Signs of life

Much of what goes on in the natural world around us is hard to observe first-hand. Like the flowering of the witch-hazel, phenomena have their own time frame, so if you miss the main event you have to infer what happened from what is left behind. Short-term fossils exist all around us.

With their superior sense of smell, the dogs know so much more than we do about the goings on in the forest. For them the air is as full of information as the Internet, and there's many surfaces to post their own scent to. They have message filters as well. Their primary interests are visitors like deer and small mammals worth chasing, not to mention the bones (and worse) they love to bring home to decorate the yard.

The creatures which have interested me lately are insects. Even though the winter seems devoid of bugs, most of the summer insects are still present in some form (other species migrate). Cocoons are tucked into crevices and under tarps. Small winged insects appear out of seemingly nowhere when the temperature dallies above freezing. Many species present are tiny eggs or larvae dormant in the soil, but there are tell-tell signs of their activities throughout the year. Bark beetles for example are tiny and spend the winter as well as most of their lives under tree bark. The adults lay their eggs in cavities excavated between the bark and the wood. The larvae hatch and radiate out as they feed, leaving starbursts and fireworks to be exposed when the bark degrades.



Insects which produce galls (tumor-like plant growths) also tend to be tiny and hidden from view. Dried goldenrod stems can have golf-ball sized galls complete with resident larva, or sometimes a small beetle or other predator who has eaten the original inhabitant. Many of the spruce trees near the house have funny cone-like growths known as pineapple galls. The insect responsible, an aphid, is long gone. The next generation slumbers at the base of spring needle buds, poised to feed and in the process create new galls when warmth returns.

Tree Stories

A frozen branch.


A city tree growing through a fence.


Forest of ice.

All plants have stories to tell if you pay attention, but trees tend to have the longer narrative. Trees stand out more this time of year, especially in an older stand. We’re lucky to have a patch of protected old-growth nearby which I took to visiting during the deer season.

This stand is notable not only because it nestles against a town but because the land is fairly flat and fertile. A nearby patch of old-growth consists of small but ancient trees growing on a very steep landscape. For most of the land around here, what was farmable was cleared for fields and what resisted farming was still logged. The pattern is certainly not unique to the northwest. Protected land tends to be the more inhospitable land which lacks easily exploited resources. So it’s nice to find gorgeous straight trees which I can barely reach halfway around that were able to escape cutting for hundreds of years.



One of the characteristics of old-growth forest (a somewhat loose term) is a diverse age structure. The elders stand among young and middle-aged individuals, and death is also present. Trees have stories to tell even beyond their death, as well as roles still to play. Only a few species such as maples and hemlock are able to grow under the shade of a complete canopy, albeit slowly. Fire is not a common disturbance in our area, but wind is. Trees falling due to high wind, disease, or age create patches of sunlight which allow shade intolerant species like tuliptrees and black cherries to persist in the stand. Sometimes a tree with a shallow root system will pull up its roots and a part of the ground when it falls (this is called a tipup). The exposed soil provides a substrate for seed germination.



This forest is not untouched by the changes of the last few centuries. Beech trunks wrinkle with imported beech bark disease. Wide-ranging species like the passenger pigeon or gray wolf no longer visit, and in the case of the passenger pigeon no longer exist on earth. Some of the downed wood from the past hundred years is missing. There were two major windstorm events after which the decision was made to salvage log damaged areas. This is unfortunate because the downed wood is important. It provides habitat for such diverse creatures as small mammals, fungi, nematodes, and bacteria. Eventually the wood returns to the soil much of what it took up. Just as a 300-year old hemlock has a long story to tell (which is probably more exciting in its condensed version), nutrients taken up from the dirt and incorporated in the trunk of a long-lived tree have several human lifetimes to persist before returning. So to a human it may seem that if the forest can wait that long, the resources must not be that important. But land that is logged regularly must eventually be fertilized to keep producing. Resource extraction is like having a bank account - you can take the interest but if you dip in too deep you begin to deplete the principal.

