Tyler Woods Video            On Wednesday, October 21^st, Claudia and I ventured out to Tyler Woods at night. It was around eight o’clock, and the sun had completely set. As we walked up Tyler Road, our path was illuminated by the lights which lined the side walk, and the light glow coming from the windows of Tyler House.

            Our last beacon of light came from the lamppost next to Tyler Path, where we then entered Tyler Woods. Although it was dark within the woods, the light from the parking lot and the surrounding houses made it possible for one to see reasonably well. Still, we took out our flash lights, and I began to look for the first place I wished to start recording.

            I decided to first record not too far from the path. As I pressed record, I noticed that the night was still and quite, which was not what I was expecting. I was expecting to hear the chirping of crickets or the hoot of the barred owl. Instead, for fifteen seconds, I recorded the sound of impenetrable silence.

            Wishing to try another location to see if I could catch any nighttime activity, I headed to my right and down another side path. Here we stopped, as I heard the sound of one of the many domesticated dogs which I have seen on my site. Although I could not see him, the bark was coming from the direction of one of the fenced houses behind Tyler House. I readied the recorder and recorded the repetitive barking which echoed throughout the area.

            Fifteen seconds later, we made our way to the Periwinkle Valley where I recorded my third recording. The dog, which we had left behind us, could still be heard disturbing the night’s silence. Besides the presence of this loud, domestic dog, no other sounds could be heard throughout Tyler Woods. The night was strangely quiet. Even Tyler House was devoid of noise. There were no cars making their way up Tyler Road; there was no music blasting through the windows, and there were no faint whispers of conversation which usually made their way to my ears through the small open windows.

            My last stop, and last fifteen second recording, was in Huckleberry Path. The sound of the dogs warning signal was now faint, and only the silence of the night remained. After I had recorded this last fifteen minutes, Claudia made an interesting observation. The strongest light source in Tyler Woods is a lamp post which stands at the end of Huckleberry Path. She noticed that those leaves closest to the lamp post had turned color and were already beginning to fall, while many of the leaves farther away from the lamp post were still green and had not yet changed color. This was evidence that the presence of artificial light impacts the time individual trees lose their leaves.

            The next night when we arrived in the Hopkins Forest, I noticed that Claudia’s sight had trees that were much older than those in my site. The ground within the sight was covered in freshly fallen leaves, and some of the trees were already bare and looked ready for the winter. My trees, on the other hand, still had some leaves that had not yet changed color. Just as in the Science Quad, I could see that those trees that were older usually lost their leaves first, while the younger trees lost their leaves later. Since my site is younger than Claudia’s site, it makes sense that many of her trees have lost their leaves while mine are still in the process of losing theirs.

            Unfortunately, I was not able to record the barred owl Wednesday night. Although the only concrete sound I got was of the nearby dog, I am sure that with multiple visits to Tyler I would be able to capture the sound of dear walking through the leaves, the hoot of an owl, squirrels out late hiding away food for the winter, and the sound of people coming to and from Tyler House. With time and patience, I am sure we would find that Tyler Woods is as alive and active at night as it is during the day.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/23/09

Field Journal #5

I entered my site at around 8:45 pm on Wednesday, by which time the sky was fully dark. Unfortunately, due to the location of my site relative to buildings and frequently used pathways, a fully dark sky does not mean a fully dark site because of the ambient light cast by the Mission dormitory as well as the lamps lining the pathways on either side of the site. While I still required a flashlight to maneuver around the site and see anything other than large tree shapes when I was in the center of my site, the edges were illuminated to some extent.

I sat for a while at the base of a large white pine, hoping to hear something worthy of recording, but the longer I sat the more I realized that the only sounds that I would record were human sounds, and that the site itself would remain unheard. There were plenty of cars passing on Mission park road, Park Street and Route 2; plenty of doors opening and closing; numerous people talking as they walked past; and in the background the whirring of a large generator coming from Mission.

