Moore State Park: Paxton, MA (1/28)

On Sunday I headed over to Moore State Park for a quick hike. There was a light snow the night before and I thought that I could find some good tracks. From the main parking lot I headed up the road that runs alongside the meadow. This is a place where lots of people walk their dogs so I obviously found a lot of their tracks. But there were a lot of rodent tracks as well. I found some larger ones with a bound of at least four feet that were definitely Gray Squirrel. Others were a bit smaller and I'm guessing that they were Red Squirrel. Then there were even smaller ones that were either Chipmunk or some species of mouse.

But there wasn't much else to see. A few Chickadees here and there but that's all. It really made me wish for summer when the Bobolinks return to the field.

Next I headed down to the lake. It was completely frozen over and some people were even brave enough to walk on it. I enjoyed the view from the covered bridge before heading down to the waterfall. It had partially iced up which made for a pretty nice photo.

Back at the parking lot, I took a look at the group of American Chestnut trees that had been planted by the park staff. The story of this native tree is pretty tragic. In the late 1800's it was estimated to be approximately 25% of all hardwood trees over much of its range. But a fungus out of Asia whiped out most of the large trees. Now only small Chestnut Trees grow and they typically die before reaching maturity.

In cooperation with the American Chestnut Foundation, Moore State Park is attempting to grow trees which will be resistant to the fungus. This would be quite an accomplished. Let's hope that it happens.