GeoEcology

Haiku for a late winter day

2011-02-11T09:07:00.007-05:00

blue sky on bright snow

loud bite of winter ice;

March to watery green

Coldest day of winter

2011-02-10T08:37:00.148-05:00

       Today, my routine drive across Delaware County, Ohio registered below zero readouts on my vehicle thermometer from -2 to -8 degrees F. The below zero temperatures today, our season lows, do not telegraph the inexorable seasonal change underway. Ohio maple sugar season will begin next week, without fail. Sap will rise in sun-warmed trees as daytime temperatures reach the mid-forties.

       The seasonal symphony of careening, colliding polar air masses is nearly past. Mountains of piled air, high pressure zones holding arctic stations, and depressions of low pressure air holding stations in temperate latitudes, are weakening, finally. This Northern Hemisphere airscape, with our earth's coriolis force, swinging trains of air masses westerly, have locked North America in an icy holding pattern for months. The holding pattern is disintegrating under warm sun arcing higher and higher across our southern sky each day. Southern air masses will soon break north, the loud bite of winter's chill released.

       Cold will return for brief internals, but repeated warmth will wake our sleepy plant and animal communities in time for early returning migrating birds this month. Waterfowl will return with open water. American Woodcock will follow thawing soils northward. Hardy earlybird migrants will arrive to exploit the rise of flying insects and the availability of soil and water invertebrates.

Olentangy River, Delaware County, Ohio

A sluggish Olentangy River, nearly frozen for weeks now, exhales icy mist. Nearly all of its seasonal low flow rises from groundwater seeping into the river channel from permeable limestones, alluvium, and glacial deposits along the length of the Olentangy River Valley. The tension between the geothermal warmth of groundwater and atmospheric cold sustains slushy ice formations and ice shelves along the river, and the icy mists of very cold mornings.

2010 ties 2005 as hottest year

2011-02-04T06:49:00.025-05:00

Another hot year, globally speaking

The winter of 2010 made many Midwesterner's wonder if we are headed for another ice age! Deep snow and cold were reminiscent of winters long past. Nevertheless, NASA reports weather data analysis indicating that 2010 tied with 2005 as the globe's hottest year since temperature records have been kept.

"Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
The two years differed by less than 0.018°F. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880."

Carcass-cam 2: new customer at the roadkill cafe

2011-02-01T13:12:00.015-05:00

Coyote scavenging a roadkill button buck.

A coyote found the button buck carcass last night. Our camera trap collected hundreds of images. The coyote ate several pounds of meat based on images and the large opening at the rear of the button buck.

Scavenging is an important ecological function and essential survival foraging involving many species, especially during late winter and early spring. Today, our Ohio landscape is frozen under an icy crust sealing several inches of snow accumulation. Rodents, a staple for coyotes and many other predators, are somewhat protected within their runway tunnels under the snow. Successful scavenging is essential now.

Native west of the Mississippi River; today, coyotes are common nocturnal omnivores throughout central Ohio, the Midwest, and beyond. They spread eastward, slowly, following deforestation. They are surprisingly common in suburban and urban settings where pet food, small pets (particularly outdoor cats), vulnerable old dogs up to the size of a golden retriever, poorly contained garbage, wild mice, Canada Geese, cottontail rabbits, and roadkill anything sustain them year round. But they are mostly nocturnal, secretive, and elusive, noticed by few people.

When Fluffy the cat goes missing for more than a day, it probably won't be coming home again. Those fliers with cute cat pictures stapled to utility poles and taped to store fronts are pictures of cats eaten by coyotes. Keep cats indoors--coyotes are out there!

Carcass-cam: scavengers at a roadkill cafe

2011-01-31T13:06:00.021-05:00

Revealing images of winter scavengers

Red-tailed Hawks proved to be the most consistent scavengers of a roadkill button buck. This small white-tailed deer fell to vehicle hit injuries in a secluded corner of our back acre near a large brush pile beside a small stream. Scavengers arrived the next day to begin eating frozen venison. Images speak for themselves.

Red-tailed Hawks spend much more time scavenging than other species imaged.

Infrared illuminated mice (Peromyscus sp.) were first on the scene the first night, returning several times. Additional images show mice entering the skin opening at base of jaw and apparently gleaning the jaw of tissue tatters.

A mink is a regular customer at this roadkill cafe, day and night.

Red-tailed Hawks squabbling over abundance.

Uneasy truce between scavenging rivals.

At least two, probably three red-tailed's spend a lot of time scavenging.


Opossums take a break from threatening each other to take a few mouthfuls of meat.

About 26,000 white-tailed deer are hit by vehicles annually in Ohio. Additional carcasses are left by errant hunters each autumn and winter. More than 260,000 deer are expected to be harvested and checked-in during the 2010-2011 hunting season (that's 260,000 gut piles left in woods and fields): uncounted numbers are mortally wounded and lost. Countless quadrupeds; raccoons, skunks, opossums, and dozens more species of wildlife are killed by vehicles. The ecological impact of carcasses supplied by human causes must be huge.

The camera is a Reconyx HC600, a research quality day-night trail camera. The camera is cable-locked to the base of a tree very near the carcass. Set to collect a motion-triggered image each second, the collected images viewed sequentially are like a movie clip of scavenger motion. Time-date-weather stamped digital images, many thousands, tell the whole story of scavengers, day and night.

