One recent late afternoon David and I drove up to the pipeline cut on the wooded hillside to look at the color changes of the trees. A lot of them have just now started to change but some were already colorful and attractive.

One small tree was a beautiful bright orange. It was an American hornbeam with papery fruit clusters hanging down. Also called ironwood, hornbeams are closely related to birches. They have smooth hard wood but they’re so small and not particularly abundant that the wood’s not used for much.

There were acorns on the ground near the hornbeam tree and I brought one back with me to try to identify what oak it came from. You can often tell what oak, or at least what group of oaks, an acorn comes from by examining it.

Acorns from red oaks are smaller than acorns from the white oak group. Their cap is thin with overlapping scales. Acorns from white oaks are bigger and have a bumpy cap. But if you only have one acorn to look at, these identifying properties don’t always help.

At the woods edge there were also walnuts on the ground from several black walnut trees, and the edge of our back yard is also littered with them.

Wild walnuts are very nutritious. They contain vitamins, minerals, protein, and healthy fats. But it takes a bit of work to properly harvest the nuts.

First you have to remove the outer husk, taking care to not get your hands stained from its juice. And then you need to cure the shells in a cool spot for 2—3 weeks before eating them. But they’re worth it if you don’t mind some work and they’re sure cheaper than walnuts you buy from the grocery store. (Wild-foraging websites like feralforaging.com and foragerchef.com have more details on how to enjoy wild black walnuts. Also, note that dogs can be sickened by walnuts.)

At the edge of the back yard there’s another nut tree that’s been loaded with fruit this year. More than 40 years ago we planted two Chinese chestnut trees that have been producing amazing amounts of nuts for years.

American chestnuts, as they were before the blight hit, are basically gone, although some sources say they aren’t really extinct. Scientists and biologists, using methods such as recurrent genomic selection, are working to restore a blight-resistant strain of our native chestnuts as close as they can get to the original. But any nuts currently being produced are being used for restorative purposes, not for commercial sales.

Chinese chestnuts taste good, and they contain a lot of vitamins and antioxidants. They’re also low in fat and high in carbohydrates. But to get to them you need to be real careful with their burs, or shells, because they’re spiny and sharp. When the burs turn from green to brown the nuts inside are ready to be harvested. (Chestnut foragers should be sure to avoid toxic species like the horse chestnut or buckeye.)

David likes cooking and eating chestnuts, but the deer like them even more, and they don’t have to cook them. So any that fall off the tree during the night are mostly gone by the morning.

On the bird front, I still haven’t seen any dark-eyed juncos, but that should happen any day now. And keep your eyes open for rare winter finches because the finch forecast says that some unusual species might be coming our way this winter.

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