Saturday, November 29, 2008

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.

Sunday, November 23, 2008



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.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

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.

Monday, November 17, 2008

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.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

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.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

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.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

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.

Monday, November 3, 2008

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.