Emerald ash borers create woodpecker wonderland

2011-01-28T09:43:00.004-05:00

Green ash swamp infested with emerald ash borer (EAB)

Invasive emerald ash borer (EAB) has found an ash bonanza in the impounded swampland east of Delaware Reservoir. The infestation is no surprise for Delaware County, Ohio residents. Complete destruction of ash trees may be inevitable in central Ohio and beyond. Just a few years from now there may be no large ash trees left living.

Optimistic ecologists hope that infestations will not cause complete destruction of large ash trees within natural woodland ecosystems. This area offers a window of insight into this hypothesis. The outcome does not appear promising, here.

Dying green ash twins. Advanced EAB infestation is is killing this green ash tree.

The twin green ash above may not live through this winter. The dozens of scraggly-looking twigs are "epicormic sprouts" indicating that the tree's essential inner bark was disrupted by wood borers a year ago. The sprouts are the trees last defense. Light gray patches indicate woodpecker activity a year ago, fresh yellow exposures are very recent. Woodpeckers don't kill the trees, they respond to fatal EAB infestations wherever destructive larvae are abundant. This tree was infested at least two years ago.

Dozens of green ash trees harbor emerald ash borer larvae in this impounded swamp. Woodpeckers chip away bark to reach the large larvae in heavily infested trees.

These large serpentine galleries are diagnostic for emerald ash borer. Woodpeckers have exposed galleries under the bark of this green ash tree to get to the larvae.

Green Canyon Peregrines

2011-01-07T17:54:00.128-05:00

Did peregrines ply the skies of riparian canyons between green canopied flanks of major Midwestern river valleys before European settlement? How common were green canyon peregrines?

Peregrine Falcons are familiarly characterized as big sky raptors of towering landscapes where stony heights offer vast vistas of prey filled sky and isolated rock ledges where falcons nest on protected eyrie's. They are modern heat-island denizens, too. They kite and flap and "kak-kak-kak" through windy gray urban canyons between monolithic buildings of urban heat-islands. Modern urban peregrines are descendant from a mix of hacked (hand-raised and released) exotic subspecies from North America, Europe and beyond. A huge effort through three decades brought these breeding peregrines to our Eastern cities. The reintroduction effort was necessary and successful, they are here to stay. Will they expand beyond urban canyons to reoccupy native haunts some day? Will they once again occupy green canyons?

Our native Eastern United States breeding peregrine form is extinct. The robust eastern form of Falco peregrinus anatum disappeared, a victim of excessive DDT used for mosquito control and "better living through chemistry" during the post-war boom years. We are still paying unforeseen cleanup and recovery costs for that era's bravado and careless economic growth, today.

Let's go back in time, back before the big wars, all of them: Imagine North America's Midwestern landscape before European settlement, visualize. A view from Space reveals Illinois' western prairie fringe blending with forest cover increasing eastward. Forest tentacles follow river valleys westward into vast prairie. From stationary satellite view, our fat green planet spinning westward under our cosmic perch reveals closing forest canopy as gathering trees coalesce. The earth turns and the landscape quickly transitions to nearly unbroken green forest canopy in eastern Indiana. Our original vast Eastern Deciduous Forest is passing under our cosmic gaze. Zoom in just a little..., our view changes a lot. Green summertime canopy is imperfect at closer inspection, we now see hairlike ribbons coursing through green valleys, zoom in more and islands of irregular canopy appear where prairie openings pattern the sea of green. Ohio, for example, was ranked 95% forest before settlement, yet, prairie openings, in western Ohio, mainly, were many, some quite large. As far east as central Ohio, in Pickaway County, a six-thousand acre prairie known as the Pickaway Plains occupied the broad glacial terrace along the green canyon of the Scioto River, the green canyon and plains easily seen from high in space, even today.

Major and minor river valleys dissecting Midwestern landscapes formed permanent corridors through Eastern Deciduous Forest landscapes. These green canyons offered corridors of open sky filled with waterfowl and frequent canyon dashes by crossing passerine (perching) birds like flocks of noisy showy Carolina Parakeets, now extinct. Did peregrines hunt ribbons of open sky along river valleys?

We have few records for Duck Hawks (peregrines) nesting away from stony eyries, in the east. My home state, Ohio, has no accepted record of native nesting peregrine falcons at all. Of course, early settlement records of bird observations are few and far between anywhere you look.

I speculate that peregrines regularly occurred in green canyons of riparian corridors throughout the Midwest. Indiana records may suggest a pattern of occurrence repeated along major river valleys.

Green canyon falcons along the Wabash River...

Birds of Indiana, by Amos W. Butler, Indiana Department of Geology and Natural Resources, Twenty-second Annual Report, 1897, page 795 (italics, mine):

"Nest, in cavity in trees, and on cliffs, eggs, 3-5; pale creamy white, sometimes overlaid with light chocolate, irregularly blotched, streaked and spotted with brown or reddish-brown; 2.10 by 1.68.
Resident, not rare, in Lower Wabash Valley. Throughout the remainder of the State, rare. Migrant. Breeds. In the spring of 1878, Mr. Robert Ridgway discovered that this was by no means a rare bird in the heavy timber in the bottoms of the Wabash River, in the vicinity of Mt. Carmel, Illinois. Three nests were found there. All were placed in cavities in the top of very large sycamore trees, and were inaccessible. One of these trees was felled, and measurements with a tapeline showed the nest had been eighty nine feet from the ground. It was placed in a shallow cavity, caused by breaking off of the main limb, the upper part of which projected
sufficiently to protect it. Four fully feathered young were taken from the nest (B. N. 0. C, 1878, pp. 163, 164).
Mr. Ridgway also informs me it breeds in Knox and Gibson counties, Ind. The Duck Hawk usually nests on the projections of cliffs, and the foregoing sites are unusual."

