What About Bears?

Black bears below the guesthouse, April 18, 2008

Next to poisonous snakes, people fear encountering bears in the outdoors.  Even some of our hunter friends are bear-shy. But ever since black bears returned to our mountain, back in the 1980s, I’ve relished every experience I’ve had with them.  So far, they’ve been exciting but harmless.

Last spring and summer, I saw more bears than ever before.  And it all began on April 18.  On that day, the temperature reached the mid-eighties, which finally brought out our hundreds of daffodils.  Because Bruce and I were away for the day, we missed the advent of our resident female bear and her four cubs from the previous year.  They drank from the stream below the guesthouse, and our son Dave, who lives in the guesthouse, had wonderful views of them from his front porch.  One of the cubs was cinnamon-colored, and all of them looked healthy.

I was upset that I had missed this close encounter.  But the following evening, our family was sitting out on the veranda after dinner.

“What’s that up in the field?” our daughter-in-law Karylee asked.

I grabbed my binoculars and immediately ascertained that the sow and her cubs were back.

“Get the scope,” son Steve said quietly to Bruce.  In the meantime, I trained my binoculars on the family foraging up in the corner of First Field.

Bruce set up the scope and we all took turns watching the little family.  Despite our granddaughter Elanor’s high-pitched talking, playing, and banging in and out of the front door, the bears continued feeding, seemingly oblivious or at least unconcerned by us.

No doubt, this was the same calm sow that I have encountered in other years with her family.  Never once has she acted threateningly toward me when I have accidentally run into her.   She and the cubs have always run off together.

On this evening, they not only ate but they played.  First one cub, then two, and then three cubs climbed high up in a black locust tree and out on branches that looked too slender to hold them, perhaps playing their version of “king of the mountain.”  Even the fourth cub joined them off-and-on, but it usually stuck close to the sow instead.  Once a pair of them faced each other, all four of their legs curled around the trunk, and alternately nuzzled each other and batted back and forth, like prize fighters in training.

Sometimes one or two of the cubs would move close to the sow as if trying to see what she was eating.  As she dug in the ground, they all crowded near, but I couldn’t tell if she was giving them food.

I was particularly interested in observing the uncommon cinnamon bear, and I noticed that another cub had a slight cinnamon cast too.  I couldn’t remember seeing a cinnamon cub here before, but Dave claimed that there had been one several years ago.

We watched them for more than an hour until it was too dark to see them.  I was elated, because that was the longest observation time I had ever had of a black bear family.

The next day we found muddy bear paw prints on our back porch door.  Then Bruce discovered more, five feet from the ground, on the window over the kitchen sink. The bears had been giving our kitchen, at least, a thorough examination, and we worried that they might get even more familiar. But I was no longer feeding the birds from feeders hanging on the back porch, believing that winter feeding is the wisest course when living close to bears.  Even so, I always bring the feeders inside every evening during November, December, March, and early April, when some bears are liable to be around. And, as it turned out, that was the only interest bears showed in our home even during the summer when only a screen door separated the kitchen from the outdoors.

It rained hard the morning after we watched the bear family. I waited until there was a break in the weather and hurried up to the corner of First Field to look for bear sign. I paced back and forth where I knew they had been and could find no sign, not even of the digging the sow had been doing.  If we hadn’t seen them with our own eyes, we wouldn’t have believed they had been up there.

But we found fresh bear scat on all our trails over the next several weeks.  Often I followed in the footsteps of bears because I would find many large and small rocks wrenched out of the ground and overturned on our trails as the black bears searched for ants.

Then, near the end of May, I wandered through the spruce grove and sat down at the edge under a spruce tree, hoping to locate what I thought was a crow’s nest. The crows flew in and scolded, but still I couldn’t see that nest in the dense tops of the spruces.

Then I heard a crashing below the grove and thought, “Uh, oh. A bear.”

