Single flowering shrub in fertile, dry, hickory-oak-hornbeam glades on the flat top of Austen Hill, in Vermont, near the east shore of Lake Champlain. Leaves only partly grown; flowers past peak bloom. The exerted stamens distinguish it from our other gooseberries except Ribes hirtellum; lab measurements gave a style length of 7-8 mm, and a ratio of style length/petal length between 3 and 4. Hirtellum typically has the style 4 mm or less and the the ratio around 2. Macrophotos match pictures from Split Rock Mt., Westport, NY, about 45 miles NNW, on the west shore of Lake Champlain.

Location was taken from the Whitehall USGS quad, and is accurate +- 200 m.

In addition, hirtellum is typically a plant of fens, cold forests, and northern shores; I have never seen it in an dry-mesic oak-hickory community.

Nonflowering plants with generally similar leaves to rotundifolium (only slightly furry, some with truncate bases) were common on the top of Austen Hill. Flowering plants of Ribes cynosbati (spines on ovary, cup-shaped hypanthium, stamens barely exserted, leaves generally more furry) were common on the lower parts of the hill, below the cliffs. My experience with the species in the Champlain Valley suggests that the nonflowering plants of the two differ in pubescence, but not reliably enough for accurate identification.

Habitat on the top of Austen was typical dry-rich glades: red and chestnut oak, shagbark hickory, some pitch pine, prickly ash, a small shad in the spicata-sanguinea complex, ground layer dominated by Carex pensylvanica, with Danthonia spicata and Deschampsia flexuosa; ground layer diverse with a total of about 20 herbs and graminoids, including Hepatica (Anemone) americana, Arabis (Araabidopsis) lyrata, Helianthus divaricatus, Asplenium trichomanes.

We have known rotundifolium from rocky fertile hills on the west side of Champlain for 15 years, and have been looking for it on the east side of Champlain. This is the first record for Vermont, and perhaps the first New England records since Les Mehrhoff saw it in Connecticut in the 1980s.

Jerry Jenkins, Northern Forest Atlas Project.

Edge of a bog with no dung in sight (but clumps emerging from a sort of empty spot where a pile of scat likely once sat and humified). With regular, multicellular leaves (differentiating this species from S. pennsylvanicum)

On Ulmus americana

Co-discovered with @pantherophis (shown in last photo) on first American Elm we inspected on a trip to Vermont.

As far as we know, this is the first observation of EZS in Vermont. Other EZS were found throughout the day and will be uploaded to iNat.

A newly-excavated Red-bellied Woodpecker cavity has been discovered by a European Starling. The male and female Red-bellied are both visible in this photo and the male is trying to pull the Starling out of the nest by its foot.

Found on a vertical daylily stem after it was just cut down. Caterpillar was still just visible inside. I attached it to this red maple branch (as it finished the cocoon) and put netting around to keep a bird from pecking it. Can observe it many times a day and can remove the netting next spring at breakout time. Any other tree I should put it on after coming out?

Observed a two moons beewolf hunting on shasta daisy plantings in Marsh-Billings Rockefeller formal gardens. Assuming it was a single individual, it attacked, paralyzed and flew off with two bees (one in Genus Sphecodes and one of unknown genus) during an approximate 8-minute period.