Narnia Interlude

In winter, it’s all about the weather, especially in February when we are liable to experience a confusing mixture of balmy, spring like days, sleet, freezing rain, and snow.  Last February 1 the predictions were so dire that all the public schools and colleges were closed.

The “tick-tick” of sleet against our windows began at 4:30 in the morning, and by dawn our brown earth was once again white — a hard, crusty white — that sent birds into the feeder area by the dozens — four common redpolls, 24 American goldfinches, a blue jay, a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers, another of northern cardinals, seven quarreling house finches, nine American tree sparrows, three white-throated sparrows, 12 dark-eyed juncos, three tufted titmice, a pair of black-capped chickadees, another of white-breasted nuthatches and 21 mourning doves, one of which dragged a shredded tail along behind it.

Once two white-tailed deer ran along the flat area below our back porch, paused to glance behind them, and then bounded on up Laurel Ridge.  I stood watching at the window for many minutes, hoping to see what had sent them off in a panic, but no other creature appeared.

From 27 degrees at dawn, the temperature gradually rose and the sleet changed to freezing rain, encasing every tree branch in ice. More and more gray squirrels were finding and invading the wooden feeder. I counted six that morning. I knew they were hungry too, but that day I was counting birds, not squirrels, for Project FeederWatch, a citizen science project of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology, and the squirrels scared off the birds both intentionally and unintentionally. I, in turn, intentionally chased the squirrels.

Expecting the electric power to go at any minute, I worked in the kitchen all morning, baking coffee cake, making soup for lunch, and mixing and baking granola. But since our back kitchen door looks out at our bird feeders hanging from the back porch, I also was mesmerized by the birds at the feeders and on the ground, their comings and goings, the changing cast of characters, the alarm calls, the birds the others fled from, mostly blue jays and, to a lesser extent, the red-bellied woodpecker that swooped down like a bomber pilot and landed on the porch post, its rapier bill looking more threatening than it was. Common redpolls were more phlegmatic than the other finches, mourning doves more nervous, flying up at the least excuse in a sudden explosive rush that startled the rest of the birds. Tufted titmice and black-capped chickadees slipped into the feeders whenever the American goldfinches and house finches allowed them.  Although the northern cardinals arrived as a pair, the male pecked the female away from the food, a sure sign that he was in winter-survival mode and not ready to initiate courtship.

One of the red-bellied woodpeckers was actually orange-bellied as I noticed when it was on the ground, yet all the guides and articles I consulted, including the definitive Birds of North America, insist that their bellies are red.  The others I’ve seen are red, but this one was not.  Could it be the food it was eating?  After all, house finches can be orange and even yellow if they don’t eat red berries, because their diet determines their color.

By noontime rain splashed from the gutters and against the bow window.  Beads of water drops froze at the bottom edge of every branch as the thermometer stood at 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Near sunset, the rain stopped, and Bruce and I crunched through the granular, snowy ice in the glittering forest with its tree branches dangling icy raindrops. And the feared electric outage?  Much ado about nothing.

The next morning, on Groundhog Day, Punxatawny Phil saw his shadow.  That seemed unlikely because at dawn it was 28 degrees and overcast.  In any case, we always have more than six weeks of winter still ahead of us on that date, regardless of what P.P. predicts.

By late afternoon, I stopped waiting for the promised sun and went out into an ice-shrouded world that glowed a faint pinkish-gray beneath a clearing sky.  A red-tailed hawk took off from the edge of First Field, and I followed it with my binoculars as it wove its way through the trees overhanging the field and finally settled on a tree branch halfway up Sapsucker Ridge.

Only tree branches had been pruned by the ice so I could appreciate the glassy, shining shell encasing every grass stem, sapling and tree branch.  The crust held the deer and me up as if it was a roughly-frozen lake.  Coyote Bench was white and overhung with saplings bowed by ice.  Fat tree trunks were hoary with ice, like scenes from C.S. Lewis’s Narnia in his book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where the White Witch ensures that it is always winter. Unlike the four children in that tale, though, who were caught in endless winter without proper clothing, I was dressed warmly and embraced the beauty of the ice instead of fearing it.

A large tree branch that had broken and fallen under the ice load, stood upright in the icy-snow on the Far Field Road. Shards of ice littered the road and crunched beneath my feet.  The spruce grove was frozen and dark, the trees bowed and anchored to the earth by ice.  Dark-eyed juncos and northern cardinals that had sought shelter within the evergreens chipped at me in the gathering dusk.