Bear in the milkweed patch near the spruce grove, July 22, 2007

I remained seated, but as the bear lumbered up the field trail, I grew increasingly uneasy, especially when he turned and headed toward my spruce tree.  I inched my way around it and the bear heard me.  He followed behind me around the tree about 20 feet away. Knowing that bears don’t see very well and that I shouldn’t run from him, I turned around, faced him, and yelled, “Go away, get out of here, buddy.”  He paused for a second and then ran off through the grove.

He was a large male and probably on the prowl for a female.  I suspected that our resident sow was in heat and the youngsters on their own.

The next day I walked Greenbrier Trail, listening to birdsong.  As I rounded one corner, I spotted a black bear on the trail ahead with its head down as it plodded along.  This one too appeared to be a big male bear, maybe the same one as the day before.  Luckily, he hadn’t seen me.

I backpedaled fast because the trail was too steep on both sides for me to get off it. After a couple hundred feet, I reached a flatter area, left the trail and plunged into the underbrush. Breathlessly, I waited and waited for the bear to pass on the trail above me, but he didn’t appear.  I heard no sound either.  I reasoned that he must have heard me crashing down slope through the dry leaves and retreated.  Still, the waiting and indecision were worse than the previous day’s encounter.

Should I return to the trail and continue on my way or retreat down the mountain through thick underbrush to Ten Springs Trail?  I sat on a log trying to decide as birds sang and flies buzzed around me.  Finally, I opted for the open trail where I wouldn’t be surprised by a sudden appearance as I (and he) would be in the impenetrable brush. I picked up a big stick to hold above my head so that I would present a tall silhouette to the bear should I encounter him again.

The trail was clear.  Apparently, the bear had heard me and gone the opposite direction.  When I reached a muddy area on the trail, I spotted large, fresh bear tracks bigger by a couple inches than my hand span, thumb to little finger.

After that, I began to see more of the young bears than I had bargained for.  In mid-June, I sat on a log at the top of Pennyroyal Trail at the Far Field.  After awhile I walked on and, in the thick underbrush to my right, at least two bears ran off — one went left, the other right — still in the thick underbrush.  I guess they were resting in the deep shade as I was.

As I continued walking, I kept peering into the underbrush.  Was that black mass a bear?  Indeed, it was, and again it ran off as I said loudly, “It’s okay.”

Power pole near the house used as a message board by bears

Three days later, during an evening walk, Bruce and I surprised a young black bear as we descended Laurel Ridge Trail.  It was ripping apart a log and looked up at us in obvious confusion.  Finally, it decided we were not its friends.  It turned around, ran down the trail, and disappeared in the underbrush.

Near the end of June Dave saw two of the cubs on Laurel Ridge Trail. One was cinnamon, the other one was black.  He had been trying to photograph a black-throated blue warbler when the cubs appeared.  He was so excited that he didn’t know which creature to photograph, and, in the end, he didn’t capture any of them on film.

Throughout the summer, we continued to see bears and bear sign nearly every day.  Several of the power poles had fresh scratches on them where the bears had left their messages for other bears. Massive piles of bear scat, first filled with huckleberry seeds and later with cherry pits, were deposited on our trails on a daily basis.  All of this kept me on high alert, especially along the narrow trails that wound through thick underbrush that had grown up because of the January 2005 ice storm.

On July 24, I found an enormous, fresh bear scat on Laurel Ridge Trail. I continued on to the Far Field Road and then turned back home.  I practically stumbled on a bear rubbing itself all over a small red maple tree at the confluence of Laurel Ridge, First Field, and Far Field trails.

The bear saw me seconds after I saw it and stood up to peer nearsightedly in my direction before starting toward me.

“It’s okay,” I said to it, and it turned around and ran down Laurel Ridge Trail. Then it paused and looked back at me.

“It’s okay,” I repeated. “I won’t hurt you.”

Finally, it bounded on down the trail.  Undoubtedly, it was one of the cubs that was growing up fast.

Two days later, I was wandering back along Laurel Ridge Trail picking huckleberries.  Suddenly a strong smell wafted past that caused me to pause and look carefully around, but I didn’t see anything. I knew that the bears had been eating the berries and had read that you could often smell a bear before seeing it.   Then, as I walked on, humming “The Hills of Home,” a bear loomed up ahead of me on the trail.  It spun around and ran off.

