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 Jackson’s 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 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.
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All photos were taken by Bruce Bonta.

Black Raspberry Time

Video link

What a fruitful year this is.  Best of all is the resurrection of our black raspberry bushes around our homegrounds.  Their plenitude was what persuaded me to buy this place.  And then the deer moved in.  For decades they have eaten every raspberry cane that has dared to appear.  But now that our hunter friends have lowered the deer herd, the black raspberries have a fighting chance.  I say “fighting” because even so the deer continue to trim back every cane they can reach.  They don’t like steep slopes, though, and that’s where I’m picking in this video.

Sunday, Sweet Sunday

Sunday is my favorite day of the week.  That’s because traffic is light on Interstate 99 at the base of our mountain on the Logan Valley side and the industrial-sized limestone quarry on the Sinking Valley side is closed for the day.  Other businesses are also quiet, and I revel in the peace of “Sunday, Sweet Sunday” as the song goes in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song.”

Of course, the trains still whistle at every valley crossing, including our own, a sound that dates back to 1850 when the main line from New York City to Chicago was built through the gap at the bottom of our mountain. Once folks lived in a small, iron forge village next to the rail line where we have built a parking lot for our hunters.

When we moved here back in 1971, the cellar holes of four dwellings were popular bottle-collecting areas.  Even today, a few of the people who lived in those homes as children, nostalgic for the sights and sounds of their youth, sometimes visit and set up lawn chairs to watch and listen to the trains.  It’s a sound they have adapted to and enjoy.

Despite my 37 years here, I have not adapted to the clamor from the valleys.  Increasing noise pollution, especially in midsummer when all our windows are open, has forced me to wear ear plugs at night.  I wonder, along with nature writer Joseph Wood Krutch, who wrote in the mid-twentieth century, “How long will it be before… there is no quietness anywhere, no escape from the rumble and the crash, the clank and the screech which seem to be the inevitable accompaniment of technology?”

But this sweet Sunday in late July is almost silent as we sit on our elevated front porch among the trees, warmed by the rising sun, and enjoy my husband Bruce’s cornmeal/whole wheat waffles.  Serenaded by song sparrows and a tufted titmouse, we are entertained by the antics of a family of red-bellied woodpeckers that recently fledged from a nearby black locust tree.

On this day, I choose to walk beneath the filtered, green light of Black Gum Trail.  Already the spined micrathena spiders are spinning their orb webs across the trail, and I stop frequently to carefully pull aside a couple anchoring strands of silk so I can avoid their entangling webs.  Fresh coyote scat and not so fresh bear scat provide ample evidence that I am not the sole user of this deep woods’ trail.  The only persistent singers this late in the summer are the low-keyed, monotonous red-eyed vireos and eastern wood pewees.

Scarlet tanagers have replaced their hoarse, robin-like songs with their “chit-bang” warning call, and I hear several during my walk.  Once I sit and watch a male scarlet tanager foraging for caterpillars on the top of black gum leaves, flying from tree to tree and flashing his black and red colors like some exotic tropical bird.  Insect damage riddles many of late spring’s perfect leaves and a handful of black gum leaves have turned red and pink, which reminds me that autumn isn’t far off.

I see a few gypsy moth egg masses on chestnut oaks and am also reminded of a new term I learned the other day — throughfall — which is defined as all the stuff that rain washes down on the forest floor from the foliage above such as insect frass, bodies, and leaves.  Although the term was applied to the rainforest, such a concept is also important in our forest.

At the end of Black Gum Trail, I pick up Rhododendron Trail where white-breasted nuthatches “yank” and chipmunks “chip” and “cuck.”  In the distance a black-throated green warblers sings while a slow, propeller plane drones noisily overhead, momentarily disturbing Sunday’s peace. Unfortunately, even deep in our hollow, I cannot escape the technological sounds from above, such as frequent helicopters, jet fighter planes, and private airplanes that fly over or along our mountaintop.