The following day, I still found a Narnia-frozen world along Greenbrier Trail.  Clouds moved across patches of blue sky on that soft, silvery, silent, Sunday morning.  Once I stopped my crunching walk and heard the clarion call of a hairy woodpecker, the whooshing of a flushing ruffed grouse, the calls of tufted titmice and northern cardinals, and, of course, the inevitable traffic noise from Interstate 99 below because of a strong inversion layer due to the heavy fog in the valley. Despite the weather, there was much toing and froing along the highway, and I wished that I could share the “beauty of the earth” and “the glory of the sky” on the mountain with those folks enclosed in their machines.

A soft mist hung over Laurel Ridge.  Along Greenbrier Trail on Sapsucker Ridge, every branch and berry shone in its glassy cocoon.  But when I ascended to the top of the ridge, every icy twig and branch bristled with hoarfrost.  The valleys were still wrapped in fog even as the sun began to emerge from the floating cloud cover and sent shadows over the snowy, ice-covered mountaintop.

Looking across at the end of Laurel Ridge, I could see the hoarfrost line reaching down only a hundred feet or so.  The ice glittered and glowed as the sun winked in and out.  Hoarfrost clung to patches of rough bark that stood out on the trunks of oak trees.  Prickles of hoarfrost even stuck to smooth-barked striped maples. Droplets of ice that hung from the undersides of many branches shone in the sunlight. But other icicles hanging from branches were also encased in hoarfrost.  Striped maple keys, enclosed in ice and outlined with hoarfrost, dangled from red or gold, hoarfrost-covered branches like shiny, beige Christmas ornaments. Hoarfrost even whitened the needles of pitch pine trees that overhung the ridge.

Mine were the only human prints on the trail, the cloven hoofs of deer the only animal tracks that were heavy enough to make an imprint like mine, or even to break through the ice.

At 10:30, as the sun shone more and more determinedly, a gray squirrel crossed the trail in front of me. Ice creaked in the treetops and shards crashed down as the temperature rose.  Ice-covered large tree trunks, patched with green lichens, and fallen trees, glistened in the thawing warmth.

I found a red-eyed vireo nest filled with snow, it’s outside a sheen of ice, anchored on a low-hanging red maple tree limb.  As the sun shone fully, I looked across at Sinking Valley, but all I could see were the tops of distant mountains, blue above the billowing white fog.

A shard of ice hit me on the back of the head, and I realized that a hard hat would have been in order.  A blue jay called in the distance.  As I crossed the powerline right-of-way, a portion of fog momentarily lifted, kaleidoscopically revealing what looked like a toy town below. Ice shrouded every rock along this section of the heavily-wooded trail. Mountain laurel leaves were bent and ice-shiny.

Black-capped chickadees sang and called in the spruce grove.  An American crow flapped quietly overhead as I descended First Field to the accompaniment of melting, dripping ice.  All the black locust tree trunks glowed lime green under their ice cover, lending color to the beige edges of the field.

Fog rolled up from the valley, briefly enveloping the area where I had walked.  A northern cardinal glowed red in an ice-covered multiflora rosebush.  Tufted titmice, a red-bellied woodpecker, downy woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatches, and black-capped chickadees called from the forest on either side of the field, invigorated by the melting warmth of a February thaw.

Within an hour, the glory was gone.  The sun shone warmly, and the temperature reached a brief 43 degrees before retreating to the thirties in late afternoon. And I was back to chasing squirrels from the feeders.

Mountain Meadows

The 150- by 50-foot wildflower garden at Mountain Meadows

Imagine receiving a gift of 113 acres on Tussey Mountain.  That’s what happened to Mike and Laura Jackson back in 1988 when Laura’s parents, Richard and Phyllis Hershberger, gave them a portion of their farm.  The Jacksons named their property Mountain Meadows and built a home with large windows for wildlife viewing.

Part of the land had been pastured.  Twice the woods on the higher slopes had been high-graded — “taking the best and leaving the rest” in forester parlance.  Then a gypsy moth caterpillar outbreak dealt the final blow to most of the remaining oak trees.

But Mike and Laura, who have devoted their lives to educating themselves and others about the natural world, were undaunted by the challenge of reclaiming their land for wildlife.  Experimental and innovative, they have learned from their mistakes as well as their successes.

On a bright, breezy day in late October my husband, Bruce and I bumped over the cattle guard across their driveway and into their three-acre yard, which is enclosed by a five-foot-high fence.  There we joined 20 other members of the Juniata Valley Audubon Society on a guided tour of Mountain Meadows.

