Nature detectives use all sorts of clues to figure out the story of what's going on with the animals in the woods. A month or so ago, I was exploring my backyard more in-depth, climbing over rocks and such, when my friend noticed a huge pile of scat. Scat is the scientific word for animal poop. And you can tell a lot about an animal by investigating its scat. The scat we saw looked like it was from an herbivore, because it looked like bits of sawdust. When we looked a little closer, we also saw many 2" long quills. So we started to look for a porcupine, the only thing we knew that had quills. We never found the animal, but we did find more signs... Hemlock branches bit off near the end all o
Exploring the unknown can be exciting and fun! You never know what awaits when you wander off the path into the untamed forest. This is exactly what Sullivan County Natural Resources staff have been doing for the past month as they break new trail on County Lands. They have stumbled across vernal pools, historic cellar holes, and wildflower patches, discovered mountain views and unique natural areas. Two new hiking trails are in the works. One that starts at the County Farm trailhead and follows the Unity Mountain Trail before breaking off into the woods. It leads to the top of Glidden Hill and follows the ridge a ways through an oak pine forest, before descending into northern hardwood fore
