Spring Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

• Maroon hoods of skunk-cabbage emerge through saturated soil, followed by thigh-high green leaves
• White blooms of swamp azalea, blackhaw, southern arrow-wood
• Yellow blooms of northern spicebush, golden ragwort
• Crawling and flying pollinators of skunk-cabbage—a distinctive, carrion-like odor attracts beetles and other insects into the warm, hooded spathes, where they pollinate the bulbous flower in very early spring
• Male northern spring peepers (frogs) camouflaged to blend into the leaf litter or tree trunks low off the ground—listen for them during cloudy weather or after warm spring rains—their call is a short, repeated, high-pitched peep

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Summer Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

• A lush, green patch of skunk-cabbage commands the attention, “melting away” as summer progresses
• Cinnamon fern and various other ferns in full array
• Orange blooms of orange jewelweed
• Lavender blooms of monkeyflower
• Wood ducks eating the large seeds of skunk-cabbage
• Birds looking for prey on their way to the nearby creek
• Toads and frogs, each one eating hundreds of insects and other invertebrates in this habitat daily. (Or being eaten by a turtle, blue heron, or raccoon.)
• The gray petaltail dragonfly (rare in Maryland) may be sighted, perching vertically on trunks or snatching mosquitoes from the air

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Autumn Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

• Sometimes little vegetation to be seen on the ground
• In drought, groundwater may cease to flow in some sites
• Ferns persist until frost
• Orange-brown leaves of tuliptree
• Red leaves of red maple
• Orange blooms of orange jewelweed
• Red berries of Jack-in-the-pulpit, common winterberry
• Dark berries of blackhaw, southern arrow-wood
• Warty American toads—sometimes becoming orange and matching the fallen leaves. (The bumps on their skin contain toxins distasteful to predators.)
• Redback salamander—a completely terrestrial salamander capable of dropping its tail as a survival technique in the face of predators

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Winter Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

• Some sites are essentially bare, dry depressions; elsewhere, mucky soils last all year
• Red tips of emerging skunk-cabbage
• Red berries of common winterberry
• Exceptionally straight, tall trunks with light gray ridges—tuliptree—might be seen fringing the community, or on small elevated areas
• Any number of wintering birds, passing to and from the creek—ruby-crowned kinglets, white-throated sparrows, northern cardinals, Carolina chickadees, American goldfinches, tufted titmice, and eastern towhees
• Unseen but possibly present: hibernating frogs. The green frog (similar to a bullfrog) hibernates in moist soils or underwater, but can become active during warm spells in winter.

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