Yeast magic

Letting the dough rise


Boiling the wort (the unfermented precursor to beer)


Fermenting the beer

The first seed catalog has come (a bit early, but everyone is anxious about finding buyers right now). Despite my daydreams of a green spring, winter has only begun. This weekend the few remaining patches of exposed ground had broken out in frozen goose bumps. There's still green to be found - evergreens, ferns huddling at the base of tree trunks, grass matted from the weight of a few rounds of snow. But the garden will be inhospitable to vegetable seeds until the thaw in March.

So I turn to growing things inside where the woodstove keeps things warm despite the retreat of sunlight. Sunday I planted some yeast. I made two ancient staples: bread (in the form of pizza dough) and beer.

I find gardening and fermentation have a lot in common. I prepare the substrate, for example cultivate the ground for plants and knead the dough for bread yeast, then provide care as necessary while they grow. Otherwise I wait. The whole process makes me feel connected both to the other beings and to history. One of our greatest assets has been our ability to make alliances across species barriers. We may have the decision making power in many of these relationships, but considering that a pampered crop like corn greatly outnumbers the human population, there's benefits for the other species as well.

Of course the quality of life for some of our partners may be questionable in the age of massive confined feeding operations. The only quality that effects evolutionary fitness (which is a bit of a misnomer) is how effectively an organism replicates its genes. If an organism has the chance to be weak, say for example because there's a sheep dog chasing away predators, it's wasteful to use resources being strong. Personally I care more about quality, but I like the lesson about intelligent laziness. I don't mind letting my companions do work they're more suited for. The cats can catch the mice that sneak indoors and the dogs can keep watch for visitors. The English ale yeast is welcome to its quiet corner, performing its alchemy on barley sugars while I tend to other things. In a month we'll crack open the first bottle and drink to the power of living things.

Night fall

When we moved out to the country from the city, night took on new meaning. Lone houses are stars nestled in the landscape while the distant street lamps and flood lights of the cities stain the sky like sunsets. My partner and I often spend the evening at her mother's house. Sure, we notice if it's raining or cold on the walk back, but also if it's cloudy or clear. Is the moon bright or just a thin crescent in field of stars?

This may be part of your life already, but if not, go out in the woods some night when the sky is clear and the full moon casts long shadows from the trees. Then return on a cloudy night when even the sliver of moon is hiding and water droplets in the air swallow the beam from a cheap flashlight. On those nights the forest is a black hole pressing in on our puddle of light. We feel our way around the bend in the driveway with our feet, and sometimes with our hands.

Out here night is a physical thing. Even when we're cozy in our little houses, the dark beyond the windows leans in whispering, "sleep." We've had a couple of weeks of mostly gray days and dark nights, and night will continue to lengthen for a couple weeks more. It's easy to see why so many winter solstice traditions are festivals of light. We won't be emulating our neighbors by lighting up our house and yard like a christmas tree, but we will be attending an interfaith celebration with lots of candles and singing. When things seem darkest is when we most need hope and merriment.

Urban ecology

I was walking near the edge of town when I flushed a pigeon-sized bird. I would have ignored it except the brown streaking suggested raptor. I watched as the juvenile sharp-shinned hawk rose over the branches of the lone white pine in the Agway parking lot, which was adorned with cones.

Often humans forget that the non-human denizens of the city are also growing, reproducing, and striving all around them. This is a small city, but it’s definitely an urban island among forested hills. The boundaries between urban and rural are a lot more porous in reality than in our heads. Also on my walk I saw bright rose hips where months ago there were roses; and larches, which are the one of the few deciduous conifers, with yellow needles ready to fall. Today I watched a squirrel bring a leaf to a drey (squirrel nest) built in a tangle of ivy growing up a building. I’ve seen deer prints mingling with student tracks at the university on the hill.

But the doors aren’t wide open. By their nature, islands exclude certain immigrants while favoring others, and urban islands are no exception. Rats and mice could never have survived a transoceanic journey before there were boats. Far-ranging sea birds, or migrating birds flown off course, could eventually discover distant islands on their own. The hazards of the city are mostly within – cars, road salt, lawnmowers, pesticides, heat absorbed by the roads and buildings, construction, etc. The face-paced lifestyle may be incompatible with the slow maturation of trillium, but it’s well suited to the fast maturing and rapidly reproducing dandelions.

