My camera travels with me almost everywhere I go.

I’ve learned from a few missed opportunities to try to have it close by when I’m driving. It goes along with me in my canvas bag as well as a few other items that might be helpful on one of my nature, birding or snooping walks.

I, of course, look for birds, but sometimes I spy a really neat flower, mushroom or a bug, and of course snap a few pictures. Sometimes, if I didn’t know what it was, I’ll look at the photos back home and try to “key” them out to add more stuff to fill my nature brain.

I wish I knew more about mosses and the myriad insects that I just didn’t see or learn about before.

This week I put together a photo page of different things I’ve found locally. See if you can identify many or all of them. I’ve included a list of possible answers (with a few incorrect ones) and an answer key at the end of the column.

See how well you do with these that you may or might have already encountered but just didn’t know yet.

Good luck, and get out there to see them for yourself.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: Which of these is not an introduced species pest? A. Japanese barberry; B. autumn olive; C. tree of heaven; D. house sparrow; E. all of these are introduced pests.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: On a good note, after some disappointing habitat loss in last week’s column, Eastern bluebirds, peregrine falcons and pileated woodpeckers have all seen population increases in the last 40 years.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com

Answer pool

Meadow vole, broad-winged hawk, cooper’s hawk, great horned owl nest, muskrat lodge, beaver lodge, fern fiddleheads, red-bellied woodpecker, redheaded woodpecker, black knot fungus, honey locust tree trunk, Indian pipes, rhododendron flowers, puffball, crabapples, mountain laurel flowers, gray squirrel nest, amanita mushroom, short-tailed shrew, thorn apples and persimmons.

Answers

1. Muskrat lodge

2. Honey locust tree trunk

3. Mountain laurel flowers

4. Broad-winged hawk

5. Fern fiddleheads

6. Black knot fungus (This fungus that grows almost entirely on plum and cherry tree species. It forms galls (black ugly lumps) on branches and if the tree lives long enough, those galls can get very large.)

7. Short-tailed shrew (They are rather common but seldom venture above the leaf litter.)

8. Gray squirrel nest (Squirrels in summer snip off thin limbs with leaves, fashion a nest in the fork of treetop branches and can hide there when they wish to rest. Since they cut them in summer, the leaves don’t drop and the nests are easily seen on the now bare trees.)

9. Persimmons (The trees are more common in the south. Wildlife loves the fruit, which hangs on the tree well into winter.)

10. Puffball

11. Indian pipes (These are very unusual, non-photosynthetic — they have no chlorophyll and are not green — flowering plants. They live in darker, moist forests and get their food from parasitizing fungi that live among tree roots. Look for them after a few rainy summer days.)

12. Red-bellied woodpecker