So I had smelled a bear.  Now I knew what bears smell like or at least that bear.  Probably if I hadn’t been humming, I would have had a closer look at it.

The bear sightings continued. In mid-August, during an evening walk, as Bruce and I crossed the powerline right-of-way on the Short Circuit Trail on Laurel Ridge, I caught a movement at the top of the Sapsucker Ridge portion of the right-of-way.  Through my binoculars, I watched a black bear slowly amble down the slope.  Just before it reached the base, it disappeared into a small ravine.

Bear cubs on a tree near Asheville, NC (photo by ashe-villain)

Five days later, as I neared the Far Field, a crashing off to my left alerted me to a black bear.  At the same time, blue jays spotted it or me or both and set up a terrible ruckus.  The bear kept trudging along until I lost sight of it in the underbrush.  And that was my final view of a bear last summer.  But the sign continued throughout the late summer and into late autumn before the bears went into hibernation.

“What about bears?” people continue to ask me when they learn that I go off by myself on our trails every day. Now you know. So far, I have enjoyed my peaceful coexistence with them.  And I look forward this April to our resident sow appearing with her new batch of cubs.
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All photos and video were taken on Brush Mountain by Dave Bonta except the last, which is by ashe-villain and licenced for free non-commercial use with attribution.

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.

The Trees in Our Yard

A black walnut tree shadow on the side of the barn

If someone were to ask me what my favorite tree is, I wouldn’t be able to answer.  It would be like choosing my favorite child.  Every tree species has its own special qualities, and no one is better than another is.  Take the 17 tree species that grow in our yard.

When we moved here 37 years ago, we had less species.  In our front yard, black locusts shaded our front porch.  Black walnut trees dominated the side yards and back yard.  Several red maple trees grew along the driveway between the barn and guesthouse. Two seckel pear trees, one at the curve above the barn and the other below the garage, yielded many sweet little pears.  Across from the lower seckel pear tree was a wild apple tree.  All of those species have survived, in one form or another, and been joined by many that we planted over the years.

The black walnut trees have not only survived but thrived, taking over whole areas in our yard and moving out into First Field.  During our homesteading years, when our three sons were young, we harvested the black walnuts.  The boys would gather them in their green husks in a wheelbarrow and dump them on the flat area of our driveway below the guesthouse.  That way, every car that drove over them would partially husk them.  The boys, their hands in rubber gloves, would finish the job.  But no matter how careful they were, they always ended up with black nut stains on their hands.  This led to several weeks of taunts from schoolmates that I’ll leave to your imagination.

The front porch is flanked by black walnuts (left) and black locusts (rear)

After the walnuts were husked, the boys put them in baskets and carried them up to our attic where they laid them out to dry.  Over the fall, winter, and spring, I would take dozens down to our back steps, crack them open with a hammer, and dig out the meat.  After much probing and picking, I would have enough to use in cookies or cakes.

Despite liking the taste of black walnuts, I decided, after several years, to let them remain on the ground where they fell as food for our gray and fox squirrels. That’s when I began to notice that if the black walnut crop was bountiful, we had little or no trouble during the winter with squirrels at our bird feeders.  Even in spring, they busily harvested those that remained on the lawn.

Not only do black walnuts provide food for the squirrels, they are ideal trees for birdwatching because they are the last to leaf out in the spring and the first to lose their leaves in the fall. By mid-August, I’m already sweeping golden walnut leaves off the front porch and veranda.

We also marvel at how quickly the nuts develop and begin dropping on the porch roof.  Only a month after leaf out we hear the first thump of an immature walnut, and two months later every breeze sends mature ones cascading to the ground.

We think that the previous owners must have planted the trees because the only black walnuts in our woods have spread from our yard.  And black walnuts like deep, bottomland, limestone-rich soil, not the stony soil of our mountain, which may be why they grow slowly here and quickly under suitable conditions. Not ideal yard trees, the experts say.

Black walnut trees ring the garage

Neither, we discovered, are black locust trees. Surely, no one would plant those fast-growing, brittle trees overhanging their home. They leaf out even later than the black walnuts, but hold onto their leaves until late fall.