The trillium which grows in our forest is native to North America, while dandelions are native to Europe. The city is a melting pot for more than just humans. North American gray squirrels mingle with European starlings and pigeons. Those same squirrels can be found in England, where they negatively affect native red squirrels. Of all the species making up the great diversity of life on Earth, only a fraction really excel in the urban environment with its stress and disturbance yet abundant waste and lack of competition. These hardy species are often transplanted far from their original home, either purposely or accidentally. The city is the McDonalds of ecosystems, with many of the same species found regardless of whether you are in Honolulu or New York.

But any community is at its core a group of individuals responding individually to the unique set of variables that makes up their niches. So while sharp-shinned hawks are still restricted to North America, some have discovered a winter food source in the feeder birds and house sparrows of the cities. The birds still need forests for breeding, and therefore aren’t permanent residents, but they are one of many species which make up our urban ecosystem.

Frozen dreaming

In our woods you can miss something if you blink, in time as well as space. I was surprised by a shrub behind our house with perfect miniature flowers in the middle of November. My partner's mother and I took a closer look and discovered dried leaves and empty nut capsules, but even with two tree/shrub books we still couldn't identify it.



I have to admit that I'm not primarily a plant person (you may have gathered this if you read the entry about accidentally picking up poison ivy berries). I've learned many individual species over the years, but the problem comes when I'm confronted by an unknown specimen. I experience plant identification keys as if they were "choose your own adventure" books - I blunder along a path and only learn I've made a misstep when my character dies at the end. Or in this case, when there's no way that the twig in my hand matches the twig in the book. Plants seem easy enough if you just scratch the surface. It's easy to distinguish a goldenrod from an aster, but is it an early, sweet, or lance-leaved goldenrod? Or one of the many other species native to New York? Then there's the problem that, compared to vertebrates, plants readily hybridize across species lines. It's enough to make one long for a confusing fall warbler.

Fortunately for birders, most male birds in breeding plumage want to be identified (at least by female birds). Many native plants have distinct characteristics at some time of the year that can't be confused with other plants in the same area. Having given up on a systematic search, I flipped through one of the books and stumbled across a picture of the nut capsule, finally identifying the shrub as witch-hazel.

With this knowledge in hand, I was able to take a closer look at the plant in front of me as well as in the literature. In late fall when they bloom, the flowers sport long yellow streamers. Now where there still are petals they are orange and withered. The nut capsules too are remnants. They eject their black seeds like slow-motion, armored touch-me-nots around the time the plant flowers. While I've missed both events, my sources mention that some individuals bloom in November and even December, so maybe I still have a chance to see the flowers if I pay attention.

Stalking the wild walnut

After buying their land many years ago, the people I band with planted several black walnut trees. Now the trees bear nuts every year, and every year the woman of the couple (I'll call her Dragonfly Chaser) harvests them for eating. Her husband will help if asked nicely, but he doesn't like their taste.

Black walnuts are surrounded by a shell, which is enclosed in a fleshy rind. Processing many nuts can be long endeavor, with several schools of thought on how to go about it. Dragonfly Chaser gathers the fruit from the ground under their trees, piles them in old crates, then ages them in their garage where the resident red squirrel lightens her load by stealing a few. The remaining green balls soften until she's ready for the next step.

One day between banding duties we liberated the shells from their green (or by now black) flesh. Dragonfly Chaser had tried processing some by driving over them (it's very unnerving to drive up someone's driveway and encounter what appears to be green baseballs piled in the ruts), but the weight of the car can also crush the shell. So we did it the old fashioned way, by stomping on them and then pulling out the little brain-shaped cores. Squirrels also remove the flesh before storing the nuts. The juice stains their chins and paws brown this time of year, while we opt for staining gloves instead.

A half-hour and a net check later, we had two buckets of pulp and one bucket of nuts in their shell. Most of the nuts would be left to dry before eating, but Dragonfly Chaser grabbed a handful as our reward. She brought them over to a flat stone with a shallow depression kept by the garage. She set one of the little brains in the middle and cracked it with a smaller rock.