As I wend my way past the many tall rhododendron shrubs for which the trail is named, black-capped chickadees scold.  I notice that most of the shrubs’ flower heads have set seed.  Because of our vacation in Newfoundland, I missed their blossoming, but it must have been glorious.  The trail edges its way past a steep, mossy hill covered with three-year-old rhododendrons.  They are shooting up fast–a result of our deer management program that encourages our hunters to harvest more deer to improve the health of our forest.

I descend Laurel Ridge on Rhododendron Trail and near the stream, Acadian flycatchers call “pit-see.” On our gravel road, five deer snort and bound up Sapsucker Ridge.  Beds of wood nettle (Laportea canadensis) bloom beside the stream, a species that has only recently appeared on our property and one that botanists claim is a favorite of deer despite its numerous stinging hairs.

On the other hand, the deer I disturbed have been dining on wild hydrangea, especially the young shrubs growing on the road bank.  They have also been snacking on jewelweed and Virginia creeper.

But other wildflowers are untouched such as the clump of Indian pipes and sprays of black cohosh.  Common enchanter’s-nightshade (Circaea lutetiana) has sent up racemes of tiny white flowers that have already turned into green stick tights at their bases.  Named for the enchantress Circe, I assume the name honors the delicate flowers and not the bur-like, bristly fruit that clings to animal fur and pant legs.

The road is a highway of deep woods’ butterflies this cool, clear, summer morning.  Red-spotted purples flutter past.  These blue-black butterflies flash an iridescent blue on their hind wings and are named for red-orange spots on their undersides.

Spicebush swallowtails bask on the road.  They are the same blue-black with iridescent blue on their hind wings as red-spotted purples, but they sport elegant tails and the edge of their wings has a line of large white dots.

Spicebush swallowtail caterpillars, as their name implies, feed on spicebush leaves and also on sassafras tree leaves, whereas red-spotted purple caterpillars prefer the leaves of black oak, black cherry, poplar and aspen. Both have caterpillars that resemble bird droppings.  Those of the red-spotted purples are grotesquely horned; those of the spicebush swallowtail only look like bird droppings in their first three instars.  Then they turn bright green with large yellow and black eyespots that mimic snakes.

I am surprised to see a great-spangled fritillary basking on a sunlit leaf because usually I see these showy, orange and brown butterflies in the fields.  On the other hand, their larvae dine on violets.  Sometimes the female butterflies, which lay as many as 2000 eggs per butterfly in the fall, manage to lay at least a few of those eggs on violet leaves.  Their orange-spotted black caterpillars, bristling with black spines, hatch two or three weeks later, drink water, but don’t eat until the following spring when violet leaves appear.

My best winged discovery of the day, though, is a regal or royal walnut moth (Citheronia regalis) lying on the road.  It is alive but unable to fly.  This large, spectacular moth has a fat, orange body horizontally striped in yellow, yellow-spotted, orange-veined gray front wings and orange hind wings patched in yellow. But it is better known in its caterpillar form as a hickory horned devil, armed with outsized, orange and black horns on a knobby, brown body that turns lime-green shortly before it pupates.

Once common as far north as Massachusetts, it is now primarily a southern species ranging from New Jersey to Missouri and south to Florida and eastern Texas.  Its caterpillar consumes a wide range of food plants such as ash, butternut, cherry, cotton, hickory, lilac, pecan, persimmon, sumac, sweet gum, sycamore, and walnut leaves.  Because this is a new species for our mountain, I carefully pick it up, place it on a leaf, and carry it home so our son Dave can photograph it.

My sweet Sunday ends as peacefully as it began.  As we sit on the veranda in the evening, I watch the mulch heap near the barn through my binoculars.  Bruce has trampled down the field grasses in front of it to give us a ringside view of our pugilist woodchuck and its chief rival.  The evening before I had heard growling and squealing and had gone down to the mulch heap to see what was making the commotion.  A woodchuck emerged from the weeds with a pawful of something and sat on its rear end to eat it, giving me what could only be described as a baleful, defiant look.  That woodchuck was a fighter even though it was smaller than its portly opponent who feeds every afternoon on the barn bank grass.

