No. 1? In numbers (not volume), that would be cigarette butts. Two? Probably plastic (mostly water) bottles. Then it’s beer cans and coffee cups. About a year ago, it was probably face masks, but that’s leveled off. The most, baffling thing has to be doggie poo bags. Hardly a hike goes by where I d…

Stacking and displacing bigger rocks disturbs the microhabitat of creatures living under them. It causes all the moisture previously stored under them to dry out, which results with destrtuction of that microhabitat.

That’s more what I was wondering about. To be honest, yeah–the aesthetics, which is substantially subjective, I realize, also irritates me. That is, I come to a trail to be in a different world and hopefully not to bring in, or at least not leave any part of the world I normally live in at other tim…

Could be a light-activated noise maker too. The LED might be connected for detecting light and the holes might be for a speaker on the other side. It looks very homemade, so maybe the battery ran out before it was ever activated?

I found this “plant” off the parking area near the trailhead for the dirt road that goes up Christopher Mountain in the Tonto National Forest of Arizona. [0298] I first saw it in 2003. At that time, it’s “leaves” were taller and still straight up. This picture is from 2008. By then the leaves w…

That could be a whole other topic! Trash mimicry. And it goes both ways – the first ‘Elf-cup’ mushroom I found was because I thought it was a little red plastic toy, or something. And I think I lost count of the times I bent over to pick up a birch-bark cigarette butt! A few weeks ago I found a p…

Or perhaps a hair-snare survey station for mammals, although there are better snares than a half-buried plastic bristle brush.

Very interesting. I never heard of survey whiskers before. The white one is consistent with what I saw if it was buried an inch or so below grade. Maybe there was some work done on the parking area around 2001-2002. Your explanation is the most plausible yet, although a bit disappointing. I was…

I’ve been fooled by brightly-colored survey whiskers in the past, thinking it was some interesting flowering plant until I approached it and got a closer look. I didn’t know that was the name for that type of survey marker.

In the riverside woodland near my city, there are shallow plastic livestock food/water tubs laid out in various random places under the canopy. I stumble upon them occasionally when I’m out hiking. If someone didn’t know what they were there for, they might assume it was discarded trash or some eff…

Trash talking: Strangest Things?

Nature Talk

vreinkymov June 14, 2022, 2:57pm 63

Could it be survey whiskers that have deteriorated from sunlight?

I got tricked today

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Trash talking: Strangest Things?

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