The meat was similar to common walnuts, but paler and more shriveled. Supposedly people either love or hate the taste, which one website described as, "a strong, rich, smoky flavor with a hint of wine." I ate one of the chewy pieces she gave me.

"Do you like it?"

The taste was very familiar. "I don't know. I have to figure out what it tastes like first."

She cracked another one and we both sat chewing on the pieces.

"Bubblegum! It tastes like bubblegum!"

"That's not what I expected at all."

Maybe the nuts change after they age, but they really did taste like "original flavor" bubblegum to me. I know we have at least one black walnut tree near where our driveway meets the road. It was probably planted along with the lilac and daffodils that bloom nearby. I think I'll leave its nuts for the squirrels.

Hidden color

Gun season

(Please note - this entry involves the mercy killing of a wild animal.)

My partner is big on the idea of appreciating experiences for what they are at the time. I found time to go for a walk before the deer gun season began, but finding brain space was harder. For some moments I was present, for others I was caught up in worries or my plans for the day.

My opinions on hunting are too complicated to describe in a paragraph, but my ability to control human hunters outside our little piece of the forest seems as unlikely as my ability to control the red-tail hawk pair sometimes seen cruising over our tree tops. Or the coyotes that chorus in the depth of night, with the occasional encore after the noon whistle from the fire house.

It's hard not to feel under siege as we confine ourselves to the house, or to short trips down the driveway in hunter orange. Even the dogs are festooned in reflective gear, although we're keeping them under tight control just in case. Yesterday when we headed outside, Bear was on a leash while Ivy, who is codependent enough that we trust she'll stay close, was free. We hadn't gone very far when Ivy noticed a raccoon behind our woodpile and ran up to investigate.

The raccoon hissed. Fortunately Ivy is a scaredy-dog, so she fled back to us. After hauling two very excited dogs back into the house, we came back out to get a good look at the raccoon. She (we later discovered it was a female) was beautiful and huge. As we watched, we also began to notice she was not healthy. She appeared disoriented, not noticing we were there much less fleeing. Her every movement was shaky and seemed painful.

I called my banding friends because they have lived in this area so long and I've seen the husband of the pair shoot a deer that was fatally injured by a car. We held out an optimistic hope that she was injured, but they quickly recognized the symptoms of an advanced case of rabies. My partner took one of the dogs next door to her mother's house while I waited for their arrival.

The raccoon began to move and I followed. Her progress down the driveway was halting but purposeful. When my banding friends arrived she had collapsed yet again in the woods on a course for the nearest neighbor on our other side. One bullet ended her suffering and her threat.

We all dug a deep hole through tree roots and soil turned gray through seasonal water logging. On top of her body we piled dirt and stones then sprinkled Chlorox around, if only to dissuade predators from digging up the still contagious carcass.

I doubt I'll be able to relax much in the next few weeks as I keep an eye out for sick animals as well as men with weapons. But just as in the past agricultural tools have become weapons when the need arose, I'll remember that weapons can be tools if you wield them right.

Birds of a feather

I stepped out of our house on a bright afternoon to go for a short bird walk, but found a silent forest besides the wind and crunch of brittle leaves. I had gone a few feet into our spruce stand when a large bird opened its wings and took flight. In complete silence it disappeared through the trees.

I'm guessing the bird was an owl, which would be one explanation for why it wasn't hunting in the middle of the day. Owl feathers break up turbulence in a way that makes their flight silent not only to our ears, but to those of their prey. But I may have been too far away to hear its flight even if it was a hawk.

As soon as the raptor was gone, the forest came alive. A brown creeper worked its curved beak under tree bark. A white-breasted nuthatch muttered "yank, yank" as it wandered head first down a trunk. The tableau was completed by the ubiquitous black-capped chickadees that pecked at spruce cones and searched for insects along twigs.