The recording I made contained only very few noises above the rustle of leaves in the breeze other than the shifting of my feet in the leaves below and the movement of my hand on the recorder. These were people talking, and church bells tolling faintly, and a door closing, which seems to have been swallowed by electrical crackles. There were no birdcalls of any kind to be heard, no chattering of squirrels or the crackle of leaves as they scampered around, and no chirp of insects of any kind. Of course, this could be explained away by the fact that the birds and squirrels are sleeping and that the loud insects are long gone after the first frost, but still I expected at least some natural noise.

I did, however, see a few small insects in my search. First was a caterpillar that was bright translucent green. It was similar to the caterpillar I described in my fourth site observation (Field Blog 3), except it was slightly larger and green in color. It was residing in a pinecone, and judging by the white silky mat it was resting on, it was in the process of creating a cocoon for itself. It was also very inactive: it did not move as I picked up the pinecone nor did it budge when I poked it with my pencil. At this point I left it to its rest as I had seen a small spider by my foot. It was small (about 7 millimeters long in my estimation), brown, with very thin legs. Its back had an almost stripped pattern with lighter circles in the center of darker stripes. What I soon found interesting about it was that it did not move when I shone my headlamp at it. When I covered the light for a few seconds, it would begin to move again, but would stop about a second after the light was uncovered.

A third critter I encountered was a daddy long-legs, but of a kind I had not before seen. It was brown and had six thin brown legs. The front leg on the right was about twice as long as the others, and seemed to be used almost as a feeler to probe ahead of the insect. On either side of its tiny mandibles it also had two much smaller tan appendages that retracted into the insects body most of the time, but came out to poke the page of my journal as it walked. A fascinating thing about the daddy long-legs was that when I tilted my journal, its legs curved around the lips of the book to hold it in place. It almost seemed like the limbs were prehensile, the way they curved and flexed as the creature required.

The site at night seemed almost the same as it is during the day except for the stillness. During a tour of the site, however, I did notice that the white wood asters have changed from a flowering state to a seed dispersing state with puffy seed dispersing clusters in place of petals.

I’m not sure what I’ve been doing right but it has been yet another astonishingly beautiful visit to Wall’s Pond. I arrived at the site today a little before 3pm under perfectly clear, blue skies. It was a perfect 60 degrees with a mild northeast breeze that sprang up to a maximum of 2 or 3 mph, barely enough to knock the remaining leaves off the trees.
The last week has not been so idyllic, though, and since my last visit the wind and rain have totally defoliated the big red maple at the north of the pond and the two smaller trees right on the northeastern edge. The sugar maples at the entrance are bare on top now and only the leaves on the bottom quarter of the tree are left, yellow and dry, waiting to flutter the few feet to the ground at any moment. The vegetation around the pond’s edge looks similarly gaunt and desiccated today. Where there had been a late summer bloom of mugwort and sedge on my first and second visit is now a dry and graying strip of woody plant life, a shadow of its former glory. As I made my way around the pond I noticed several flooded areas at the boundary of the mowed grass and the strip of vegetation, an indication that last week’s rain still hasn’t drained or evaporated.
I haven’t seen the mallards in a few weeks, but I did witness a rather dramatic show of wildlife today, the excitement of which greatly surpasses the ducks’ relatively sedate afternoon feeding. In a huge red spruce across the meadow from the pond, on the Fort Hoosac property, a lone crow abdicated its perch overlooking the house for a moment, only to be usurped by a opportunistic raptor (my closest guess, from the shape of its tail and the white breast plumage, is that I saw a northern goshawk. The beak, however, seemed a bit too big for a goshawk, and from the Audobon guide I could not identify this bird with certainty. I seriously regret not bringing a camera along so as to exact a better identification.). The crow circled around and, discovering the treachery, began “cawing” incessantly. The crow gained some altitude and dived on the invading bird repeatedly, “cawing” with fervor, but to no avail. After a few minutes of this, the crow swooped off to the west, circling around a tree at the extreme northwest corner of the meadow and came back to the spruce with two more crows in tow. The three crows flew up over Fort Hoosac and, screeching all the way, dive-bombed the raptor who finally relented. The crows chased their quarry low over the meadow where I stood watching and didn’t let up until all four birds were well into the cover of the Clark West Woods.
After this drama played out I turned my focus to a tactile analysis of the pond and its environs. I knelt and ran my hand through the grass at my feet. It was supple and warm from the sun, with just a touch of lingering dew where the blades met the ground. Moving into the thick of the sedge and mugwort, careful not to sink in the soft puddles thereabouts, I felt the crackle of dead leaves and brittle stalks that had, only a few weeks ago, been so flexible that it was hard to pull off a stem to take with me. I continued around the south end, crunching through the masses of dead leaves, stopping now and then to grab handfuls and crush them even more, exposing the occasional wet spot or bed of soft pine needles. I swung around past the entrance again to test the water temperature under the big sugar maple where the shoreline is firmest. Without a thermometer I would guess that the water was in the mid to upper 50s – my benchmark being 20 summers of swimming in cold Atlantic water on Cape Cod.
Eager to get the crow vs. raptor episode down on paper, I took one more quick turn around the pond, stopping to take some audio recordings. On my way past the eastern meadow where I watched the crows drive off their competition I spotted an incredible sight: a lone Monarch butterfly alighting on the few remaining dandelions in the field.