On the other hand, maybe previous owners did plant them. Their dangling white flowers are beautifully fragrant and attract honeybees that make prize locust honey. Their seeds also feed squirrels and their hard wood makes excellent fence posts.

In fact, the previous owners seemed to specialize in inappropriate yard trees.  One tree species here — the balm-of-Gilead — overhung both our home and the guesthouse.  They too grew fast, like the black locusts, but unlike the locusts, their wood was light.  Believed now to be a hybrid of balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera) and eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), it was first introduced back in 1900 and became a popular cultivated tree.  That’s probably when ours were planted, because by the 1970s, their trunks were immense.  Eventually, my husband Bruce, with the help of his tractor and chainsaw, had to remove the one overhanging the guesthouse and another overhanging our son Mark’s bedroom because they were dying.  Others, in the backyard, survived longer, and only last year Bruce and our sons Steve and Dave assisted him in removing one of the last, dying trees.

Preparing to cut down the last of the big balm-of-Gileads

Another unfortunate choice of the former owners was the Lombardy poplars that grew up one side of the driveway.  A favorite of European estates, this narrow, erect tree, known as the cultivar “Italica,” came from near Lombardy, Italy, hence its name. Cultivated in Europe since the early 1700s, the ones planted here died one by one and were gone in ten years.

The seckel pear trees gradually declined and died but Jack Winieski, the consulting forester for our forest stewardship plan, took cuttings and returned several years later with a sapling that Dave planted along our driveway.  Every year it grows a little taller.

Another gift was supposed to be several redbud tree saplings.  At least that was what George Beatty, a now-deceased botanist, told me when he gave them to me.  We planted them below the front porch and, like all our tree plantings; they took several years to grow into reasonable trees.

At some point, it dawned on me that either Beatty had made a mistake or had purposely presented me with a less glamorous tree than the redbud.  The leaves were not heart-shaped and the flowers were green not lavender.  I referred to my tree books and discovered we had hackberries instead. Hackberry, also known as sugarberry, has fruit that is important for birds during the winter so I’ve gotten over my disappointment that those trees are not redbud. Besides, their leaves provide larval food for several showy butterfly species including question marks, red-spotted purples, and mourning cloaks, all of which we have in abundance, as well as hackberry emperors and tawny emperors, which I’m hoping to see.

With so many short-lived trees in our yard, our son Dave began digging up longer-lived trees in our forest and planting them underneath the remaining black locust trees and in gaps caused by the death of the balm-of-Gileads and the black locusts closest to the front porch that had died and fallen.  A white pine flanks the tallest hackberry and a scarlet oak the shortest one.  The scarlet oak shot up and is already adding welcome color to our yard in the autumn.  Dave planted a second scarlet oak in the side yard facing Laurel Ridge, which is also thriving. But then scarlet oaks thrive on dry upper slopes and ridges.

Chestnut oak leaf

That same side yard also holds two white ashes that are good-sized trees, even though both lost several branches during an ice storm.  Dave had planted them even earlier than he had planted those in the front yard and they provide landing places for the birds at our feeders. Their seeds, which often persist through the winter, supply welcome food for purple finches, pine grosbeaks, and fox squirrels.

Dave’s also planted tulip trees in the side yard and fenced a few in the front yard that have seeded from the enormous tulip tree at the edge of the woods.  These are favorite trees of mine, especially their large, tulip-shaped, yellow-green flowers blotched with orange. Cardinals, purple finches, black-capped chickadees and squirrels feed on their seeds during the winter.  Lately, Dave’s planted a chestnut oak near the hackberries.  Also known as rock oak, it is the most common tree species on dry, rocky slopes and ridges and its acorns, which mature in one season, are a favorite food of squirrels, wild turkeys, and deer.

Of course, Dave’s had to fence every tree he’s planted so each one is enclosed by woven wire until it gets above deer height.  Especially in winter, those fences detract from the beauty of our home grounds, but they are necessary.