For many birds, the nuclear family is only important during the breeding season, if at all (Males of some species take no part in child-rearing, and female nest parasites like brown-headed cowbirds are done with their eggs after finding a nest to lay them in). Even birds that nest colonially generally exclude others from the immediate vicinity of their nest. Many birds defend a territory for food resources. This allows them to stay closer to their nest while foraging, since conspecifics (individuals of the same species) aren't depleting the food. Once the young leave the nest, there's less need to stay in one place. Who can even try, with the fledglings wandering blithely unaware of adult territorial boundaries? As migration begins, and winter threatens, flocks provide a multitude of eyes on the lookout for food and predators.

I drove past a cornfield the other day as a flock of common grackles came down like snow to feed on the waste grain. Nowadays cedar waxwings decorate the trees at my banding friends' house, coming to eat everything from buckthorn berries to tiny red crabapples. In the forest, it's hard to go very far before encountering chickadees chipping.

Finding chickadees is a good way to bird, since they often form the core group of mixed species foraging flocks. Warblers hang out with them during migration. Titmice, nuthatches and woodpeckers are common participants all through the winter. Even golden-crowned kinglets, which frequently migrate through but occasionally winter in this area, may join up.

These many forest species which join mixed foraging flocks understand chickadee alarm calls. The calls can rally nearby birds to mob predators, such as the raptor I saw. Some birders imitate them to draw birds into view. I don't do them myself, and not just because I'm not very good at imitating bird sounds. It seems a shame to raise a bird's anxiety level for nothing. With a real predator, mobbing not only takes energy, but there is the risk that the predator may turn the tables. Sometimes with a large predator which may not eat all that many chickadees to begin with, staying silent is the better choice.

Chance encounter

Today at lunch I stepped out into the cold under a cloudy sky. I walked through a brown and gray world full of knobby trees straight out of German folklore. Under the ever present rush of traffic from the highway was the whisper of wind moving through mostly bare branches.

I had stopped by a bend in the trail to listen to cardinals chipping when I noticed the thick brush moving independently from the wind. Out crept a deer as gray as the trees. She stopped not fifteen feet from me and began browsing a shrub while two other gray ghosts appeared behind her. She was barely bigger than one of my dogs, which made me wonder if she was a fawn who'd lost her spots. I could see her coarse winter coat in my binoculars, which earned me barely a glance. The trail is in a wildlife sanctuary so the hunting season is marked only by distant gunshots. Fattening up for the winter is a higher survival concern here than unnecessary fear.

We stood together for a while as they foraged and I bird watched. The male cardinals whose chipping had drawn me appeared in their bright red coats. A blue jay flew up with a mouse in its beak. I watched it hammer at the mouse the way a nuthatch hammers at sunflower seeds. A goldfinch sat on a branch fluffed up against the cold.

Suddenly a man carrying a scope rounded the corner and hustled straight towards us. The deer looked up and froze, and then I did too. We watched him fly by with a quick acknowledgment for me and no indication that he had seen or cared about the deer he had passed right in front of.

When he'd passed, the deer lowered their heads and, after a pause, began to work their way through the bramble away from me. Their movements were slow and delicate. Occasionally one stopped to nibble on something. Then they crossed the trail and faded into the more open woodland on the other side.

After a few minutes I wandered away in the other direction.

Fall surprises

I learned to identify a familiar plant by a new part recently. I was out walking during lunch when I noticed a cluster of off-white berries in the path. I had picked it up and was twirling it around when a sudden suspicion made me drop it. Sure enough, when I looked up I saw the same kind of berries suspended from the nearest poison ivy vine.

So I moseyed quickly back to work, but not as quickly as I would have if I knew then that poison ivy can cause a rash in as little as ten minutes. Fortunately I was able to wash my hands with dish detergent, which in this case washed away the oil that causes the allergic reaction. This oil is present on all parts of the plant, even after the leaves are dead or the vine goes dormant in the fall.