Shawnee State Forest, Ohio's "Little Smokies"

2010-04-29T11:33:00.013-04:00

We visit Ohio's "Little Smokies," Shawnee State Forest, Scioto County, Ohio April 23--25 in search of temperate and early neotropical migrating bird species.

Ohio's Little Smokies

The birds were few and far between at Shawnee this weekend due to this spring's prevailing high pressure over the Midwest limiting rainfall (no rain pools to attract shorebirds) and presenting unfavorable flight conditions for small birds eager to move northward (migrants 'stack-up' in the southern U.S.and points south waiting for low-pressure frontal systems to swing through bringing strong south winds--the wind beneath their little wings). Fortunately, a frontal system brought us some migrants Saturday morning, though still very low numbers.

A roadside apparition, moccasin flower Cypripedium acaule Aiton

Wildflowers did not let us down. Shawnee is a large tract of steep hilly woodlands criss-crossed by disturbance; roadsides & fire-breaks, intense ice-storm damage over large tracts (2003), tree pathogens--many following the ice-damage, and fire, both controlled burns and last year's 3000 acre wildfire. Plant diversity is very high in Shawnee State Forest for many reasons; disturbance is just one. Looking down for wildflowers is as tempting as looking up for wood warblers!

Yellow mandarin, AKA nodding mandarin
Prosartes maculata (Buckley) A. Gray

My friends, Julie & Ken Davis, with my wife Jackie and I searched high and low for birds and we did find 107 species between Columbus and the Ohio River, mostly low numbers of them, but that's a low species count for the third weekend in April in south-central Ohio and at Shawnee (my goal was 125 species, and many of most)!

Invasive garlic mustard

2010-04-17T18:48:00.004-04:00

Garlic mustard is a non-native invasive species escaped from gardens: it's everywhere, now. Large areas of central Ohio's Hoover Nature Preserve, Hoover Reservoir, Galena, Ohio are dominated by tall garlic mustard during early spring.

A bottomland overwhelmed by invasive garlic mustard.

Gardeners introduced this species long ago. Garlic mustard greens, young shoots and leaves, are delightful ingredients putting the 'tang' into tangy salads. There's our solution, lets all dig in and eat it up!

This destructive invasive should be eliminated from wild places. The size of the plants in the picture, with small white flowers, is the ideal size for hand-pulling, roots and all, and bagging for disposal. Before seeds develop, the plants can be composted. Once seeds form, hand-pulled plants must be burned or left in trash bags for landfill disposal to prevent further spreading.

Rare wildflower, Alum Creek State Park, Ohio

2010-04-15T14:42:00.024-04:00

We find a wildflower that is listed as Potentially Threatened in Ohio.

Forkleaf toothwort (Cardamine dissecta) blooming

This dandy little flower has been found in seven Ohio counties since 1980 including Delaware County where this cluster was found April 14. Several thousand stems form about a dozen patches between Alum Creek Reservoir and Africa Road, and on the east side of Africa Road, too.

Early flowering downy serviceberry (Amalanchier arborea) is fairly common along Alum Creek, coloring the edge of shale bluffs with soft white petals.

Showy wildflowers occur where sunshine warms the ground under bare branches of winter-gray trees reaching into blue sky. Their showy displays are seen from far away, then. The cast of wildflower characters is ephemeral, diverse, and beautiful every spring, rivaling sunny summer prairies.

Another early flower coming on strong, littleleaf buttercup (Ranunculus abortivus)

A bug's-eye view of Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica)

My favorite marsh in early spring

2010-04-11T19:16:00.023-04:00

My favorite marsh is not a typical wetland. It's a riparian forest seep with open emergent marsh, and more. It's my favorite because its geomorphology is unique and because it's close to home.

Marsh marigolds in full glory.

A spring marsh is a beautiful place.

Cowslip is an alternative name given to marsh marigolds among farmers raising stock. Seeps often were 'improved' to collect water for thirsty cows and horses. These showy wildflowers grow best in mucky slippery seeps.

The best known Midwestern wildflower, common blue violets.

Common blue violet up close.

A carpet of spring beauty flowers the flank of the marsh.

Skunk cabbage plants unfurling giant leaves form a belt along the base of seeping glacial deposits. Marsh marigolds, emergent sparganium marsh, and swamp rose tier the background.

Sessile trillium, I prefer the name toadshade

Ramps, a native wild onion and popular spring fare among rural Appalachians and others endowed with adventurous palates and tolerant spouses.

Boxelder in bloom--trees do it, too.

Earth science from NASA 's Global Climate Change site

2010-04-10T10:26:00.001-04:00

NASA's award-winning Global Climate Change: NASA's Eyes on the Earth website offers nifty gadgets for visualizing global climate change. Check out the feature Vital Signs of the Planet for the latest on CO2 (now 389 ppm, highest in over 650,000 years), temperature records (2000-2009 was hottest decade on record), Arctic sea ice minimums (plunging 11% per decade with 2009 resulting in the third least ice cover on record), rising sea level (up 57mm since 1993), and the size of the ozone hole (about 9.3 million sq. miles).
You can see the orbits of NASA satellites, enter the Climate Time Machine, and surf rising sea levels.