Hopkins At Night By: Claudia Corona        10/26/09

Being in the forest at night is an experience from another world. Not because we were scared or anything preposterous like that, but because it’s a different sight, a different feeling, a different atmosphere than what we are used to.

I say “we” because I brought a peer along who also wanted to see what the forest was like at night. And how was it like at night? Like nothing we’ve ever seen, literally.

It was a little after 8:30pm when we made it to the entrance of the Ford Glen Brook trail, and by that time, everything was pitch black. We could dimly see lights coming from a lone house across the brook, but the lights were only bright enough to illuminate inside the house, certainly not anything outside. Trees that normally blocked the sun out of the forest were now being were covered in layer upon layer of night. The wilting white snakeroots were no longer discernible and it was too dark for the ferns to openly boast their evergreen color to the surrounding dull brown vegetation. The dark atmosphere demanded quiet and we adhered, especially since I wanted to know what other creatures were up and about at this time and place.

Our first stop for audio recording was 100 feet from the beginning of the trail, and right before we had to get off the trail to go to the brook. Here we stopped and listened for sounds. In the distance, the audio recorder caught the sounds of the artificial owl call  by the Rosenberg Center, which we had visited the week before during our owl trip. The artificial owl call sounded like a siren, constant and repeating, and one used to draw attention. But the siren wasn’t one of alarm, just of seeking. The rushing water traveling along in the brook was much more audible here than it had been some yards back. But hearing it wasn’t enough, I wanted to get closer to the brook.

With hopes of hearing a frog or two that maybe hadn’t yet migrated away, we went down to Ford Glen Brook. As we trekked down to the brook, the sound of rushing water became clearer and clearer, so clear, that even though we were about 15 diagonal feet from the brook (because it was too dark and dangerous to climb down the rocky slope), the resonance made us feel as if we were standing right next to the brook. The sound of the rushing water was a very constant one, and although it was calm and soothing, it lacked ribbits and chirps, so after a while, we decided to go back onto the path.

We voyaged back onto the trail and stopped. For some time we stood in complete darkness listening for sounds that might be out of the ordinary, not caused by wind, water, or artificial owls. After some time had passed, I decided to call it a day and so we marched back to our bikes. We still kept our ears open for hopes of hearing a bird screech or a bear roar, but our steps were too noisy. It hadn’t rained in a while, and so the leaves were still crunchy and loud when we stepped on them, which explains why a part of my audio recording is leaf stepping. We were trying to hear animals and got rambunctious leaves instead!