Poison ivy isn't the only plant whose transformation surprised me this year. I never realized that goldenrod flowers turn to tiny seeds with fluff attached (see previous post) because I was never paying close enough attention until this year. I identified this bittersweet nightshade in bloom, which allowed me to recognize it when it turned color:


Not only are other animals not surprised by poison ivy berries, but many seek them out. They don't suffer the same allergic reaction we do. A few days after my encounter, I watched a chickadee peck at a berry cluster. The berries are low in calories, which makes them a low quality food source for birds and mammals who are more worried by weight loss than weight gain. Birds would rather eat high calorie berries such as the elderberries and buckthorn berries which stain the bags we use for transporting birds for banding. However, low quality berries and seeds play an important role in the dead of winter and early spring, when all the elderberries, buckthorn, autumn olive, and pokeberries have long since been picked clean. Then American tree sparrows will even forage for the tiny goldenrod seeds, bending over the stalks in the process. Diversity is often a better investment against famine than quality.

So we leave the poison ivy alone when it's not right in our yard. Considering the extent of poison ivy in our woods, trying to control them would be tilting at windmills. Instead, I guess I'll add a third couplet to the old "Leaves of three/let it be," and "Only a dope/touches the hairy rope." Maybe "Berries are white?/Beware, may bite!" What it lacks in poetry it makes up for in utility.

Fall harvests

One day last week, rain thickened and eventually became pellets of snow. I went for a walk at lunch through the woods. Snow fell constantly in a soft pitter-patter as dried leaves rustled in the cold wind.

I prefer being out in snow to being out in cold rain. Snow benefits other beings as well. These pellets melted on contact with the unfrozen forest floor, but in a couple months when snow cover stays it will insulate the ground, as well as all the bulbs and roots under the dirt. Our winter chickadees can shake off a dusting of snow, but rain can mat their feathers. This collapses the air pockets which are so important in insulation.

Snow shelters small mammals from predators as well as from the cold. In much colder environments, the thickness of the snow packs can mean the difference between winter survival and death. In our area snow is more ephemeral, especially at lower elevations. I'm just hoping we have enough for snowshoeing this year.

I tend to think of winter as a time of withdrawing. But this
year my schedule will be opening up after banding ends,
making winter a time of opportunity.

In some ways winter is the simplest season. Cold. White. The
bountiful busyness of summer has faded. Many species take
advantage of this leveling of the playing field by getting a
quick start when the sun returns. Trout lilies and other
spring flowers sprout from bulbs long before leaves shade the
forest floor. Deer breed in the late fall to give birth in
spring.

The other evening I heard great horned owls in the back woods
as the light faded. These owls are raptors seen in a mirror,
darkly. They rouse at dusk and hoot to attract a mate in the
late autumn when other bird song has quieted. The breeding
season takes off in winter after which pairs may lay eggs as
early as February. The eggs are very cold hardy and the female
helps by creating a warm environment through metabolism
and insulation.

We tend to only think of mammals and birds moderating their own
temperatures, but the talent is more widespread than once
suspected. The wet areas of our forest are littered with skunk
cabbage leaves emerging in tight rolls which will unfurl in
spring. Skunk cabbage are known not only for emitting an
unpleasant odor when bruised but also for creating their own
warmth. Their prehistoric-seeming flowers can melt their way
through snow to bloom in late winter and early spring.

Until then, it's nice to see green coming instead of going.

The other day a cold wind thrashed about in the trees, blowing some of the remaining leaves high into the air. I'd been planning a walk for lunch, but the fury of crashing branches under heavy gray clouds convinced me to stay inside and do yoga.

That night, a constant roar surrounded our little house. There is a chaos to the weather that is oblivious to our supposed mastery of the universe. The wind pressed in upon the warm glow of light and the faint echoing roar of the wood stove.

Our society is "civilized," so for many of us poverty is a matter of numbers and autumn is about leaves and cornstalks. But outside there is an edge to the flurry of activity. Little birds like chickadees, nuthatches, and brown creepers flock together for protection and the benefit of extra eyes looking for scarce food. The forest is full of calls instead of songs as fair weather birds are drained away by migration. If there's a reason that the veil between the worlds is thin on All Hallow's Eve, I imagine it is this: fall is a time of reckoning. In the forest, most of the food that will keep scatter-hoarders like chickadees and squirrels alive throughout the winter has already been grown.

