A Little Less Colorful

After the last fairly colorful post, I thought I would share some of the subtler discoveries from our recent wanderings. 

First up is a flower that has no chlorophyll, so it's sort of a pale and ghostly bloom on the forest floor.

I always called it Indian Pipe as I was growing up, but it is also known as the ghost flower or corpse flower. It is a parasitic plant that depends on fungus feeding on trees to survive, since it lacks the chlorophyll that would allow it to generate its own energy. Sort of a parasite's parasite, I guess. They're really quite delicate and pretty, even though 'corpse flower' doesn't sound very appealing.

I believe this is a young chipping sparrow. The babies can be a little hard to tell apart at this stage, but I'm cheating, since I watched a pair of chipping sparrows nest in this area earlier in the season.

It seemed to be as interested in us as we were in it. But, we had to go home and get things done, so we moved on.

Baloo lodged his formal protest about having to go back indoors. It was a beautiful day to be outside!