This is a visually spectacular website loaded with authentic original content created by NASA scientists and interpreted by NASA's communications team. Good stuff from money well spent supporting NASA.

Haiku for a nice evening

2010-04-07T19:35:00.015-04:00

clangor of thunder
cool breeze before April rain,
fast winged birds singing

The Pleistocene Epoch takes a great leap backward...

2009-04-16T12:22:00.011-04:00

The Geological Society of America (GSA) released its new Geological Time Scale April 9, 2009. Overnight, the Pleistocene Epoch is much older, by definition!

This is GSA's first full time scale revision in 25 years. The new revision did not await final resolution and international consensus. Debate continues among researches within the International Commission on Statigraphy, an international body meant to gain international time scale uniformity. The GSA chart anticipates changes likely to come as this debate settles.

According to GSA...

"Some aspects of the GSA Geologic Time Scale do not conform to the recommendations of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The names “Tertiary” and “Pre-cambrian” were not dropped on the new time scale. The Quaternary, the status and boundaries of which are still being debated, was modified to reflect some of the pending recommendations. These differences were retained to best reflect the needs of GSA members and Divisions."

Principal among important changes; The Pleistocene Epoch now begins at 2.6 million years ago. That's 0.8 million years earlier than before. The start of the Pleistocene Epoch marks the time when significant climate cooling resulted in significant changes in the fossil record (among other changes).

Educators gather, Leave No Trace...

2009-04-07T05:52:00.174-04:00

Learning and teaching outdoor ethics and skills...

The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics advocates sustainable outdoor recreation practiced using methods which greatly reduce visitor impacts to natural areas. The organization's mission is tightly focused on development and promotion of trainings and activities supporting outdoor ethics and skills through ascending scales of involvement. They have built an army of trainers and that army is on the march.

Outdoor ethics and skills, the road show...

This Subaru Tribeca is the Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers program vehicle. Subaru, a leader in green production, makes the Leave No Trace Traveling Trainers program possible through generous corporate giving. Subaru has pledged sustaining, multi-year funds to help LNT build core programs. They offer great deals to LNT membership, too!

A gathering of outdoor educators...

Outdoor Educators from four neighboring states representing diverse groups ranging from the Wilderness Education Association (WEA) to The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) gathered at BSA's beautiful Camp Lazarus near Delaware, Ohio to conference and catch-up on the latest advances and worldwide news about Leave No Trace progress and recent efforts, April 3-5, 2009. The conference was gathered and organized by Ohio's Leave No Trace State Advocate, Don Nash, of University Heights (Cleveland), and hosted by BSA's Simon Kenton Council Conservation Committee led by Chairperson and event co-organizer, Jackie Bain (your blogger's amazing wife) of Delaware County.

Leave No Trace programs support science-guided training...

The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics gathers and guides resources; financial contributions, patron and partnership support, membership support, volunteer efforts, and professional and academic work product to support growing worldwide trainings offered by volunteers and professionals. Trainings are guided by ongoing academic research into reducing user impacts in our great outdoors while promoting outdoor recreation and values.

The "authority of the resource" sets Leave No Trace guidance apart from many environmental action groups and movements offering guidance based on less reliable philosophies. Researchers, led by recreation ecologists, bring research results to educators and work with educators to interpret and to translate findings into activity-based trainings. The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics supports extraordinary integrative collaboration.

"'authority of the resource' sets Leave No Trace apart from many environmental action groups"

The integration of professional science and professional education with citizen science and citizen educators to influence widespread cultural practices in outdoors settings is a unique approach and a potent brew for stemming the upset caused by repeated misuse of our recreational environments.

"The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics supports extraordinary integrative collaboration."

The Subaru Traveling Trainers Team joined the gathering, too. JD Tanner and Emily Ressler, professional trainers, travel throughout North America (eastern mostly, this is their third year on the road) delivering trainings and building ethics and skills among school children and adults alike.

Traveling Trainers, JD Tanner (right front, with pin-flags bundle), and Emily Ressler (middle, with pin flags) introduce conference participants to a vivid demonstration of the impact of frequent casual toilet practices around a popular remote campsite.

Participants plant bright pin-flags on the spots they might have chosen for a convenient toilet spot if they had been camping nearby for a period of time, without LNT values. This activity helps participants visualize the need for sound management of toilet practices in many busy remote settings like popular wilderness campsites, and it illustrates why frontcountry park and camp users should walk the extra twenty-yards to the campground latrine.

A little history...

Early efforts to reduce human impacts centered on big obvious (often roadside) insults like accidental fire and purposeful littering. These earliest efforts to influence human impacts on public wild lands focused on narrowly defined challenges using 'poster-child' images, mascots, or caricatures and slogans. These familiar early caricatures are iconic today, and still in use.

The early appeals tweaked emotions, particularly among youth. This 'warm--fuzzy' model was first introduced broadly by the USDA Forest Service with the adoption of their cuddly little mascot, "Smokey Bear" during 1944. Today's experienced outdoor educators grew up with a young Smokey Bear and his old slogan,

"ONLY YOU can prevent forest fires."

Today, Smokey Bear is middle-aged and his deep gravelly voice-over is provided by a popular screen actor. His 21st Century slogan is worded a little differently for a new generation of forest managers who regularly use fire as an important natural area management tool. Beginning in April of 2002 Smokey's slogan became:

"Only YOU can prevent wild fires."