Laura showed off the 150 foot by 50 foot wildflower garden they had established primarily to attract butterflies and other invertebrates.  Although they had hoped to find a native wildflower seed mix suitable for their south-central Pennsylvania site near Everett, they had to settle for a northeastern United States wildflower mix that included cosmos and zinnias, both natives of Mexico, as well as coneflowers, lupines, scarlet flax, tickseeds, larkspurs, cornflowers, wallflowers, Shasta daisies, corn poppies, evening primroses, New England asters, foxgloves, and golden yarrow, only some of which are natives of Pennsylvania or even the northeastern United States. The day we visited the garden displayed a colorful blend of cosmos, zinnias, and cornflowers.

Mike Jackson shows off a red mulberry tree

Mike then pointed out a few of the many trees and shrubs they have planted for wildlife.  In the past, they had planted non-natives such as buddleia, Calgary pear, burning bush, and Japanese honeysuckle without realizing they were invasive.  Calling the knowledge of natives versus non-natives “a steep learning curve,” they finally established a rule that “if it is invasive, remove it.  If it is not native and not invasive and provides food and/or cover for wildlife, then we might plant it within our fence,” for example, “blue spruce, holly, and annuals that attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds,” Laura said.

Inside their fence, which is a deer exclosure, they can plant trees and shrubs without protection.  Outside the fence, every tree and shrub has a wire fence or plastic tube around it.  But now they use exclusively wire fencing.  The five-foot-high tubes produce “wimpy trees,” Mike said, because the trees grow too fast in the moisture and heat-trapping devices. On the other hand, in wire fences trees grow slower and stronger. The tubes also attract paper wasps, which bears love, so they tear apart the tubes to get at the insects.

Every spring the Jacksons order tree saplings from a variety of sources.  During our visit, Mike sang the praises of red mulberry (Morus rubra). These wind-pollinated trees produce dark purple, edible berries in July that are eaten by eastern box turtles, and mammals such as gray and red foxes, gray and fox squirrels, skunks, raccoons, woodchucks and opossums, and once the Jacksons watched black bears mating below the mulberry trees.  More than 20 species of songbirds are also attracted to red mulberry fruit.  In the words of Charles Fergus, from his wonderful and informative Trees of Pennsylvania and the Northeast: “To observe frantic avian activity, stand in a mulberry grove when the fruit is ripening in early summer.  Birds will be everywhere, gobbling down the sweet crop: grackles, starlings, cardinals, robins, catbirds, mockingbirds, thrushes, thrashers, orioles, waxwings, woodpeckers–even crows, clambering about clumsily on the springy boughs.” Unfortunately, such a sight is increasingly rare because red mulberry, which grows across the southern half of Pennsylvania, “has declined greatly in abundance over the last 200 years,” write Ann Fowler Rhoads and Timothy A. Block in their definitive Trees of Pennsylvania.

Laura Jackson leading a tour of Mountain Meadows

Other native trees the Jacksons have planted are not as uncommon as red mulberry, for instance, the 50 to 60 eastern redbuds or Judas-trees (Cercis canadensis), which thrive in the southern part of the state and produce a haze of lavender-rose blossoms in early spring.  The primary larval food for Henry’s elfin butterflies, their small, pea-like flowers also provide nectar for Henry’s elfins, eastern pine elfins, spring azures, duskywings, and other early butterflies as well as for honeybees.

Sweet American or wild crabapple (Malus coronaria) is our only native crabapple tree and another species the Jacksons planted to attract wildlife.  Grosbeaks, foxes, ruffed grouse, skunks, opossums, raccoons, deer, and black bear relish the yellowish-green, sour fruits that mature in autumn, partially fall on the ground and partially remain hanging from the branches throughout the winter.

Washington hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), another tree the Jacksons planted, is one of many confusing hawthorn species. This native produces fruits that furnish food during the fall and winter for deer, rabbits, raccoons, foxes, squirrels, ruffed grouse, and songbirds.

In the former log yard, they have planted a variety of apple trees but, Mike said, they have to pick the apples before they mature and put them on the ground so the bears don’t rip the trees down to get the fruit.

The Jacksons also wanted to increase nut-bearing trees on their property.  Because the American chestnut tree is functionally extinct, they planted Chinese chestnuts (Castanea mollissima) instead.  They also planted sawtooth oaks (Quercus acutissima), an Asian native, because they grow fast and produce acorns much sooner than our native oaks.

Native shrubs that are wildlife attractants on the Jacksons’ property include both red-osier (Cornus serocea) and silky (C. racemosa) dogwood.  These thicket-producing shrubs provide both food and cover for many birds.

Winterberry (Ilex verticillata), still another choice of the Jacksons, has bright red fruits in September or October that often remain on the branches throughout the winter, hence its common name.  Ruffed grouse, cedar waxwings, and other winter birds harvest the fruits.

The Jacksons also put in a hybrid of the American hazelnut (Corylus americana), which produces sweet, edible nuts that are almost immediately harvested by squirrels, chipmunks, blue jays, deer, and ruffed grouse.

