Seasonal Highlights
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Spring Highlights
Plants & Landscape
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Animals
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- Carpet of wildflowers! Among the earliest to arrive and to disappear: Virginia springbeauty, yellow trout-lily, Virginia bluebells, Dutchman’s breeches
- Yellow blooms of yellow trout-lily, northern spicebush, tuliptree (and the profuse, non-native invasive lesser celandine! Ecobit: Lesser Celandine in Rock Creek Park)
- White blooms of Dutchman’s breeches, mayapple, Solomon’s plume, blackhaw, southern arrow-wood
- Greenish-white blooms of American bladdernut, Jack-in-the-pulpit
- Blue blooms of Virginia bluebells
- Pink or lavender to whitish blooms of Virginia springbeauty, violets
- Maroon blooms of pawpaw
- Greenish to purple hoods of Jack-in-the-pulpit
- Migratory and resident birds drinking or bathing in slow parts of creek along sandbars in the heat of day
- Belted kingfishers and wood ducks, seldom seen anywhere but near the creek
- Some salamanders now laying eggs in seasonal wetlands, or attached to the bottom of rocks, or under rotting wood, or in pockets in damp moss
- Ants, flies, or beetles pollinating the maroon pawpaw flower
Summer Highlights
Plants & Landscape
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Animals
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- Lush growth on the forest floor
- Multiple kinds of ferns fully unfurled
- Some lingering wildflowers
- White blooms of Canadian honewort, white avens, broadleaf enchanter’s-nightshade
- Greenish-white blooms of Canadian wood-nettle (don’t touch!), Canadian clearweed
- Pink to whitish blooms of swamp smartweed
- Yellow blooms of richweed
- Orange blooms of jewelweed
- Lime green fruit of mayapple, pawpaw
- Pale green, inflated, papery seed capsules of American bladdernut
- Red berries of Solomon’s plume
- Mammals, birds, and amphibians making use of the cool water
- Louisiana waterthrush bobbing its tail or pulling submerged leaves out of clear-running streams, looking for aquatic insects and other prey
- Eastern box turtle (a small land turtle), foraging for plants or prey
- Lungless salamanders active under damp leaves on rainy or humid, cloudy days
- Dragonflies hunting insects
Autumn Highlights
Plants & Landscape
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Animals
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- Ferns persist until frost
- White blooms of white snakeroot
- Greenish-white blooms of Canadian clearweed
- Orange blooms of jewelweed
- Yellow blooms of wingstem
- Red berries of Jack-in-the-pulpit, Solomon’s plume, northern spicebush, American strawberry-bush, (and the non-native invasive shrub Linden arrow-wood).
- Dark berries of southern arrow-wood, blackhaw
- Green or brown fruit of pawpaw
- Yellow leaves of tuliptree, northern spicebush, American hornbeam, and American beech
- Migratory birds refueling on wild grapes and other food and water as they fly south through D.C.
- Raccoon tracks streamside, similar to tiny human handprints—evidence of nighttime activity
- Beaver-gnawed trees and saplings
Winter Highlights
Plants & Landscape
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Animals
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- Good time to notice structure and colors of tree trunks
- Majestic straight trunks of tuliptree
- Smooth green, brown, and white loose "plates" of American sycamore bark, getting whiter towards treetop
- Rusty brown, peeling, papery bark of river birch
- Smooth, gray, “rippled muscles” bark of American hornbeam
- Natural rattles of the American bladdernut’s brown seed capsules
- Look for clues to the height of recent floods
- Belted kingfisher perched above the creek, occasionally diving for minnows
- Great blue heron, standing motionless in the water, or spearing fish
- Other winter forest birds coming for a drink