We were getting ready to hop back up on our bikes when suddenly, a cry coming from somewhere above in the trees, touched our ear drums. This sound was very different from the constant artificial owl call. Not having been prepared to record this sound, I took out the audio recorder, and hoped that this bird, most likely an owl, would call out once more. “Peo!”, we heard it again, now caught on tape; but we coudln’t pinpoint where the bird was! It was definitely a bird cry, but the sound wasn’t fast and loud like a shriek would be in a time of urgency. And it also wasn’t low and slow like a hum. It reminded me of a bird call. I understood it as the bird saying, “I’m here, where’s everyone else?”. After a few more calls, the bird stopped; satisfied with our finds we biked back home. Although I didn’t see the bird that called, the sounds I got on tape were worth it, because they show that there’s always an active world out there, even at night.

Stephen Maier

22 October 2009

Tonight I visited the West Clark Woods with a classmate at 6:45 p.m. It was about 60°F and the wind was soft and cooling. The weather created the perfect atmosphere for a night visit. As we approached the entrance to my site, I imagined nocturnal birds sitting in the treetops spying on small rodents scurrying in the brush on the ground. Only equipped with a small flashlight and a cell phone for protection, I envisioned us creeping around the forest until we were startled by some large animal. We would freeze in a moment of role reversal between man and nature. We were the “deer in headlights” stopped in front of a giant buck. The scenes I pictured were fantastic, but unfortunately they remained a fantasy.

As we were about to enter the woods, I stopped dead in my tracks. I was startled and even grew timid. I asked Nathaniel to shine his flashlight into the tree about fifteen yards from us. Something caught my eye, something that had not been there last week or in the weeks prior. Nathaniel moved the light to where I was pointing and we both gasped. Perched on a branch protruding from the tree line was an eerie bird. It reminded me of the vultures from The Jungle Book, however, far more malevolent than the oblivious birds in the children’s movie. It appeared to be approximately 18 inches tall with a long beak that extended about 4-6 inches away from its face. The bird exhibited a gray color, which may have been skewed since we were viewing it in the darkness. It was resting on one long, slender leg looking off into the distance towards the Clark Art Institute. It looked like a relative of the crane, stork, or heron.

Earlier in the semester, when the class gathered to watch birds, we were fortunate enough to spot a great blue heron on the far edge of Eph’s pond. The bird we saw this evening was very similar in silhouette, but slightly smaller to the heron. Clearly they were different colors, but they were also different in demeanor. The heron appeared harmless relaxing in the water enjoying the sunrise; but this bird seemed ominous. It appeared to be on the prowl waiting to attack its next victim. I didn’t move and I didn’t hear Nathaniel move either. I was contemplating my next move, not sure of where to go. If this bird was terrifying me, what would I do if I were to see coyotes or bears or moose? This thought helped me to muster up some courage and enter the woods. However, the image of that bird in the tree didn’t escape my mind.

We found our way to the zero point of my site and briefly surveyed the area around us. The darkness hindered our vision and disabled us from making any observations. So we decided to move to a convenient resting location where we could record the sounds of the woods. Last week, the most action I encountered was in a small hemlock grove that I reached via a barely noticeable path overgrown with thickets and thorns. Therefore, I thought the forest sounds would be represented and amplified best in this location tonight.

The noises there did not prove to be as promising as I had hoped. I closed my eyes allowing my sense of hearing to compensate for my lack of vision, but the animals I assumed to be in nature were inaudible. I heard cars and trucks traveling through the Route 2/Route 7 rotary, leaves rustling on the ground, arbitrary leaves, needles, seeds, and nuts falling from the trees above, and some human voices, which I assume were emanating from the Williamstown Public Library based on from where the sound was resonating. I heard some scampering of small animals through the leaves and a ten second segment of steady calling which sounded like a frog. This was the only evidence of the animals I had assumed were omnipresent in the West Clark Woods.