In addition to planting trees, shrubs, and flowers to attract wildlife, Mike constructed an enormous, tepee-shaped wildlife brush pile in their woods.  At its base he has a hole big enough for a hibernating bear to crawl into.  Although he set up a trail camera near the brush pile and caught a sow and her cubs on film, so far no bear has hibernated in it.

Mike is an avid deer hunter and has built a huge tree stand in his woods.  During our walk along their woodland trail, we saw many mature shagbark hickory trees, two healthy butternut trees, and an enormous white oak that took three people — their arms outstretched — to reach around its trunk.  Mike also showed us his American Woodcock Habitat Site where he has to remove dozens of invasives to make it viable for woodcocks.

Showing off the woodcock habitat area at Mountain Meadows

Back in 2002, the Jacksons joined the Pennsylvania Forest Stewardship program and, working with their Service Forester, drew up a plan for their property that emphasized attracting wildlife.  They have documented their work to improve their land under the stewardship program in a loose leaf notebook, complete with photos.  More recently, they have added American mountain ash and witch hazel to the tree species on their property.

As former teachers — Mike taught fifth grade in the Everett elementary school and Laura taught advanced biology and environmental sciences in Bedford High School — they have been keeping lists of the plants and animals on their property.  Of the 37 mammal species, a Russian wild boar was the most distressing and a bobcat the most exciting.  They’ve also recorded 117 bird species, 29 shrubs, 13 vines, 14 coniferous trees, 78 deciduous trees, 8 snakes, 4 turtles, 8 frogs and toads, 4 salamanders, and, so far, 92 insects, and 8 spider species.

Mike takes special interest in the eastern box turtles and timber rattlesnakes he finds.  One notebook is devoted to the turtles.  He photographs each turtle’s shell and plastron and files a notch on the edge of its shell.  That way, when he sees a box turtle, he can figure out whether it is new to him or a repeat.  Just before we arrived, he recorded box turtle #90 — an astounding number.  Once he watched a female lay eggs on a path that they planned to dig up.  He moved the eggs into a raised bed in their garden and fenced it. He and Laura kept a close watch on it and saw hatchlings emerge from it late in the summer.

Mike, with the help of Laura, is also adept at handling rattlesnakes.  Each year he captures every rattlesnake he sees and measures it.  So far, the eight he has captured have been between 36 and 45 inches long.  He also sexes and photographs them.  When I asked him why he does this, he said, “Because I’m curious about them. Are any returning? How many do we have? How much do they grow every year?”  And once again, he keeps meticulous records on them.

Did I mention that they were wildlife rehab assistants under a local veterinarian for ten years?  In that time they rehabbed 54 orphaned opossums, 34 gray squirrels, 17 red-phase and 16 gray-phase eastern screech-owls, and 7 American kestrels, in addition to barred owls, a beaver kit that the PGC gave them to raise, and a baby flying squirrel.  Laura particularly enjoyed raising owls, but she told a funny story about the flying squirrel.

“We had it in a bird cage, never realizing that it could squeeze through the bars of the cage.  We searched high and low for three days, but never found it.  On the fourth day, I found it… snuggled in a laundry basket full of dirty clothes.  Fortunately, when I decided to wash the clothes, I sorted them one by one and didn’t just dump them into the washing machine.”

The day of our visit their bird feeders hosted three male purple finches and a female.  Their turkey pen held wild turkeys that they raise.  Water lilies bloomed in a water garden in front of their home, which contained green frogs, a painted turtle, and a bullfrog.

Mike files a notch on a box turtle shell to distinguish it from the others on the property

Laura has taken a part time job, since she retired, as Director of the Bedford School District’s Environmental Center, but both she and Mike have taken on an even more monumental volunteer position. As founders of SOAR (Save Our Allegheny Ridges), they are trying to educate people about the detrimental effects of industrial wind farms on wildlife.  Although they are not opposed to wind farms if they are appropriately sited in states “where the wind comes sweeping down the plains,” and even on such devastated areas as former strip mines, they are appalled that for a possible one percent of the electric power we need, plans are afoot to put them on many of the mountaintops in northern and central Pennsylvania.  These mountaintops contain some of the state’s last unfragmented habitat for wildlife.  Already the Jacksons have documented with photos the problems this so-called “green power” is causing on our mountaintops, namely, erosion, despoiling of Class A wild trout streams, and providing, on land that has been cleared for access roads and around the windmills, ATV trails.