We're lucky we don't have to count on the sack of potatoes I grew this year lasting us through the winter. Many wild plants have their own version of storage tubers. Mayapple dies back to the root which winters in its own version of a root cellar, the soil. Even flowers that haven't been seen since spring such as trillium and trout lily are lying in a stasis of roots or bulbs, a latent understory just below the surface. Before European agriculture, logging, and housing development, northeastern woodlands were much more stable environments, while grasslands dealt with fire as well as transitions to woodland and wetlands. Spreading one's progeny was a more sure strategy than trying to stay in one place. Many grassland flowers such as goldenrod and asters have a great many flowers which turn to seeds attached to a white fluff that catches the wind. Mayapples, trilliums, and trout lilies have one flower per plant or less and even woodland asters have less flowers per size than grassland asters.

However many seeds they produce (or spores, in the case of the sensitive ferns pictured below), their effort is over for the season. Some will be eaten, some will land in inhospitable territory, but all that's left is hope and waiting.

I decided against lighting a fire yesterday. Sometime during the night, the temperature inside dropped below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. When I wake up at 6:30 to a dark and cold house, I start thinking seriously of hibernating.

At the approach of winter, migratory birds "get the urge for going" while those of us who are stuck here settle in for the long haul. At my house we've got our flannel blankets out and cords of firewood stacked beside the house. Our gray squirrel population is busy rustling through the leaves. Shagbark hickories are one of the tree nuts they stock in their larders. The green casings are much smaller than black walnuts and enclose a shell hiding a nut with a delicate taste reminiscent of maple syrup. When not foraging, squirrels can be seen gathering twigs and leaves to build shelters in tree cavities and bare canopies. The big balls of dry leaves visible in the tree tops all winter are actually squirrel nests, known as dreys. Not all dreys are occupied. Unlike in the summer, when leaves provide a screen, winter nests are exposed to predators. It's helpful for a squirrel to add a few red herrings to her territory.

The striped skunk is another mammal which becomes very active in fall. Young skunks are venturing out on their own, encountering such dangers as roads and predators. Skunks of all ages are out fattening up and searching for cozy dens. Neither squirrels nor skunks actually hibernate, but they need fat reserves and shelter to hide from the worst of winter. Normally skunks are crepuscular, which means they move about in the twilight of dawn and dusk. During the fall and mating season in the early spring, skunks may be active during the day. Unfortunately, other than one skunk on the side of the road, the skunks I’ve seen lately have all been black and white rags on the road. Our dog Bear was luckier.

Or so he probably thought at first. I’m sorry to say that I have a close relationship with someone who thinks “lunch,” or at least “toy,” when he hears a small furry creature in distress. Here was an entertaining mammal about cat-sized but not part of the family, not up a tree, and not down a hole. It even did some fascinating stomping while it held its ground. Skunks actually have to physically produce their version of mace, so they would rather warn predators away than deplete their supply. But a warning, like any communication, only works if both sides understand the signals.

Poor optimistic Bear. The smell lingered around our house and clung to his boisterous yet wet figure. Mephitis, the genus and species of the striped skunk, means foul odor in Latin. We all agreed that the sulfurous musk did not necessarily smell bad, just incredibly strong. I very much doubt that happy-go-lucky Bear learned his lesson, since his only trauma during the whole episode happened when we had to give him two baths and a rub down with Nature’s Miracle Skunk Remover. He wasn’t hit in the eyes, which would have caused temporary blindness. According to the NYS DEC website, it also produces pain, paranoia, and a “hidden fear that can be triggered years later by the musk odor.” I’m glad our puppy didn’t get hit in the eyes. Mostly.

Fall morning

In the early hours, there's a different world outside. I've been helping out some local bird banders and we usually open the nets before dawn. It's been hard sometimes, because I'm jealous of my free time (I help band up to four days a week then work in an office the other three) but often it's worth it.

Yesterday I woke to frost sparkling under a bright moon and the outstretched arms of Orion. We couldn't open nets until after dawn, so I was there to watch as a shaft of light hit a frozen net which breathed vapor into the cold air. Fall mornings when the sun rises after a frozen night, the trees release clouds of leaves to float down and coat the ground like snow.

In the office we're surrounded by the hum of machines. We navigate environments made for and by humans. Outside the world breathes.