This evening the small pugilist appears first, sitting on its bottom and beginning with a moldy, whole wheat tortilla that it holds in its front paws as a child would.  But soon the corn cobs are too much for it to resist even though we thought we had cleaned them thoroughly.  Picking the first cob up, it holds it horizontally in its front paws and systematically gleans what bits of kernels are left.  All the while, it is on high alert.

As it starts on its second cob, the fat woodchuck emerges from its den under the barn to eat grass on the barn bank.  Then it lifts its head, sniffs in the direction of the mulch heap, and barrels toward the tasty leftovers.  The pugilist, still gripping its second cob, disappears in the opposite direction.  Its protagonist hunkers down on all fours to chow down, unlike its rival.

But unlike the previous night, the woodchucks preserve the Sunday peace.
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All photos were taken on the mountain by Dave Bonta (move cursor over them to read the titles, and click on them to see at larger sizes). The last two show the very moth described here.

Making Connections

Our plane dropped through the momentary hole in the clouds and made a perfect landing on the St. John’s runway. After a day’s delay, because of fog, we had finally arrived in Newfoundland. Place of my dreams, this island in the sea is halfway to Ireland. And yet here is where our beloved Appalachian Mountains begin.

Not only were we far from Pennsylvania, but we quickly discovered that we were far from the so-called modern world. We felt as if we had returned to the days of our youth before malls and fast food outlets, when motels were small and family-owned, most people were lucky to own one car, homes were neat and modest, and the world was half as crowded as it is now. Newfoundland roads follow the contours of the landscape instead of blasting through it as our interstates do, and the slower pace of life allows folks to engage in conversation as entertainment, even with foreigners like us.

However, all was not idyllic in Newfoundland. Because the cod fishery had crashed, back in the 1990s, due to overfishing by both the Newfoundlanders and foreign fishing fleets, we expected to see crushing poverty. But during our three-week visit to Newfoundland and Labrador, we saw people who make do, catching fish, hunting moose, and picking a bonanza of wild berries — blueberries, partridgeberries, raspberries, squash berries, bakeapples, blackberries, strawberries — that thrive in their bogs, barrens, and forests.

They use handmade wooden sleds to haul out the wood they cut for winter heat, leaving the sleds along the roadsides until they are needed. Garden plots, fenced and guarded by makeshift scarecrows, line the roadsides and are often far from the nearest community. The soil, tilled and enriched with kelp from the sea, yields an abundance of cold-tolerant vegetables, especially potatoes.

Most of the restaurants and motels are run by women. They spend their winters making aprons, jams, and other gift items to sell to the trickle of tourists that visit this remote province. Many of the men have left for the oil sands of Alberta where they can make a living for themselves and their families back in Newfoundland.

Even though Newfoundlanders speak English, every town has its own version of the language and, in one case, we couldn’t understand a word they said. Before roads, villages along the sea were only reachable by boat, and these outports, as they are called, were so isolated that their linguistic heritage — mostly Scottish, Irish, English, and Welsh — has retained the accent and expressions of the 17th century when their ancestors arrived in the province.

European settlement in Newfoundland dates back to the eleventh century when the Vikings built an ephemeral village on the tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula. Centuries later, in 1497, John Cabot landed on Newfoundland’s Bonavista Peninsula and claimed the land for England. Then Sir George Calvert, First Baron of Baltimore, set up the colony of Avalon on the Avalon Peninsula in 1621 before he left for warmer climes and founded Maryland.

So what possible connections could there be between Pennsylvania and the remote province of Newfoundland and Labrador besides the Appalachians? Well, at least a few folks in the town of Arnold’s Cove are Steeler fans, or so one couple told us when we met them on the Bordeaux Trail. They also asked to take photos of us so they could prove to their town council that folks from Pennsylvania had used their trail.