Fishermen and hunters are alarmed to see still more of our wild land and waterways compromised.  Studies by wildlife biologists have already documented incredible bat kills during migration as they are chopped up by the enormous windmill blades.  The blades are also a danger to migrating songbirds and raptors, all of which use our ridges as migratory corridors.  Canada has many industrial wind farms, but they have a law that forbids building them on mountaintops.  Too bad we haven’t followed their example.

Every day, it seems, the Jacksons send us notice of still another problem with the siting of industrial wind farms. The Jacksons always thought of themselves as conservationists, but now they have become environmentalists in defense of wildlife.  Wish them luck in their venture.
__________

All photos were taken by Bruce Bonta.

Rock-Flipping

IRFD badge by Jason, digitalfrontiersmedia.com

Never underestimate the power of the Internet. That’s what I thought last Labor Day weekend when folks from around the world participated in International Rock-Flipping Day.

You say you’ve never heard of such a day? Well, neither had anyone else before August 22. That was the day our son Dave announced it on his literary blog Via Negativa. Another blogging friend, Fred Garber of Factory Town in Iowa, suggested it. Dave e-mailed Bev Wigney from Ontario who maintains an excellent blog — Burning Silo — that often concerns itself with the insect world. She agreed to help promote the idea, and Jason Robertshaw of Cephalopodcast in Florida designed a handsome badge for the event complete with a pill bug.

The rules were minimal. Flip over rocks and record, with camera and pen, what was beneath. Then return the rocks to their original positions. Send in photographic results to a Flickr Group pool or to Bev and/or Dave. They would also promote links to any blogs that covered the event. In addition, Dave offered a “grand prize” to anyone who photographed an animal flipping rocks. He figured that no one would score. How wrong he was.

“The point,” Dave wrote, “is to have fun, and hopefully learn something at the same time.”

Morgan, Devon, and Marcia flipping rocks

Photos, videos, poems, and essays poured in the day after the event. Altogether, bloggers from 14 states, eight countries, and four continents posted their results online, providing hours of entertainment for everyone who participated and those who read their blogs.

Sharon Brogan of Watermark: A Poet’s Notebook from Montana wrote a serious poem that began:

For years I sat with people as they
turned over boulders in their hearts.
Millipedes, centipedes, scorpions;
snakes and roots and cockroaches.

Silvia of Windywillow from Ireland was more irreverent. “This is flippin’ great fun!” And she found a wood louse, worm, slug, and crane fly.

Tai Haku of Earth, Wind, and Water from somewhere in the Caribbean, who describes himself as a “scuba-diving, tree-planting, bird-photographing nature fan living and blogging in a tropical paradise,” went into the rainforest to flip rocks. He found an “elegant-looking cricket and a giant millipede” and added that “Questing through the forest gave us a good excuse to scale the island’s highest peak and also gifted us with three other great sightings of animals not under rocks: an Antillean Racer, a pair of beautiful Red-tailed Hawks and nicest of all bird tick #74 — a Bridled Quail Dove ambling through the forest.”

Rose Connors of Fate, Felicity, or Fluke looked under rocks in an Oregon tide pool and posted striking photos of a starfish, sea anemone, purple crab, sea snails, and mussels.

Bev Wigney discovered mating millipedes and a woolly bear caterpillar with its newly-molted husk nearby. Pablo at Roundrock Journal in the Missouri Ozarks turned over his first rock and carefully photographed the coiled northern copperhead beneath it.

And there was a grand prize winner — Fred First of Fragments from Floyd who photographed a raccoon flipping rocks in southwest Virginia’s Goose Creek.

raccoon on Rock-Flipping Day, by Fred First

Here on Brush Mountain we tried several different approaches to rock-flipping. Early in the morning, Dave flipped a rock on our scrub barrens habitat of lowbush blueberries and huckleberries, scrub oak, mountain laurel, sweetfern and bracken on our small, hundred-year-old, powerline right-of-way. What he found was a handsome, coiled, red and black Narceus millipede, in his words a “superabundant composter of forest litter throughout the northeast, where they apparently serve as a significant reservoir of calcium and phosphorous in otherwise acid, well-drained mountaintop soils.”

In mid-morning, Dave and I sallied forth with our ultimate weapons, two enthusiastic seven-year-olds — my great niece Morgan and her best friend Devon. Our plan was to flip rocks in and next to our barely-flowing stream.

wood frog found under a rock beside Plummer's Hollow Run

Both children plunged in, turning over rocks, and after an hour and a half, we had compiled a pretty good list — several northern dusky salamanders, a wood frog, mountain dusky salamander, ground beetle, crayfish, and earthworm, which circled Morgan’s thumb to her great delight. Under rocks on our dry road bank, we uncovered tiny ants guarding their eggs.