Leaves of change

I think Wednesday was the most glorious day of fall foliage this year. The woodlands abutting cornfields seemed unchanged from summer, except for being painted in the golds and ruby reds of an autumnal palette. But that night the temperature dropped and wind moved in with the rain to litter our yard with leaves. We started to notice many bare trees in the morning, a reminder of the approaching winter.

The fall finery of deciduous forests in the northeastern US is as aesthetically pleasing as bird song or summer flowers. However, in those two examples, there's purpose to the beauty. Bird song must attract mates as well as fend off rivals, and showy flowers attract pollinators. Autumn leaf colors have no such purpose and if they inspire any humans to conserve temperate deciduous forests it's incidental. The trees have another form of conservation driving them: nutrient conservation.

This was also on my mind Thursday morning as I raked up leaves to store by the compost pile. The full bin represents my last big harvest of the growing season. Soon winter will shut down my gardening completely.

Our winters are cold and often gray. Us human residents suffer from the lack of sunlight, but so too does the forest around our house. The broad leaves of hardwood trees have a much greater exposure to the elements than the tight spruce needles that will stay green all winter. Conifers are also resinous, which conserves water and acts like antifreeze, not to mention creating creosote when you unwisely burn conifer logs in your woodstove. Shagbark hickory, beech, and other deciduous trees protect themselves by going dormant and losing those broad leaves, their most vulnerable parts.

But leaves are a big investment in terms of material, and trees absorb as many nutrients as they can before dropping them. Chlorophyll, the famous green pigment that facilitates most photosynthesis in plants, is broken down. This exposes yellow and orange pigments which were always present in small amounts, aiding chlorophyll by absorbing light energy in different spectrums. In contrast, the bright reds and purples of particularly good foliage years are produced in the fall when the leaves manufacture sugar during warm, sunny days, but that sugar is trapped and broken down during cold nights. Browns are another result of decomposition, not as striking by themselves though an important shade to round out the fall palette. Eventually the nutrients that are left will be mostly locked in to the leaf physically or chemically, and the tree will cut its losses. The leaf is released to the forest's version of a compost pile, the forest floor.

Oak leaves can take up to three years to decompose in the forest, but I'm hoping to speed up the process in my compost. By now, my reserve pile from last fall looks pretty much unchanged, while the compost pile, a mix of leaves, green yard clippings, and vegetable waste, is dense and dark brown. Leaves are high in carbon, but the other compost ingredients are high in nitrogen, making the mixture much more palatable to all the bacteria, fungi, mites, nematodes and insects which carry out decomposition.

In our region, glaciers dug down to the bedrock and prevented the reformation of top soil until they retreated around 11,000 years ago. One result of this scouring was the extirpation (that is, local extinction) of native earthworms. Without earthworms, decomposition of the leaf litter proceeds slowly. Eventually the leaves will return their nutrients to the soil and the trees which dropped them, but until then the leaf litter has an important job to do. The layer buffers shallow roots in cold temperatures, but also retains moisture throughout the year. It guards against erosion that threatens to drain away nutrients. It also shelters mice and other small creatures, something I will have to be careful about when I cover my garden beds with leaves to ready them for the long winter. Many native seedlings and wildflowers need this protective layer. Their populations can steeply decline when introduced worms eat through the leaf layer too quickly. Not only do natives decline, but invasive plants thrive in the exposed soil where worms have freed up nitrogen that weeds need to, well, be weedy.

The importance of leaf litter is why I only rake up leaves from our yard, not our forest. I also have to be careful not to introduce more worms, because although I know we already have at least one species, I don't want to add a new one. Last year, before I knew enough about how dangerous they were, I almost started a worm compost. I even ordered a batch of worms. We were too busy to pick them up from the post office in time, so they all perished in a traumatic incident still legendary to the small town postal workers (rotting worms smell like essence of death, in case you ever wondered). Now, though, I feel very fortunate not to have made a mistake which could have completely altered our surrounding ecosystem. No one has yet found an easy way to search out and destroy all the worms in a forest. We can't undo the introductions that have already happened here.