These sounds were incredibly difficult to locate, for the wind was gusting with high intensity in the woods. I would estimate the wind speed to have been about 8-10 mph at times, highly obstructing our listening capabilities. In the sound recording,nothing is audible save the wind. I intend to return another evening to try my luck again with the animals at night for tonight was relatively unimpressive.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 9:00 PM/ Thursday, October 22, 2009 10:00 AM- Syndicate Road Woods

To hear my recording, click here

It is amazing how much we take sound for granted.  Just walking out to my site at the Syndicate Road woods I noticed so many more sounds than I had before; the sound the leaves make when they fall to rest on the ground, the hum of the electrical and heating units of nearby buildings, and the rustle of squirrels scampering up tree trunks.  I first visited my site on Wednesday night, hoping to see and hear some things that were not present in the daytime.  The moon was a thin waxing crescent and gave no light to my journey.  I did not see many stars, but I figured the night was cloudy because it was warm.  On the road, the sound of crickets filled the air in a slow, melodic chorus, but once I stepped under the canopy of the woods I could barely hear their chirping.  The woods were quiet and eerie at this time of night.  There were a few gray squirrels scurrying about, but I did not see or hear any deer, frogs or other nocturnal animals.  The stillness was interrupted at multiple points by not only cars whizzing past on Syndicate Road, but by trains as well.  It turns out that there is an active railroad quite close to campus that runs westward just north of the Hoosac River and then north, parallel with Route 7.  From what I heard, it sounded like the train was used mostly for freight and the sound of its wheels on the tracks lasted for at least five minutes.  Wishing to get a recording of this chorus of stream, cars and trains, I turned on the recording device, only to find it was out of battery.  I decided to come back the next day to make a recording.

On Thursday morning, after charging the recorder, I headed out to the Syndicate Road woods at about 10:00 A.M.  It was an oddly warm day for late October, about 55 degrees, and there were few clouds in the sky.  At this time there were more human noises to take into account; the scuffle of feet through fallen leaves as people headed out for class, the chatter of the dining staff during their break, and the thud of the rubber ball against the floor of the paddle ball court.  The difference between my visit this morning and my visit the night before was the presence of boisterous birds.  Their chirping noises were even more easily heard when I walked further away from campus and closer to the woods.  I could identify the calls of crows, finches, and chickadees, but there were many more I could only analyze and record.  A few squirrels greeted me as I entered the woods and I even saw and heard a few chipmunks scamper about.  I heard a continuous, loud rustling of leaves, and attributed them the small creatures, but after the noise continued I turned to look and realized that it was the result of a deer.  I only saw one, which appeared to be a doe, and as soon as I tried to get a closer look she ran off towards the Poker Flats fields.  This has been my second sighting of deer at the site during broad daylight, and I wonder why the deer are active at this time. 

Another sound that I was able to record was the sound of the stream.  Although the stream seemed to trickle very loudly out of the culvert, the water was mostly stagnant so the sound must have been amplified by the shape and material of the cement culvert.  Otherwise, the Syndicate Road woods were mostly silent, but it makes me wonder what the definition of silent is.  In fact, if you listen closely, the woods are far from silent; the leaves crackle in the wind, small crickets chirp, branches snap.  We humans have formulated a new definition of “silence”.  To us, if the sounds that surround us do not reach the volume of a car or a motorcycle, we consider our atmosphere to be quiet, maybe even silent.  We take for granted the whistling of the wind and the sound of two blades of grass brushing together.  At my site today however, I realized that if you spend a while in the woods even the chirping of a song sparrow can seem quite loud.

practice audio

 

4:30PM

5:50PM

Losing the Forest for a Tree

I arrived today to again be greeted by the singularly grey sky.  It was a high thirty degree day and I noticed that the parking lot had more fallen leaves covering it than the week before.  It was clear now that summer truly had left.  On the twenty-second of September autumn officially began, but most of it had been punctuated with beautiful and warm days harkening back to summer.  This time, autumn finally had the bite of winter.

The Stetson Parking lot woods reflected that difference.  The entirety of the interior, and much of the exterior of the Stetson Parking lot woods was covered in a layer of loose fallen leaves.  The maple, black locust, birch and cottonwood leaves all provided an easy way for me to hear where all the small animals moved.   As a result I could hear almost every squirrel and chipmunk as they walked on the ground.  Next, as a surprise to me, I saw three red squirrels.  I almost mistook the first red squirrel for a grey juvenile at first, but after seeing a second climbing down a cottonwood I realized I’d just seen my first red squirrel on campus. Keeping tally for the next fifteen minutes, I spotted eight gray squirrels, eleven chipmunks but no more red squirrels.