A short commercial spot, seen frequently lately, brings our mature Smokey into the lives and conscience of today's youth. Our modern Smokey Bear has his own website, too!

Another early mascot (1970's) addressed litter through our mythical wise owl, Woodsy,

"Give a Hoot--don't pollute!"

Woodsy Owl has enjoyed a make-over, too. He has a new look and a new broader slogan,

"Lend a hand--care for the land!"

Our expanding transportation system during the 50's and 60's, culminating in the completion of the Interstate Highway System, brought the wilderness into reach for many families, hunters and fishermen, and adventurous youth. Old style high-impact camping approaches entered our remote wild lands along with proliferating new cars, trailers, and sundry accouterments supporting a gasoline-powered onslaught of impacts. New environmental impacts followed...

Slogans and images meant to reduce litter and other impacts proliferated and were posted throughout public areas ("Take only pictures--leave only footprints."). Federal land-holding agencies during the 60's--90's increasingly worked together to unify efforts.

A new era of cooperation and effectiveness began with the new century and with the Leave No Trace organization.

A new message and a new method for a new era...

Today's Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics is an independent non-profit organization, a direct descendant of the earlier multiple-agency efforts to reduce abuses in the backcountry and wilderness. And, it's a hybrid. A new partner, The National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) brought new leadership and professional educators to the problem of impacts during the 1990's and developed comprehensive skills-based approaches which informed inter-agency task forces searching for solutions.

Today, the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics is fully independent of federal agencies (no government funding) and reaches further and deeper into our recreation practices than all earlier approaches to managing human impacts in natural settings.

An army of educators...

The Leave No Trace training effort is reducing impacts from millions of visit-days in public outdoor settings, particularly in backcounrty and wilderness areas. Volunteer and professional educators take the message to outdoor enthusiasts through a network of state advocates coordinating trainer-trainers known as LNT Master Educators. Master Educators train Leave No Trace Trainers. Leave No Trace Trainers offer public meeting presentations, awareness workshops, youth group programs, school programs, and mentoring.

Leave No Trace programs for frontcountry...

Frontcountry programs developed by Leave No Trace are all about Conservation of Recreation Spaces. Our roadside parks and other public areas are developed and hardened with roadways, manicured trails, toilet facilities, and turf so these frequently visited areas can sustain high traffic while remaining natural. Even so, the user impacts to frontcountry public areas are often serious. Frontcountry outdoor recreation spaces are the best places to introduce concepts for reducing impacts everywhere.

Outdoor ethics in practice...

Your blogger held the after lunch agenda block so we offered a walk-and-talk to explore for user impacts and to discuss possible training approaches to reduce impacts. Along the way we introduced and practiced a 'recognition model' guided walk aimed at helping hikers learn and practice Leave No Trace skills in our frontcountry camp setting. We gathered outside the camp dining hall where we discussed the Three R's of the recognition model, Remind, Recognize, Recommend. The recognition model is not an LNT-developed approach (though there are many similarities), rather it stems from a body of literature guiding skills-based training (coaching models) used in industrial settings.

"the Three R's...Remind--Recognize--Recommend"

Remind frontcountry (or wilderness) users of their immediate opportunities to reduce impacts...

We began by reminding hikers of immediate opportunities to practice simple skills leading to reduced impacts on the frontcountry camp, such as stepping on durable surfaces, (remind is not the same as correct--reminders are opportunities reviewed before the action, not unwelcome corrections along the way).

We invited everyone to talk about what LNT skills "look like" when practiced. For example, stepping in the muddy trail-center to avoid stepping off trail--a high impact practice that leads to trail spread--you know--when the trail loops wider and wider to each side as the center mud puddle grows). Building outdoor ethics requires introducing principles, then reinforcing them through practice. Acknowledging and talking about specific skills during training sessions is a great way to develop and reinforce outdoor skills along the way.

Next, hikers paired-up to offer casual recognition to one another when seeing ongoing skills practiced during the hike. While we talked, before departure, we passed around a box of ziplock bags to help carry out any litter we might find along the way--a great reminder to pick up litter!

"...talk about what outdoor skills 'look like' when practiced."

Conference participants examine impacts of 86 years of recreation at venerable Camp Lazarus while practicing using a 'recognition model' for reinforcing skills.

Recognize frontcountry (or wilderness) users practicing skills along the trail and in camp...

While we hiked around camp to study the cumulative impacts of 86 years of very heavy use by youth and adults recreating in the great outdoors, we talked about the challenge of bringing lots of traffic into the natural setting of a nature-based camp without losing the nature in the natural setting. Conversation about "durable surfaces" and other concepts was interrupted (by design) by frequent individual and group recognitions,

"Thanks for picking up that plastic bottle."

"Thanks for stepping in that trail puddle to avoid trail-widening and side-trails impacts!"

The group quickly recognized the power of simple acknowledgment, a casual,

"Thank you"

The phrase, "Thank you" and other simple acknowledgments are powerful tools for reinforcing simple skills used along the trail.

We found the camp well designed with durable but permeable roads and trails, copious turf for running and playing and team sports, and plenty of well preserved natural landscapes inter-fingering along forested drains, bringing nature close in. We found 'hardened' surfaces designed to sustain traffic, and we found compacted surfaces in need of recovery. Most of the impacts observed centered on camper compliance with required camp methods such as proper ash disposal, avoiding casual trail development, and migrating campfire rings. These common camp problems are solvable through developing outdoor ethics and skills!

