Home / Walks / 14 August 2026

Coldbrook Rd area

Walk 11 · Friday, 14 August 2026 · 9:59 AM–12:45 PM EDT · Hubbardston, MA

22Specimens

231Frames

0.07″rain in the 7 days before

2 dayssince last measurable rain

87%peak humidity on the day

77° / 64°high / low

0.05

0.01

—

0.01

Daily rainfall, inches (bar height and upper number) · peak relative humidity, % (lower number) · day of the walk in gold · faded tiles are dates with no station data. Observed data from Worcester Regional Airport (KORH), about 15 miles away.

Cooler and dry, northwest wind.

Cleanup on this walk. No record kept — logging began later. See the cleanup ledger.

Field notes

Bear sign on the trail

Several deposits of scat along the trail, large, and loose with visible fruit remains. Consistent with black bear. Not identified beyond that, and no animal was seen. Recorded because what a bear is eating is a reasonable proxy for what is fruiting and ripening in the same woods — and because the photographs of it have no place in a mycology gallery.

Also seen that day

The pine stand and the boardwalk 10:45–10:50

Rows of planted pine, the still water beside the trail, and the boardwalk crossing it. Three frames looking up into the canopy were taken to work out whether one tree was ash. The open, needle-floored ground under the pines is quite different from the hardwood litter at Massasoit Rd and Elm St, and the species list reflects it.

Cardinal flower at the water's edge 10:53–10:54

Lobelia cardinalis in flower beside the water, with ferns. Not a fungus, but it dates the walk in the season as precisely as any weather record.

Birch around the chanterelle patch 11:31

Photographed deliberately to record which trees the chanterelles were growing under. Chanterelles are mycorrhizal, so the host is part of the observation rather than background to it.