October 2021

 

The purple berries by the waterfall are Ink berry bushes. Ilex glabra is a species of evergreen holly native to the coastal plain of eastern North America, where it is most commonly found in sandy woods and peripheries of swamps and bogs, which is why it likes living in the sandy soil of Wooded Island next to the koi pond.

The leaves are starting to turn on the Japanese maples and a few of the cranberry crabapple trees. They tend to be their brightest at the end of October.

 

 

The Great Blue Herons are still busy fishing in the lagoon.

If you see a bird doing this, it's probably one of the cormorants that have spent the summer in Jackson Park. To enable them to dive deep for fish, their feathers don't have the kind of oil that ducks have, so they need to air dry their feathers between dives.

 

In October we feeding the koi. The fish spend the winter in the depths of the pond. If they have the rich food in their systems as their metabolism slows down, it can "ferment" and kill them.