"The group quickly recognized the power of a simple acknowledgment.'"

Recommend ideas to frontcountry users to help them plan ahead and prepare...

Recommend frontcountry (or wilderness) visit dates, route ideas, and equipment suggestions to aid users in their planning and preparations for their future visits: And, recommend frontcountry park and camp maintenance and management needs to assist camp and park professionals (for example; a brush pile to block a feeder trail to an informal social trail network forming on a steep shale slope).

Discussing "lessons learned" captures important ideas for preparing for future visits. When we ask outdoor users to use reduced impact approaches, and they try, they discover roadblocks. Recommendations can help remove personal roadblocks and make frontcountry areas more user-friendly for reduced impacts.

One great example of a personal recommendation from our hike was trying-out rubber-bottom boots. Rubber-bottom type boots or trail shoes keep your feet dry when you step through trail-puddles.

The popularity of expensive designer sneakers and hiking shoes is one important cause of increased trail-widening and new trail short-cuts in my opinion. Hikers wearing clean expensive designer sneakers or sophisticated trail shoes usually go to great effort (way off trail) to keep their expensive shoes clean and dry--their shoes are part of their 'look', on trail and off. They need to keep them clean for the restaurant they will visit later in the evening. Rubber-bottom boots or shoes stay on trail--mud is no problem. I just hose-off my rubber-bottom boots when I get home.

Obtaining proper equipment for walking Ohio's often muddy trails is part of the first principle of Leave No Trace, Plan Ahead and Prepare!

L.L.Bean's Maine Hunting Shoe is a longtime favorite of outdoors people, including your blogger (my boots pictured). They will always be in-style as far as we're concerned. These watertight boot designs are comfortable, breathe and protect, and they are great footwear for Ohio's muddy spring and fall landscapes where slopes are not too steep. The rubber chain-link tread is easy on both durable and not so durable surfaces. They don't pick up a lot of mud like deep tread soles. Hikers can confidently walk through deep puddles and along the durable surfaces of gravelly streambeds to avoid side-stepping, causing trail-spread, or to leave no trace on undisturbed off-trail areas by stepping the streambed gravel. The boot's soles are non-marring, too (the soles don't leave scuff-marks on rocks as you scramble over their durable surfaces).

Venerable outdoor supplier, L.L.Bean Inc., is a 2009 Special Projects Partner and longtime supporter of the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics. Partnerships between outdoor gear suppliers and the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics are vital for continued success.

Next we returned to the dining hall for more great programming and networking to conclude a successful summit of outdoor educators.

About forty-five people participated in the conference, odds are we'll do it again next year for even more LNT advocates!

The LNT message is summarized in Seven Principles:

Plan Ahead and Prepare
Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
Dispose of Waste Properly
Leave What You Find
Minimize Campfire Impacts
Respect Wildlife
Be Considerate of Other Visitors

See my post from May 5, 2008 for more about Leave No Trace and a Leave No Trace Master Educator Course.

Florida revisted...

2009-03-18T07:22:00.043-04:00

For my father, whose borrowed elements have returned to the biosphere.

Thomas D. Bain Jr.
1930-2009

Solace in nature...

Sunrise over Merritt Island where the Space Shuttle is prepped and waiting to slip the surly bonds of Earth, center horizon.

Manatee browsing algae along riverside rip-rap, Haulover Canal, Merritt Island.
These gentle giants barely ripple the surface of warm water rivers and springs they visit during wintertime.

A Reddish Egret dancing-up dinner along the shallows of a Merritt Island lagoon.

This live oak, festooned with Spanish moss and resurrection fern, was a large tree when fabled Naturalist William Bartram is said to have passed by during his travels in 1774.

Gopher tortoise at home on remnant ancient sand dunes of the Lake Wales Ridge, central Florida. This 14 inch animal may be over sixty years old.

Florida Scrub Jay. Gangs of rare jays find young pine clearcuts a substitute for diminishing oak scrub.

Native oak scrub (at right), one of the most endangered habitats in Florida, supports more endemic species than any other. Citrus at left. We are looking down slope from the crest of the Lake Wales Ridge toward Archibold Biological Research Station, near Avon Lake, central Florida.

Florida oranges brighten breakfast tables everywhere. Oak scrub endemics are dozed aside to make room for citrus as demand continues.

Crested Caracara at nest site (between billboards), Moore Haven, Florida.

So many families thread connections to Florida from around the United States and Canada, the place has become a central element in the tapestry of the American experience. Aged generations move there for warm retirement, younger generations follow for fun and sun. Native flora and fauna move aside or integrate along the margins of human habitats.

Many families; Snowbirds and vacation visitors, know Florida only marginally; the beaches, the roadsides, the social environments and cultural attractions. My family is firmly threaded in this tapestry, but I was fortunate to have been introduced to the depths of the Florida experience; the plants, the birds, the mammals, the geology and fossils, and a little history. My grandfather and father reached into the sands, the skies, and the waters of Florida. I have followed them. Florida is a remarkable place, the more so beyond the margins.

My connections with Florida began during my teen years visiting grandparents wintering in Daytona. My father followed them, building and retiring in Sebring, Florida. I have followed for family and natural history visits, but I will not pursue retirement there where there is now too little room for me with surviving native species. I will visit again and again with my son and I hope he will know, appreciate, and help to protect natural Florida.

Lawn art, life-size Aluminum wildlife (non-native) for sale.

