of the waning summer:  Cat-o-nine tails starting to shed their seed cones.

There's an even more ominous sign hiding in the background, which becomes more evident with a change in focus.

Yes, leaves are starting to turn.

August 23, 2026: A Bounty of Buttons

This week I took a slow paddle around the edges of the lake exploring the late summer shoreline vegetation.  I was also looking for purple Bladderwort blooming, but it was the wrong time of day as these aquatic plants seem to bloom early in the morning.  But there were plenty of other interesting plants to be found, including many with seeds and fruit.  

Possumhaw or Wild Raisin (Viburnum nudum)

This is the same plant I found blooming on the Franconia Ridge in July.  It was supposedly named possumhaw because opossums dine on it.  The plant's fruit goes through a full spectrum of color as it ages:  It starts pinkish-white, darkens to red, then to blue, and finally in winter, it becomes black and wrinkled, resulting in its other common name of wild raisin. 

A clump of possumhaw berries showing the color progression

Early on the fruit is acidic and not very palatable, even to a animals.  This means much of it is left on the plant until winter when the sugars have become more concentrated.  At that point in the season it's a very important high energy food source for wintering animals, especially fruit-eating birds such as cedar waxwings and bluebirds (which are now year-round residents in central New Hampshire).

The next abundant crop I came upon was Arrow Wood, another viburnum species. 

Arrow wood (Viburnum recognitum)

Arrow wood fruit is soft with high energy content and will be eagerly consumed by many birds.  But not all will be consumed with a large crop, and because the berries cling to their branches, the surplus will provide another high calorie food for overwintering birds.

One more fruiting shrub, or in this case a vine, I found was grape.

Fox Grapes growing among the possumhaw and buttonbush.

There weren't a lot of these, and they were largely overgrown by all the other shoreline plants, but they were hiding in there nonetheless.  

In addition to providing food for animals, these thickets of vines and shrubs are a great deterrent for keeping geese from nesting.  Because goslings can't fly, geese prefer to nest where they can easily walk to the water.

Buttonwood is another lake-edge shrub that keeps on giving throughout the year.  Their pretty white pincushion flowers start to bloom in June and continue into July.  

Buttonbush flowers in early July.

By mid August the flowers form reddish seed pods that add a dash of color all the way through fall. 

Eventually each blossom forms dozens of small seeds that ducks feed on during the fall. 

Many tiny seeds in each button.

Over winter when food is scarce or buried under the snow, songbirds take over.  Mice will happily pick up whatever seeds the birds or the wind drop to the ground.

And though I didn't find purple bladderwort, I did find a different pretty aquatic plant in bloom:

Duck Potato (Sagittaria latifolia)

The name duck potato is partially a misnomer.  The tuber is in fact much like a small round potato that is edible, but ducks rarely dive deep enough to dig in the mud to eat them.  [Florida Wildlife Foundation]  Ducks do eat the above-water seeds, but it's beaver and muskrat that feast on the tubers.  Native Americans harvested them as well.

We've been inundated with hummingbirds the past few weeks - I think there might be two pairs that have broods nearby.  There are frequent acrobatic dogfights between adults, and multiple small hummers drinking from the flowers.  Here's a video (accompanied by Beethoven's Fur Elise) of one hummingbird sampling several flowers in a sometimes random manner.

They provide nice entertainment on a summer afternoon!

I'll end with the weekly update on Pip - looking sharp!

August 16, 2026: Flying Loons and Flourishing Fungi

I simply have to start this week with a fantastic photograph taken by Debby Crowley.  She was in her kayak watching for Pip when this caught her eye. 

Photo by Debby Crowley

Catching a loon flying fast overhead is no easy task!  An opportunity to see something like this isn't a lucky moment, but as any photographer can tell you, it's most often the result of much time spent in the field. Thank you Debby, and I'm glad you stayed upright!

One morning while I was loon watching, I caught Pip doing a foot wag. 

Now that's a foot!

Pip has now grown into a handsome young juvenile loon.

Pip will be dressed in this chevron plumage through the rest of its summer and fall here on Wicwas, so even as it grows, it will be distinguishable from all the other loons on the lake.

Much easier to photograph than an airborne loon was this osprey, perched stationary on one of its favorite lookouts points on Lake Wicwas.

This tall spike of a tree is on the southeast corner of Wood Island with a broad view of the lake. 

This section of lake is a prime spot to look for osprey diving into the lake to catch fish.  A good time to watch is late afternoon and evening on a clear, calm day.  If you see a raptor soaring overhead, stop and watch a while from a distance and you might get a show. 

When I was scouring the tree tops for osprey and eagles, I saw an indication that this might be a good mast year for white pine. 

A good crop of green cones on the tall pines.

Lots of birds and small mammals will appreciate this bounty come winter.

The evening primrose have bloomed and I've been checking in the morning for the pretty primrose moth, but I haven't seen one yet.  

Evening Primrose, with no moths, just a beetle.

If you see one you'll know it.  With soft pink and white coloring, it's one of the prettiest moths you'll ever see.

In the forest, there were some new sights this week.  Mushroom season is picking up speed now and Indian Pipes are decorating the hiking trails in damp areas. 

In another somewhat damp areas I came across this small, delicate plant, one I haven't seen before. 

Woodland Horsetail at Page Pond.

It's a Wood Horsetail, a perennial.  Just like the club moss (see Sept 20, 2015) horsetails are decendents of huge trees that grew a hundred feet tall in the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago.  Today's horsetail species max out at about 20". 

Finally, to end the week, here's a pretty melody courtesy of a Song Sparrow singing its heart out one morning.

Whatever the song sparrow might lack for flamboyant plumage, it makes up for with its voice.