Years ago, two eastern cedar trees seeded in the powerline right-of-way.  Bruce dug them up and planted one in front of the old corncrib and the other close to the side of our house.  The one in front of the corncrib struggled for years to amount to something and finally died.  But the one at the side of the house struggled and survived.  Every ice storm bent it over and Bruce would go outside and knock the ice off it.  Sometimes it would take months for it to straighten out again, but it always has.  Now it reaches above our second story window and gives needed cover to birds at our feeders and juncos through the winter nights.  Once song sparrows and now cardinals and robins nest in it.

Chipmunk in a volunteer white mulberry beside the guest house

When we were young and poor, we paid an extra dollar for a flowering crabapple tree as part of our vegetable seed order from a seed company.  What looked like a five-inch-tall dead stick arrived in the mail.  We planted it beside the springhouse and waited and waited and waited.  Year after year, that sapling struggled to be something.  After twenty years, we had a stunning tree covered with deep rose blossoms and buzzing with bees every spring. My only regret is that we didn’t pay a few more dollars for a few more trees.

The red maples have been looking poorly recently, but a wild black cherry sapling has grown into a respectable tree nearby and black walnuts have also sprouted from squirrel-buried nuts and grown up to take the place of the maples.  Black walnuts are known to produce the chemical compound juglone in their leaves, nut hulls, buds, stems, fruits and roots that inhibit the growth of some plants, but red maples are not on the lists I’ve consulted. And happily, tulip trees, which Dave planted beneath the black walnuts, are also not affected by juglone.

The January full moon shining through the trees in the yard

A red oak has sprouted from a misplaced acorn in the side yard facing Laurel Ridge in what used to be a Concord grape arbor when we moved in.  But once our last dog died and the deer foraged near our home with impunity, those vines became deer food.

I’ve been using the term “yard” loosely.  We haven’t mowed our front yard or the side yard facing Laurel Ridge for years.  Both are either steep slopes or wetlands or both. We mow our back yard and the side yard facing First Field three times a year, enough so that we can walk into the house and hang up our laundry outside without getting our feet wet.

What was once a tailored landscape looks more and more natural every year.  The many trees give us needed shade in the summer and an open vista in winter.  Without the trees in our yard, providing ample food and shelter throughout the year, we would not have as many close encounters with birds and mammals.

All photos by Dave Bonta

Golden Eagle Redux

After release, the golden eagle landed briefly in a white pine before resuming its journey south (photo by Dave Bonta)

In case you’ve been wondering about the photo of me in the sidebar, here’s the story, from my November column in Pennsylvania Game News.

The phone rang just as we were in the midst of eating dinner.

“I’ll bet that’s Trish and she’s got an eagle,” I said.

Bruce answered the phone.

“You’ve got an eagle,” he repeated.  “You’ve got a problem. What is it?  Steve and Dave are here too.  I’ll send them both up.”

So began an adventure that had eluded us the previous autumn (see Golden Eagle Days, Part 1 and Part 2).

It was the last day of daylight saving time, and at 6:15, the sun had already set.  Trish Miller, a golden eagle researcher working on her Ph.D. at Penn State, had arrived at the new trapping site on our mountain in the morning.  Luckily, she had come by herself, because I had often encountered her with her little daughter Phoebe on her back heading to the site.

Unlike the previous year’s site, this one was a steep climb up Sapsucker Ridge and then a precarious climb down into the middle of a rock slide where her husband, Mike Lanzone, assisted by interns from the Powdermill Nature Reserve, had designed and built a blind and live trap.

During their first trapping season here, they had discovered that the golden eagles, after crossing the Tyrone Gap in Bald Eagle Mountain, would drop below the ridge on the northwestern side and not soar above it until they reached the top of First Field.  On the rock slide, the eagles often flew past at eye level.

Golden eagles are capable of taking very large prey. Dr. Katzner shows us why (D. Bonta)

The day she called us, the northwest wind had picked up at noon, and Miller had watched nine golden eagles fly over.  Every eagle was escorted through his territory by the resident red-tailed hawk, which picked them up on the far side of the gap, near a cell phone tower, and accompanied them on along the ridge.