Visitors, transplants, and immigrants bring their diverse arrays of cultural influences into the depths of Florida. More and more habitat is taken for human environments, increasingly artificial and surficial. Still, there is much of native Florida left to inspire young and old, and many wonderful people pulling together for habitat for all.

Tom Bain Jr. standing on a ladder leading to service on one of many Habitat homes he helped to build with Florida families.

Tom Bain Jr. was born into that muscular post-war generation that wrestled abundant living from global tensions and globalizing prosperity. Dad rounded his life by helping to build scores of homes in central Florida, working with the generous folks of Habitat for Humanity, Highlands County, Florida. Dad, full of years--full of experience, slipped the surly bonds of Earth March 8, 2009.

Contributions in Dad's name to Habitat for Humanity are greatly appreciated by the Bain family and by many deserving Florida families helping to build their own futures.

The making of a "trail tree"...

2009-03-08T11:47:00.051-04:00

Natural systems create bemusing natural phenomena. Trees, in their many wonderful forms, are beautiful natural sculptures, bemusing and inspiring us.

We find local "trail trees" among the mix of tree damage types in a wind-shear zone...

A small "trail tree" type. A wind damage survivor.

Here in central Ohio, where the glaciated flatlands meet the linear north--south river valleys formed by glacial drainage, we find zones of heavy wind damage among forest trees. These damage zones follow the upper slopes where the flatlands ramp downward along fairly steep flanks to the river valleys below. Frequent wind-shear along these slopes causes recurrent timber damage. Observers can see multiple episodes of shear damage preserved in trees of different age classes. Wintertime is the best time to look for damage patterns among forest trees.

We made another visit to Bent Tree Trail, Amy Clark/Bader Bird Sanctuary, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, to chase birds, check for signs of Spring, and ponder the bemusing shapes of the many damaged trees found along the trail.

We brought along our camera to shoot a sequence illustrating natural development of contorted trees into shapes known as "trail trees."

Stage one...

About a year ago, a windstorm felled a large dead tree over the trunk of a smaller living tree. The smaller tree was struck high, bending it over without uprooting the tree or snapping-off its trunk. A smaller tree to its right did not withstand the blow, its trunk snapped several feet above the ground. The surviving tree is pinned in a near-horizontal position, held between the felled tree and another larger tree.

Stage two...

A living small branch of the pinned tree re-oriented and grew toward the sunlight, against gravity, and shot upward with vigorous growth during one growing season. Growth inhibitors manufactured by canopy leaves had suppressing growth of low branches like this one until the crown was pushed down, away from sunlight. The new growth is now the dominate growth. The pinned crown has withered and is dying.

Stage three...

A nearby tree exhibits a later stage along the development path our pinned tree will likely follow as it survives future decades. This tree was pinned, I'm guessing, twenty years ago. A small branch originally well below the crown became its new dominate growth (apical dominance) as it recovered from the insult. The original crown, and the segment of tree trunk feeding the original crown, are now gone. A naval scar (ring-scar) is all that remains of the withered trunk and crown.

Stage three continued...

My lovely field assistant brightens the forest with her smile as she stands in for scale (my wife, Jackie). Maybe I'd better say that I'm HER field assistant...

Folklore suggests that Native Americans made "trail trees" (A.K.A. "signal trees," "warning trees," "compass trees," "boundary trees," and so on...) by tying down saplings so they would survive to grow pointing in the direction of a trail or toward an important resource, a spring or a landing for a portage trail, and so on.

Some enthusiasts suggest Native Americans had a secret method of creating the cubby-hole (the ring-scar seen in the photograph above) by inserting a piece of charcoal or some secret concoction that made the tree grow a hollow they would latter use to leave secret totems, messages, and the like. This young tree made its own cubby-hole without assistance from humans (unless some secret practitioner of the lost art of cubby-hole creation still prowls our forests--anything is possible).

Stage four...

Another nearby tree exhibits a much later stage along the development path our pinned tree will likely follow, if it survives many future decades. This old survivor is much too young to have been the project of a Native American trail-blazer. It too is a product of wind damage. Nevertheless, it illustrates the potential for survival after violent paroxysms mangle trees, whatever the origin of the damage. The open truck of this tree suggests it may not survive another decade or two, but who knows.

Countless examples of all stages of "trail tree" development are scattered throughout our Eastern Deciduous Forest. I've seen hundreds of examples at all stages of development, far prettier than those pictured above (I'm going to have to start carrying a camera all the time). Some "trail trees" are so perfectly formed, they seem to approach artistic expression. At first, it seems these beautiful trees must surely result from intervention by human beings.

Through time, and broadening experience, I've encountered many trees exhibiting a complete continuum of development of these contorted shapes, all randomly distributed throughout the forests I've visited--though more frequently found in recurrent windfall areas such as wind-shear zones or along steep slopes with loose eroding soil. Nature makes "trail trees." You may label me skeptical, but my skepticism results from thousands of hours of work and recreation in our forests while pursuing professional and avocational projects.

The folklore of "trail trees" is fun, and it's very understandable. Check-out the many Internet sites offering pictures of these beautiful and bemusing trees. Large trees are inspiring regardless of personal beliefs.

Checking-out the natural mechanisms creating such beautiful mysteries is even more fun. Nature does not need our help to create beautiful mysteries.

Asteroid gadfly...