Unfortunately, the kids’ attention flagged sooner than mine did. While I continued compulsively flipping rocks, they climbed up and down the road bank in search of wild mushrooms. Devon, who is a devotee of the Food Network, was desperate to eat them, but I told him we could only do so if we found chicken mushrooms.

In that way, rock-flipping metamorphosed into mushroom-hunting. We had no luck that morning and, as promised, I took them up to the spruce grove for a picnic lunch. This is Morgan’s favorite place and she wanted to share it with Devon.

“What is this peaceful place?” Devon asked about the dark, cool, and quiet spruce grove. Child of the New Jersey suburbs, he had never been so far from the sidewalks. He kept relating his experience here to computer games and television shows and I, who have neither played computer games nor owned a television, had no idea what he was talking about. His other passion was race cars, a passion he shares with his father and one that I have absolutely no affinity for.

When we found many inedible mushrooms under the spruces, Devon kept picking and throwing them with boyish bravado. He also collected a deer leg bone there with true reverence. Morgan tried to play house with him as she often has with me, using natural materials to stimulate her incredibly active imagination. But Devon was having none of it.

chicken mushroom

Finally, we headed down to our house via our wooded trails. Once we stopped to pull apart a rotten log and found a northern slimy salamander, a species I had hoped to find during our rock-flipping morning. I picked it up, admired its handsome, white-spotted black body, and showed the children the sticky residue it left on my hand. As a salamander-lover, I found it difficult to accept their refusal to pick up that salamander and the many we had found during our rock-flipping morning. They also wouldn’t hold any of the crayfish we uncovered, although Devon had delighted in actually finding crayfish burrows under the rocks.

Devon, who possessed more energy than balance fell and bounced back up several times as he climbed fallen trees, swung from low branches, and ran full-tilt down the trails. Once, Morgan ran after him, tripped, and fell. Because she was close to crying, we sat on a log to rest. I glanced casually over into the woods and on a large, fallen tree trunk, I saw them.

“Chicken mushrooms,” I shouted, and Morgan, forgetting her upset, ran as fast as Devon and I to harvest what turned out to be ten pounds of bright orange and yellow chicken mushrooms. I filled my large backpack with them, and an enthusiastic Devon, bent beneath the load, proudly hauled the pack on his back to the house.

Morgan and Devon were delighted with the mud under the rock bridge

Before dinner, Dave orchestrated the Flipping of the Bridge with the help of my husband Bruce and the back hoe on our tractor. Back in 1994, Bruce had bashed the ten-inch-thick, four-foot-long Juniata sandstone from our road and Dave had installed it with the tractor’s help, dropping the rock over the drainage ditch as a bridge from our lawn to the driveway. Dave wanted to see what was under it.

We all stood breathless and watching — Devon, Morgan, our niece Heidi and husband Jeff — as Bruce clawed the rock loose with the tractor’s backhoe and turned it on end.

Mud, thick, dark, and wet, was all we saw. And then Dave lay down on his belly and looked underneath. Something moved. A northern fall field cricket — Gryllus pennsylvanicus — clung to the underside of the rock. But the big machine impressed the children much more than the cricket, especially when Bruce gave Devon a ride.

For dinner, Dave sautéed the chicken mushrooms with fresh green peppers and served them in a delicious sauce as a side dish, making Devon, who ate like a horse, supremely happy.

So our rock-flipping day was a gastronomic treat as well and wild and woolly from beginning to end.

Annie of The Transplantable Rose in Austin, Texas, who found earwigs, cutworms, earthworms, a millipede, ants and ant eggs, summed up the experience for all of us with some light verse:

Flipping rocks and flipping stones,
Whatcha think we found there?
It can be a big surprise
What’s living in the ground there!

* * *

Marcia holds the slimy salamander she found on IRFD

To find links to all of last year’s entries and to see Dave’s photos of our experience and his account, see here (especially this post). To see the dozens of photos posted by many of the participants, visit the International Rock-Flipping Day Group on Flickr.

This year International Rock-Flipping Day is set for September 7, and we encourage everyone who is interested to participate. We especially urge you to take a kid or two along. (Public school classes that wish to participate may celebrate IRFD two days early, on September 5.) As Pete McGregor of Pohanginapete in New Zealand wrote, “I acknowledge how important rock flipping used to be to me, and how exciting it is for kids in particular. Have you ever noticed how, in a child’s mind, the larger the rock the more wonderful the things that must live beneath it?”

The Best and Worst of Times

February can be the best and worst of times. Last winter we had more best than worst. Many days were cold, crisp, and bright. Those that weren’t dumped enough snow for my snowshoeing pleasure. Unusual bird sightings and close-ups of several mammals added to my appreciation of this shortest month of the year. In addition, we had three birthdays to celebrate — our two-year-old granddaughter Elanor’s, her father Steve’s three days later on Valentine’s Day, and her Uncle Dave’s ten days after that. So when it was storming outside, we had birthday cake to eat inside.