Then the tenth golden eagle struck the bait.  One of the lines to the bait broke, and the eagle hung on to it while flapping half off the trapping platform.  Afraid to spring the bow net, Miller waited, hoping the eagle would flap back on to the platform. When it did, she sprang the net and had a perfect catch.  She managed to get the eagle into a large carrying case she had brought along, but she couldn’t haul it up the rock slide and down the trail to our place, a good half-mile away, before dark.  That’s where our sons came in.

Bruce and I waited and waited.  It grew dark and still we waited.  Finally, in they came, our two sons and Miller, bearing the eagle in the carrying case.  After giving us a chance to look in and see the magnificent bird, they carried the case down to our cellar and covered it with a sheet for the night to keep the bird calm.

Phoebe seemed especially entranced by the big eagle (D. Bonta)

The following morning researchers and bystanders began assembling to work and watch by 8:00 a.m.  It was a cold, damp and overcast 37-degree Sunday morning.  Dr. Todd Katzner, Director of Conservation and Field Research at The National Aviary, arrived from Pittsburgh first.  The Scott family, who had been packing up from a day of hunting when they brought the eagle down off the ridge, was also here, as well as our sons.

Before the other researchers arrived, Katzner carried the case into our shed.  He carefully opened it and climbed halfway inside the case to grab the feet of the eagle and pull it out.

“I think this a first year female,” he said and gave us a lesson on golden eagle biology.  He spread her tail to show the white on it and her more than five-foot wingspan to display the white underneath.  Both were signs of her age.  But her massive golden head was already its golden adult color.  Although her beak looked dangerous, it was her taloned feet that were.  She had been hatched sometime last April or May in northern Quebec or Labrador, he thought.

Miller, Lanzone, their children Jeffrey, Ashley and Phoebe arrived at 8:30, followed by Dan Ombalski, another researcher, from State College.

Todd Katzner and Trish Miller take measurements (Bruce Bonta)

Once everyone was assembled on our veranda, the work began.  They put a cap over the eagle’s head so she wouldn’t be too stressed, although Katzner told us that her cortisone level was high.

They measured her wings and tail and brought out a chart to check sizes against what would determine the sex of the bird.  Her legs were thick; her bright yellow talons huge.  “Fresh, happy feet,” Miller called them.

She weighed 41.20 grams or 8.4 pounds, which definitely made her the bigger, heavier female–the first female eastern golden eagle ever radio tagged.

It took hours to fit the harness and radio transmitter over her abundant feathers and impressive breast, and they shook her several times so she would flap wildly.  Then they would once again adjust the harness.  They sewed a section on with thread so that the transmitter would fall off in a year or two.  All of this was part of a new kind of transmitter, and Lanzone had been up all night tweaking it, perfectionist that he is.  Instead of transmitting data once an hour, as the other transmitters did the previous year, this one was made to transmit every thirty seconds.

Finally, all the actors were ready. That was when the researchers decided that the eagle would be released on the rock slide where she had been trapped, so she would resume her migration with as little disruption as possible.

Mike and Trish make adjustments to the transmitter, with assistance from Steve (B. Bonta)

All of us hiked to the site except for Katzner who drove The National Aviary truck that held the golden eagle in the carrying case.  By then three Powdermill interns had joined us as well.  What a crowd to usher off an eagle.

I picked my way down the rock slide to the first open area where they planned the release.  Everyone had cameras and surrounded the eagle and Lanzone who was holding her.

At that moment, Miller came over to me and said that they would like me to release her.  It had never crossed my mind that they would honor me in such a way.  Looking at her talons, I gulped and agreed.  How could I turn down a chance to hold this incredible bird?

Miller showed me how to grasp her feet and then carefully transferred the eagle to me.  Her eight pounds seemed light despite her massive size.

I held her for what seemed many photos and videos.

“Just throw her lightly into the air,” they told me.  When I yelled “Ready,” Katzner responded “Go!” And just as we had rehearsed — off she flew.  I felt as if I was releasing air.