During that time, all animal activity was high.  I also heard a number of different birdcalls bouncing from tree to tree.  I identified one as the yellow bellied sap sucker’s trademark falling call, and the other as the Least flycatcher.  The final birdcall I could identify was a simple crow’s caw.   Until 5:10 all of the animals were very loud and then suddenly all of the chirping and movement in the wood ended.

After the animals stopped, I set off in search of plants.  Many of the trees on the Southwestern side of the woods are of this one species I am currently incapable of accurately identifying.  This is thing I noticed was a type of tree I’ve been unable to identify due to the strange shape of the tree’s leaf.  I have been unable to find a similar leaf anywhere in the Audubon field guide or online.  It is a compound leaf, made up of three to seven leaves and they are oppositely arranged.  Strangely, however, each of the leaves appears to be shaped differently.  On the tree, the leaves appear to be afflicted with a small fungus which pokes many small holes in its surface.

Today, only four different trees in the Stetson Parking lot woods had colored leaves.  Each one of the three sugar maples and had turned a nice bright yellow.  The last tree, a Norway maple was had turned very deep reds and purples, and at some points remained green.  Upon closer examination, I realized that a branch had broken off.  The large broken arm of the tree looked very strange with red leaves.  The Norway maple does not belong with red leaves.

Interestingly, as the branches of this tree reach out, the bark on the trunk quickly becomes similar to that of the wild raspberry bush.  Where the branches thin out at the ends, they darken in color and gain a white waxy coating that may be rubbed off.   The bark on the larger trees does not have a waxy coating, but rather a thick, shallowly furrowed outside with a stippled surface.

When I finally had to leave, I suddenly realized that I had spent a high amount of my time absolutely fixated on discovering the identity of one tree in my site.  I could not believe that I had suddenly become a walking talking embodiment of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

 

Edit: (I’m pretty sure this is White Ash now)

Thursday, October 15, 2009 – Syndicate Road Woods – 10:00 AM

As I walked down Syndicate Road to my site this morning I noticed the usual signs of autumn, the yellow and bare trees, and the New York aster that had by now almost completely shriveled up.  At the intersection with Baxter Road, however, I was greeted by two deer about 75 yards east of me.  They seemed to be females because of their lack of horns and medium stature.  One had a few white dots near its stomach, and I assumed it was younger than the other.  Instead of lifting their tails and running away, the deer stopped, stared at me for a few seconds and then began to slowly walk closer.  I continued on, not wishing to engage in a standoff with the deer.  I also noticed a large puddle south of Baxter Road that was at least 8 feet in length and width and showed the effects of the recent rain.  Many song birds chirped loudly as I entered the Syndicate Road woods, and even though the sky was quite overcast, the woods were lighter than usual because the taller trees had lost many of their leaves.  The leaves that did remain on the taller trees, however, had turned a medium yellow, aside from one coniferous pine tree and a tall maple, whose leaves remained green for no apparent reason to me.  The smaller trees and shrubs were still a green color, and I imagined this pattern could be attributed to the same reason why trees lose their leaves from the top first.  The ferns have now dried completely and have turned a light brown color.  It is hard to imagine the floor of the wood as it was in September when the foliage was green and in full bloom.  There is a constant crackle of drying branches and falling leaves due to the soft wind as I make my way over closer to the stream.

Because of the recent precipitation, the stream looks more like an actual stream now rather than a series of puddles, as it had appeared in previous weeks.  It is noisy and bustling by the culvert which emerges from the intersection of Syndicate and Baxter Roads, but then gets quieter and much stiller as it weaves northward.  Because of this new movement, I now realized that the water was indeed very clear and clean, but only appeared murky because of the muddy, rocky basin.  The tree with the magenta leaves that I identified last week as sumac has lost some of its vibrant color and many of its leaves.  I see a bush that appears to be honeysuckle, whose leaves have turned a light yellow color but whose berries are still juicy and ripe, and I wonder if this is the natural progression for honeysuckle plants.