But inside is not the life that I prefer. Even when it was two degrees below zero I was out and wondering why the local schools kept closing. Four decades ago, we lived on a farm in central Maine for five years. One winter day, when it was 40 degrees below zero, I unplugged the car engine heater, bundled baby Mark in layers of clothes, and drove Steve to first grade and Dave to nursery school in our Volkswagen bus that never warmed up above zero degrees during our half hour ride. No one there ever talked of calling off school because of the cold.

Three decades ago, several years after we moved to our mountaintop farm in central Pennsylvania, my husband Bruce went off to a January conference. Usually, he dropped the boys at school on his way to work because I stopped navigating our steep, gravel, mile-and-a-half, north-facing hollow road once the ice and snow arrived, which, in those days, was around Thanksgiving. But the boys had to get to school one morning when it was zero degrees, and back then school wasn’t cancelled because of the cold.

I didn’t want them going alone, so I walked them the two miles down to town, where we stopped at a restaurant to warm up. The hoarfrost that hovered over the river clung to my hair, and other patrons gave us startled looks as we entered the restaurant. After drinking hot chocolate, the boys walked on to school, while I returned home. We thought it a great adventure, and it remains a happy memory of childhood for them. How many such memories will today’s children have of facing and embracing the cold?

But on the two days last February, when the thermometer bottomed out at two below, I and the birds embraced the cold. Thirteen songbird species crowded the feeders, but a “thump” on our bow window brought me running. A Cooper’s hawk sat below the window and flew off as soon as it saw me. All the little birds had fled.

When I went outside it was two degrees above zero and windy. Both a song sparrow and a tufted titmouse defied the cold along the trails. A flock of black-capped chickadees fed on the hemlock cone seeds in our hollow.

The following day more birds were about. Chickadees and titmice even sang. A pileated woodpecker drummed and a red-bellied woodpecker called. Juncos foraged on the ground in exposed areas where the snow had melted and a pair of white-breasted nuthatches landed on nearby trees.But I hiked on to the Second Thicket in search of a bird that had never over wintered here before, although he or another of his species had tried to the previous winter — a male eastern towhee. Following a highway of deer tracks, I threaded my way up, over, and around a nest of fallen trees and finally sat against a log listening for “toe-hee,” which I heard after a couple minutes. He had survived the cold. That was one of the best of times.

The worst of times came the next day when it was a mere two degrees. I walked down the road to escape the wind, and found 50 American goldfinches feeding on the cones of one black birch tree. A few more goldfinches and chickadees foraged on hemlock cone seeds. Behind the hemlocks, among old hurricane-felled deciduous trees, titmice and northern cardinals dug in frozen, exposed leaves while white-breasted nuthatches and a red-bellied woodpecker mined tree trunks.

I crunched over the hundreds of fallen hemlock cones and paused to sit beneath a small hemlock overhanging Waterthrush Bench. It was so cold my pen refused to write. Idly, I glanced up at the undersides of the hemlock tree, and my heart froze as I saw woolly adelgids along the stems. I whipped out my hand lens and studied those telltale, woolly tufts. Then I looked more carefully and found other infested branches. Farther up the hollow road, other hemlock trees had woolly adelgids.

Difficult as it has been to mourn the loss of older relatives and friends over the years, such deaths are expected as is my own in not too many more years. But to lose a whole species! First, we lost our butternut trees. They were few and scattered, but we were attached to the one overhanging the guesthouse. It was one of the last to go.

Now my beloved hemlocks. I mourned as I contemplated the hollow, especially during the winter, without them. How dreary it will be without their evergreen boughs bent beneath the snow. Only a few white pines will brighten the monochromatic winter palette.

Being naturally optimistic, though, my mood changed when I saw an immature northern goshawk at the Far Field. Years ago I had seen a similar immature nearby and was struck at how often nature almost repeats itself.

Last February seemed to be a month for raptor sightings because later in the month a male northern harrier flew up from the valley and over the mountain as I sat on Coyote Bench, and a female American kestrel perched on a power pole in the middle of First Field. Both the Cooper’s hawk and a sharp-shinned hawk made frequent appearances in the yard and around the feeders, but neither scored when I watched.

Then came the Valentine’s Day snow. It began with an icy covering of pellets atop a thin layer of snow that had fallen overnight, followed by intermittent snow squalls. By afternoon, the wind had picked up, the thermometer had plummeted, and a blizzard of snow fell. On that day, all the schools and even the colleges were closed. Birds flocked to the feeder area. At least a foot of snow covered the ground by nightfall.