Arnold’s Cove, like all the towns we visited in the province, has a scenic, well-kept trail open to the public. Many such trails include elaborate boardwalks and bridges that span wetlands and streams. The Bordeaux Trail of Arnold’s Cove, for instance, wound six miles around a series of coves at the head of Placentia Bay. It was on such trails that we traced the connections between their natural world and ours.

We arrived the last week of June. Lilacs bloomed in the dooryards and giant dandelions along the paths at Cape Spear National Historic Park, the easternmost point in North America. A constant breeze kept the dreaded north woods’ mosquitoes and black flies away, and we had, for the most part, glorious weather.

We saw our share of seabirds — close-ups of northern gannet, common murre, and Atlantic puffin colonies, for example. I even had a puffin stand beside me, a highlight for this puffin-lover. But of the 56 bird species we saw, 45 of them either migrate through or also live in Pennsylvania. Many of the plants and trees were the same or closely related to those from areas in the commonwealth.

However, only five of the nine mammal species we saw also live in Pennsylvania — mink, otters, red squirrels, snowshoe hares and woodchucks. But woodchucks, called “whistlers” by the locals, only inhabit Labrador, which is connected to mainland Canada through Quebec, and both red squirrels and snowshoe hares are introduced species. So too are moose, which were introduced in Newfoundland in 1904 to help feed a starving population. They have multiplied like white-tailed deer in Pennsylvania, and Newfoundlanders fill their freezers with moose meat. Mooseburgers, moose stew, and moose soup are popular items on restaurant menus. But talk to park naturalists and botanists, and you hear about how moose are devouring the understory throughout Newfoundland.

Another new species in Newfoundland arrived in 1985 by crossing the frozen Cabot Strait from Nova Scotia. Already the eastern coyote has helped to upset the balance between native caribou and lynx, their historical natural predator, at Gros Morne National Park, according to the park naturalist. In winter, coyotes hunt in family packs, like wolves, and bring down adult caribou when both species retreat to windswept areas of the park that are relatively free of ice and snow. To further complicate matters, native bald eagles, since the fish stock collapse, have been preying on baby caribou. Consequently, their herd is dwindling. In addition, most of the caribou in the Avalon herd, in southeastern Newfoundland, have died of brain worm.

Despite the overpopulation of moose, we found abundant plant life along the trails. In spruce forests and barrens, the understory of blooming Labrador tea — a Pennsylvania rare plant — sheep laurel, and rhodora reminded me of the Long Pond area in the Poconos. The Coastal Trail at Terra Nova National Park wound through a spring wildflower display of bunchberry, yellow clintonia, starflower, sarsaparilla, Canada mayflower, and absolutely gigantic pink lady’s slippers. Twinflower (Linnaea borealis), which is a Pennsylvania threatened plant, was an abundant ground cover. Pitcher plants, the province’s wildflower (like our state wildflower), bloomed in every bog.

But we were especially overwhelmed by the wild lupines that flowered in roadside ditches and abandoned fields, looking as if they had been planted. In a sense they had been. One Newfoundlander told me that lupines produce abundant seed, which they collect and scatter over open land. Here in Pennsylvania, the wild blue lupine (Lupinus perennis) is listed as rare and seeing one is always a special treat.

The forests of Newfoundland and Labrador are primarily evergreen — spruce, balsam fir, white pine, larch — but deciduous trees include white birch, aspen, and red maple, a northern boreal forest. Such a forest nurtures many songbirds that are rare breeders in Pennsylvania, especially blackpoll warblers and yellow-bellied flycatchers, which sang in every spruce forest we hiked through.

But the most common singers in the forests were white-throated sparrows, and I wondered if any that I heard had spent April on our mountain. Newfoundlanders told us that their spring, like ours, had arrived two weeks later than usual, which may be why our white-throats had delayed their migration.

Other spruce forest breeders we heard or saw that breed in Pennsylvania included yellow-rumped warblers, black-and-white warblers, hermit thrushes, and northern waterthrushes.