I hear a woodpecker poking at a tree trunk with short, quick pecks as I wander southeast towards the large indent of land that I had discovered a few weeks ago.  The foliage here is much greener than in the other sections of the woods and the trees appear much leafier.  Although this area of the woods has a slightly higher elevation than the others, I do not think I can attribute its coloring to this fact.  I wonder if it is because the trees surrounding the indent are smaller and shorter than in the eastern section of the woods.  Here I stumble upon a small weedy plant that is still green.  It has twigs growing in an opposite pattern yet only a few leaves grow from the top.  I will try to identify it before returning to the woods.

This week I wished to focus on the touch and feeling of many of the natural objects around me.  Even by getting closer to trees and leaves in order to touch them I discovered new sights that I had not noticed before.  The bark of a tall beech tree was groovy and had moss growing on its southern side.  A dead vine that seemed to grow from the ground leant up against the beech, and I could tell it had been dead for a few years.  A fungus grew on the vine, brown and leafy on one side but rough and with small black dots that appeared almost like stitches on the other.  The stones in the creek were cold and smooth and only some of the larger ones had moss growing on their top sides.  I wondered if the fact that some of the rocks did not have moss growing on them was due to their rock type, because the quartzite stone did not have any moss, while the rock that appeared to be phyllite was almost completely green.  I spotted another vine which was also covered in hairy green moss.  I further study if different fungus or moss types grow on different types of trees.

On the 21^st of October, there was a drastic decrease in temperature within the Berkshire area. This drop in temperature had a great affect on the plant life within Williams Town, including Tyler House Woods. On the night of October 21^st, the temperature dropped to twenty seven degrees Fahrenheit, while previously it had been in the forties.

The next day on the 22^nd of October, we observed that the trees within and around Williams College that had once been green before, were now rapidly changing color, some even losing their leaves entirely. The extreme cold triggered the trees to lose their leaves. Therefore, we saw a great number of trees whose top leaves were beginning to change color and fall to the ground.

In my own site, I found that the ground was covered with even more dry, yellow leaves. Most of the trees were turning a bright yellow color. There were also some bushes turning a reddish color, but the predominant color was yellow. For the most part, the trees were beginning to turn color at the tops of their branches before any color change occurred on the lower branches.

The leaves that had fallen also revealed some of the animals that had once remained hidden. As I walked through the woods, I spotted at least four grey squirrels and three chipmunks. I could hear the high pitched squeal of the chipmunks as they raced across the fallen logs and up the sides of the maples. One was even rummaging through the leaves as it attempted to bury one of the nuts it had found on the forest floor.

While approaching my site, I noticed that there was a lot of activity from both the wildlife and people within the area. I could hear crickets in the nearby field, two squirrels ran about one of the nearby trees, a man and his dog played fetch not too far off, and two cars made their way up to Tyler House. It seemed that there was more activity near my site than usual. I usually arrive at Tyler Woods around 4:00 or 5:00 o’clock. Is it possible that an hour or two could change the amount of activity in Tyler? I may, in the future, try to arrive at my site at different times in order to determine whether or not time has a significant impact on the amount of activity within Tyler Woods.

Besides the maple trees, the pine trees within my site were also losing some of their needles, remnants of which could be seen discarded around the base of their trunks. The needles were mostly gone from the lower branches. There were also more cones on the ground than there were before. This may have been the reason for why there were so many squirrels and chipmunks in my site today.

Although a large number of trees were changing color, there were still many trees which were still holding on to their green leaves. I wonder why these trees have not changed color. Will they begin to change color, or will the leaves drop before hand?

From observing my site after the sudden drop in temperature, I have seen how changes in temperature can affect when a tree decides to shed its leaves. It will be interesting to see how the trees will continue to change as the temperature continues to drop. How long will it take and at what temperature will it be when the other trees begin to lose their leaves?