It was windy, clear, and cold — two degrees — the next day. Our son Dave broke a snowshoe trail for me in the dry, powdery snow, and I followed it up First Field in brilliant sunshine. The Norway spruce grove at the top of the field, its boughs bowed down with snow, was empty of birds or animals. While I was reveling in the snow, Bruce was trying to start our tractor with attached snow blower so he could clear our road. But the battery on the tractor was dead, and after 24 hours of charging, it still wouldn’t start. Instead, the next day Bruce draped the bulldozer with a tarp and set a torpedo heater beneath it to warm up the bulldozer engine. After several hours of this, at 11:00 a.m., the bulldozer coughed to life. Need I mention that such problems usually make February storms the worst of times for Bruce.

That day I followed him on foot an hour later, eager to see those still verdant hemlocks snow-covered. The hollow was heaped with snow. In some areas the stream disappeared beneath the white cover. In other places, the stream flowed around snow-covered rocks or slid beneath shards of ice.

It was the first day of the Great Backyard Bird Count, started by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology several years ago to document where and how many birds and bird species were around in midwinter in North American. (See my February 2002 column.) I counted chickadees, titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers. Farther down the road, I found a hairy woodpecker and heard a pileated. Where Bruce had scraped down to the ground with the bulldozer blade, juncos foraged. So too did a white-throated sparrow. A female cardinal searched for and ate fallen tulip tree seeds. Altogether, I had made a good start on the Great Backyard Bird Count.

The next three days I did the count on snowshoes as Dave broke more and more trails for me. A common raven croaked across First Field one day, and a red-tailed hawk flew from a tree overlooking the field on another. Golden-crowned kinglets were scarce last winter, but I finally found one on Sapsucker Ridge Trail where I had broken my own trail. Breaking trail in virgin snow on a bright Sunday morning was a special pleasure. The blue shadows on the snow, the distant views of bluish-white, snow-covered mountains, the fallen trees piled high with snow, the clouds racing in the wind, opening and closing patches of blue sky and sunlight like the lens of a camera, and the bits of bird life still striving and thriving despite the wind and cold–all this and more rewarded me for getting outside.

I cleaned the snow off a fallen tree and sat on it, buffered by my hot seat, as the birds moved closer. Three chickadees bounced on the tree limbs above me, gleaning minute insects from thin branches. A white-breasted nuthatch landed on a small, dead snag nearby, and poked and prodded the wood. Bird shadows passed over me as the sun appeared for a few minutes. At the Far Field six juncos harvested weed seeds. One, which specialized in broomsedge, was missing most of its tail, but it could fly.

Beyond the Far Field, the sky darkened. Looking out at the valley, I could see an advancing whiteout. Then it was on me, a heavy, blinding snow shower that lasted only a short time before the sun shone again on Laurel Ridge Trail. So it went — on and off snow and sun — the rest of the dayWhen it warmed up to 11 degrees on February 19, Bruce came inside to say, “I think I heard a bluebird singing.”

Could it be? I rushed outside, binoculars in hand, listened, and scanned the electric wires. Nothing! Then I heard it. Again I scanned the wires. This time I saw, perched on the wire above the old bluebird box, a male bluebird, his sky-blue back silhouetted against the snowy field.

It was the last day of the Great Backyard Bird Count. The snowshoe trails had firmed up, making the going easy. A cardinal sang a quiet “pretty” at the Far Field, and a chickadee managed a “fee-a-bee” song. But most birds were more interested in eating than singing. On Pennyroyal Trail above the Far Field three cedar waxwings fed silently in the European buckthorn tree. In the snow beneath, a pair of juncos and a white-throated sparrow gleaned the fallen fruit. Altogether, I had tallied my all-time high of 26 bird species for the Great Backyard Bird Count.

A temporary thaw came after the Great Backyard Bird Count ended. By then the hungry deer were digging up large patches of snow so they could eat the fallen leaves. An opossum made daily trips to our bird feeder area from the woodchuck den it was sharing on the slope below our house. A fat porcupine debarked a tree branch below the First Field; the first chipmunks emerged to court and mate. The number of juncos at our feeders reached 80. And we had our first ever American crow at the feeder. A winter cranefly, its long, elegant legs supporting a thin, translucent body, picked its way over the softening snow.

My legs were not so elegant. When I tried to walk in my old snowshoe tracks that I could barely discern under a couple new inches of wet snow, I frequently missed the tracks and sank into the four inches of snow left from the Valentine’s Day snow.

There was no doubt about it. Snowshoeing was over for another year. We had survived the best and worst that February had to offer, and spring was on its way.

All photos taken in Plummer’s Hollow by Dave Bonta