Of the Pennsylvania songbird migrants that breed in Newfoundland and Labrador spruce forests, fox sparrows, which rarely sing when they migrate over our mountain, regaled us with song. So too did ruby-crowned kinglets, palm warblers, and Wilson’s warblers.

American robins surprised us. They were darker than the ones that breed in Pennsylvania and are a separate subspecies, Turdus migratorius nigrideus. Instead of being familiar, dooryard birds, they breed in the cool, damp, coniferous forests of all the eastern Canadian provinces.

In the more open, often windswept areas of the province, in yards and above the sea on bluffs, white-crowned sparrows sang. We heard the protesting calls before we saw breeding spotted sandpipers in the wetland along the Bordeaux Trail in Arnold’s Cove. Greater yellowlegs were common shorebirds; ring-necked ducks and common loons bred on inland lakes. While we sat on an open, grassy area across from a rocky, grassy sea stack of nesting Atlantic puffins, Savannah sparrows serenaded us. Greater black-backed gulls and herring gulls continually harried the puffin colony. Double-crested cormorants nested on an island beyond that colony. On a rocky islet nearby a greater black-backed, gull chick stood next to its parent. Horned larks bred on the open headlands of Burnt Cape Ecological Reserve. This reserve, near the tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, is also a botanical treasure with over 300 plant species, 35 of which are rare or endangered. And, we were told by our guide, botanists from Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences have been studying them since the 1930s.

During our 200-mile drive on a gravel road in Labrador, past bogs, forests, and lakes, we spotted a pair of rough-legged hawks on top of a rocky precipice. Usually these are birds that we see in Pennsylvania only in winter. Other winter visitors we saw that rarely make an appearance in our state were pine siskins, white-winged crossbills, and pine grosbeaks.

Our first pine grosbeaks were hopping around on a parking lot in Pistolet Bay Provincial Park near Burnt Cape Ecological Reserve. While we were waiting for our guide to the reserve, three pine grosbeaks — two males and one female — landed on the ground next to us. I couldn’t believe how tame they were. They seemed to frequent such places because we next saw them under a wooden staircase leading down to a beach and again they acted as if we weren’t there. These were my first pine grosbeaks, and I was thrilled by the sightings. I was also excited to see another first — white-winged crossbills — at the Botanical Garden of Memorial University in St. John’s.

All through our trip, we mixed the familiar with the unfamiliar — birds, mammals, plants –a nd we counted icebergs off the coast — hundreds and hundreds of all shapes and sizes. On our ferry trip along the coast of Labrador the ferry skillfully threaded its way through them during the foggy night and I remembered the Titanic. Newfoundlanders and Labradoreans seemed as awed by them as we were. They hadn’t seen so many icebergs in decades.

What do icebergs have to do with Pennsylvania?

We were seeing parts of the Greenland ice sheet, which is melting at an unprecedented rate because of global warming. The icebergs were a constant reminder to us that we are all connected in this wondrous world and that we ignore such warnings about our warming climate at our peril, and the peril of generations to come.

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Newfoundland Photos by Bruce Bonta
(click thumbnails to go to file pages, then click again to view at full size)

At Cape Spear, Newfoundland

Witless Bay puffin colony

Witless Bay - Kittiwakes

Witless Bay - Common Murres

Cape St. Mary's Gannet Colony

Cape St. Mary's Gannet Colony

Cape St. Mary's Gannet Colony

Trinity

Elliston Point

Elliston Point - Puffin Colony

Elliston Point - Atlantic Puffin

Terra Nova National Park

Terra Nova National Park

Terra Nova - Lupines

Bonavista Bay with iceberg

Mary's Harbor, Labrador

Mary's Harbor - Waterfall

Interior Labrador

Coastal Labrador with iceberg

L'Anse-au-Claire, Labrador

L'Anse-aux-Meadows

Burnt Cape

Burnt Cape

Burnt Cape

Fishing Village, Great Northern Peninsula

Gros Morne National Park

Gros Morne National Park

Gros Morne - Arctic Hare

Gros Morne - Krummholz

St. John's Harbor