When I walked into the forest, it seemed very quiet, though there was some birdsong. I did not know what kind of birds I heard, but they seemed different from the birds I usually hear around home and work. The birds I usually hear around home and work include sparrows, robins, starlings, and crows. Later in the walk, I spotted chickadees and nuthatches. I may have seen a flock of juncos as well. I could not get a close enough look to tell what they were. They were among trees on the cliff.
In the forest, I saw the usual black birch, oak, etc. Having just seen pines when I was in Connecticut and New Hampshire the past week, I was struck by the absence of pines. However I did in time come to a grove of white pines. I looked around to see what made this spot different, why would pines grow here and not in other places? What I noticed was that it was a low-lying area. However, there are other low-lying areas on the island where pines do not grow.
Besides the pines, the evergreens I see at Peebles Island are hemlocks and what may be Atlantic white cedar (I have trouble distinguishing the "cedars.") The hemlocks mostly grow on the side of the cliff. There's an area where there are a lot of them on the cliff. In that area, there are also a few over on the inland side of the path.
Being on the side of the cliff affects the shape of this hemlock:
Because the trees have mostly lost their leaves, it is harder to identify them. However, the oaks can be identified by the leaves that still cling to them. After identifying them by their leaves, I studied their bark and buds, to see if I could learn to recognize oaks that way as well.
Here is the bark of two small oaks near the cliffside. I think the first is red oak and the second is white oak.
The bark on these small trees looks quite different from the bark of the big old oaks.
The oaks had clusters of small red buds at the ends of their twigs.
I spent some time examining a small white oak that had many leaves still on it. I noticed that there were buds at the base of each leaf. I concluded therefore that in the places where there were buds but no leaves, there probably had been leaves which had fallen off. I examined the buds that were not adjacent to leaves, and found the leaf scars behind them.
The forest also includes trees which I think are chestnut oaks.
