This past November, as part of Northern Woodlands’ fall fundraising effort, we published a quiz with nine mystery photos and challenged readers to identify any three of them in a line (a la Tic Tac Toe) in order to qualify for a prize drawing.
A full forty of you succeeded in filling out a correct Tic Tac Toe Line, thereby reaching the finalist stage of the drawing. We’re pleased to announce that Gary Sullivan and Samuel Curtis are our two winners, selected by a senior Northern Woodlands intern through an extensive and scrupulously fair process.
Congratulations, Gary and Samuel! You’ll be receiving jugs of syrup from Dave Mance’s family sugarbush.
So what were the correct answers? See how you scored.
- Wild Turkey Egg (most common wrong guess: grouse egg)
- Black Swallowtail (most common wrong guess: monarch)
- Evaporator fire box (people had different names for this, so we were flexible in our scoring, ex. “evaporator,” “maple syrup boiler”)
- Feller buncher (specifically, this is the head of the machine)
- Moose teeth marks (this one stumped a number of you, who guessed it was either the work of a bear or a deer – a moose made this mark with its lower incisors)
- Bear “nest” – not a true nest, but a clump of broken beech tree stems that the bear makes while feeding. Several of you mistook this for a ball of mistletoe. See another photo of bear nests here.
- Indigo bunting
- Turkey tail. This one was especially difficult, in part because the photo left room for interpretation. Near misses included false turkey tail and mossy maze polypore.
- American chestnut. A rare sight these days, this image confused a number of you. This photo was taken of a mature tree that has, miraculously, so far withstood the blight. (If you look at the far right bottom corner of the image, you’ll see part of a paper bag – used by the American Chestnut Foundation in its work to pollinate survivor trees as part of its breeding program.)
Thanks to everyone who participated! If you haven’t already, check out our biweekly What in the Woods is That? guessing game on the lower right of our home page.