But instead of streaking away, she flew into a nearby pine tree.  Our son Dave and Lanzone ran through the underbrush to take more photos and watch her as she ruffled and smoothed her feathers, grooming off the feel of humans who had insulted her dignity.  Once she reached behind her back and pulled repeatedly at the transmitter. There were a few tense moments until she gave up trying to remove it and went back to grooming.

Then she rose into the air again, and instead of continuing down the ridge, she returned to circle above us twice, as if in farewell, before she headed south to our collective applause. We wished her a safe trip and hoped all would go well with the transmitter so we could watch “our” eagle’s journey.

But months dragged on and we didn’t hear anything.  I finally contacted the researchers and learned from Katzner that “the prototype transmitter had worked very well and provided initial data for a few days before it failed” and they had lost track of her.  What a disappointment!

Everybody wanted to touch this talisman of wilderness (D. Bonta)

But Miller told me that they had learned more, during that short time, about how she used the ridge during her flight, than they had from the other eagles they had tagged with transmitters the previous year.  Because their research project goal is, in Katzner’s words, “to provide informed science and generate key information so that raptor friendly wind farms can be built in Pennsylvania,” they must know how high eagles fly above the ridges.

Nothing in the evolutionary history of birds or bats has prepared them for industrial-sized wind mills, what some folks call “eggbeaters in the sky.”  Each 150 foot blade, 300 feet in diameter, weighs 9 tons and the blade tips move 200 feet per second, Katzner says.

The researchers also must identify primary migrating routes and wintering sites and identify the eagles’ behavior on migration and during the winter.  Eventually they plan to produce maps that show the relative risk to the birds from the development of industrial wind farms.

All of this scientific information was impressive, but we couldn’t help wondering about our own golden eagle.  What had happened to her?  Where had she gone?

Then, on Valentine’s Day, we received an e-mail from Lanzone.

“Got a call today from someone helping with a PGC study about an eagle that looked like the one in the Game News.  Turns out it was the golden eagle you released.  It looks very healthy from the pictures and has been visiting the deer [dump] for just over two weeks (they had thought it was a bald eagle until the other day)…it is visiting their study area on private land just north of Greensburg in Westmoreland County about 25 miles from my office.”

They hoped to re-trap her and put on a new transmitter, but she was having none of that.  Once trapped, twice shy. But what a relief it was to learn that she was fine and that she hadn’t even left Pennsylvania.  And she wasn’t the only golden eagle to winter in our state.  At other deer dumps in other parts of the state stationary cameras captured photos of golden eagles feeding on deer carcasses.

The white on the underside of the wings is one of the things that distinguishes a juvenile golden eagle from an adult (D. Bonta)

There is much more to learn about eastern golden eagles.  Katzner estimates that from 1000 to 1500 golden eagles pass through Pennsylvania during migration, which is 90 to 95% of the population.  So far, it seems as if in the autumn most pre-adults migrate through eastern Pennsylvania along Hawk Mountain (the easternmost ridge in the ridge-and-valley province) and adults through western Pennsylvania, primarily along the Allegheny Front and our own Bald Eagle Ridge, the westernmost ridge in the ridge-and-valley province.  Southern West Virginia appears to provide key wintering habitat.

In spring, adults migrate mostly from the Allegheny Front to about 60 miles east, although Tussey Mountain, the next ridge to the east of Bald Eagle, seems to be the major ridge.  There is also evidence that some pre-adults stay in Virginia for the summer.

With the help of Quebec collaborators, they now have radio transmitters on 15 eastern golden eagles.  Using GPS satellite telemetry, which is solar powered and should last one to three years, GPS data points at regular intervals are transmitted to a server by satellite. And those points should give them all the information they need about the eastern golden eagles’ flight speed, elevation, and timing during migration.

As Miller continues her “Wind Power and Eagle Migration” Ph.D. work, we hope she traps and radio tags many more golden eagles on our mountaintop and on the Allegheny Front so we can learn more about the life history of this distinct, poorly-known, small population of eastern golden eagles.

The eagle seconds after release, with the Allegheny Front in the distance (B. Bonta)