What in the Woods is That?

Jan Van Meter recently spotted “two of these white balls with pink nodes” attached to the twigs of a white oak in southern New York.

It’s metal, it’s rusty, and it’s hollow. This is a section of a longer piece found in the woods in southern Vermont. What is it?

Red petals decorate the forest floor in Windham County, Vermont, on Memorial Day weekend. What are they?

Beech nuts, gravel, emergent vegetation. Where was this strange amalgamation found?

Ellen Snyder stumbled across this in New Hampshire and thought we might appreciate it. We ate it up.

It’s not a waffle, but there is a connection.

This week’s WITWIT is more of a WTHHH (What the heck happened here?).

Sent along by Mark Heitzman, who found them on his property in Barre, Vermont.

A reader in southern Vermont submitted this collection of seven different cones (not all were found in the forest). Can you ID them all from left to right?

Bob Chandler came across this scene on a logging job in Maine.

We won’t make you guess how many there are, but we want to know what they are and why they all landed on the ground at the same time in late December? (Penny Harris took this shot in…

Another strange mark in the snow, which Dicken Crane came across while walking a skid trail.

We stumbled upon these strange markings in a thin cover of snow. What created them?

Russ Cohen, rivers advocate with the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, took this photo in September in southern Vermont. It seems appropriately colorful and festive for this time of…

What’s so special about this maple log?

This picture was taken by board member Richard Carbonetti. Yup, it was taken in the woods. What is it?

Reader Penny Harris took this picture in her woods in Cambridge, Vermont. What's the black growth?

Forestry students might call this "Dendrology at 50 mph." Name the tree species, from left.

What’s the muddy depression that these folks are looking at? (That’s our Tracking Tips columnist Sue Morse in green, for those who don’t know her.)

Yes, it’s a dead chipmunk. (We’re pretty sure the dog killed it, but it may have been gluttony.) Note that his mouth is full of beech nuts. Now how many beech nuts do you think this wee…