2009-03-04T14:41:00.037-05:00

Earth experienced an extra-terrestrial near-miss a couple of days ago. Asteroid 2009 DD45 surprised observers. Asteroids known and unknown gadfly humanity.

Asteroid Itokawa, Credit & Copyright ISAS, JAXA.
NASA's Picture of the Day, May 22, 2007.

Asteroids, like this giant studied by Japanese researchers, are big chunks of early solar system rock moving at very high speeds in eccentric orbits around the Sun. This one is much larger than our recent gadfly, Asteroid 2009 DD45.

Asteroid 2009 DD45 unexpectedly whizzed close by Earth a couple of days ago, giving just a couple of days warning. Closest approach came less than five Earth diameters away. The lump of rock was between 19 and 43 meters across--more than big enough to equal the Tunguska Event, a massive air blast over Siberia which leveled 800 square miles of ancient Siberian forest in 1908. Most investigators think the Tunguska Event resulted from the explosion of a similar size asteroid as it entered the atmosphere.

Today, the impact of an asteroid of this size would result in human and economic, and natural catastrophe, wherever it occurred, whether or not we saw it coming.

The time scale of human life, even that of human civilization, is small compared to the frequency of catastrophic impacts of all sorts, both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial. The geological record is punctuated by countless catastrophes.

Even as we reflect on the occasions of the 200 year anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150 year anniversary of the publishing of his On the Origin of Species; do we fail to fully encompass the stochastic nature of change that resulted in today's diversity and distribution of life?

Charles Lyell, geologist, proponent of "uniformitarianism," published his influential three volume Principles of Geology in 1830-1833. He gave Darwin deep time in which to operate his slow agents of change. And, he gave us all the next best thing to no change at all--gradualism, slow change we can live with comfortably.

If our lives spanned millennia rather than decades, maybe we'd have a better grasp of the importance of the sudden hiccups that shake things up and change outcomes globally. Maybe then we would encompass the meteoric speed of change Homo sapiens has brought, and the Earth-changing impact of that collision.

Asteroid 2009 DD45 details can be found at Tom's Asteroid Flybys Webpage.

See goodSchist for a discussion of asteroids and cosmic precursors for life: Cerces, Dawn and (no) Panspermia.

Winter wings over The Wilds...

2009-01-19T09:38:00.044-05:00

Bundled birders rendezvous with raptors at The Wilds.

Red-tailed Hawk pushing through its first power stroke after leaving a perch at The Wilds.

Photo by Mike Maier, Photographer, Avian Expressions.

Record low temperature did not dissuade hardy birds or the hard-core birders determined to discover them at The Wilds. About one-hundred and fifteen birders gathered with all manner of winged-things wild and free for the Ohio Ornithological Society's (OOS) 4th annual winter raptor rendezvous at The Wilds, January 17.

Bulky-bundled birders exhaled swirling breath-clouds into piercing sub-zero air while gathering in The Wilds' visitor's center parking lot to organize eight field teams early in the morning (my vehicle thermometer dropped to 12 below zero Fahrenheit while passing through low hollows among surrounding hills).

Birding teams were dispatched in rotation through eight breezy observation areas by OOS organizers Marc Nolls and Cheryl Harner to ensure good habitat coverage and good birding. Teams canvassed grassy reclaimed hills and swales searching high and low for winged-things wild and free. Raptors were abundant and birders were not disappointed.

A nest box for American Kestrels erected through partnership between OOS, AEP, and The Wilds, overlooking one of the hundreds of frozen reclamation lakes, ponds, and wetlands dotting The Wilds and surrounding American Electric Power's tp://www.aep.com/environmental/recreation/recland/">ReCreation Lands.

Here, at The Wilds, over ten thousand acres of rolling grasslands and shrub-steppe habitat interrupt and diversify the steeply divided deciduous hillsides of eastern Ohio's Allegheny Plateau. Here, open-country birds of the northland find new winter habitat where forests once dominated.

Ninety-percent of the acreage at The Wilds has been surfaced mined for the bituminous coal that powered economic growth during the Baby-boomer heyday in the Midwest. Award-winning reclamation, and partnerships between AEP, The Wilds, and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, inspired by a new era of reclamation legislation in Ohio, resurrected this wild area from a post-mining spoil wasteland to its youthful steppe ecosystem friendly for vertebrates, wild and semi-wild. Today, The Wilds is home to conservation science and research and home to some 29 species of rare mammals from around the world, some no longer found in the wild. The Wilds is a giant research zoo; and, The Wilds is a winter raptor magnet!

Some of the raptors and other birds my group enjoyed seeing:

Golden Eagle, Rough-legged Hawk, Red-tailed Hawk, American Kestrel, Northern Harrier, Short-eared Owl. Other groups spotted a Merlin, too. Snow Buntings made an appearance. A number of waterfowl kept a small spot of water open below the visitor's center. Among them were Tundra Swan, Green-winged Teal, Gadwall, Mallard, Canada Goose, American Black Duck, Hooded Merganser, and Lesser Scaup.

This event was organized and staffed by generous volunteers with the Ohio Ornithological Society.

Chipping Sparrow endures Ohio winter...

2009-01-11T23:02:00.014-05:00

Today, we found an out-of-season Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina) subsisting on suet and sunflower seeds at feeders in Hogback Road Nature Preserve, Preservation Parks of Delaware County.

A Chipping Sparrow visiting a suet feeder in Delaware County, central Ohio. The wing toward the camera is drooping, suggesting the bird is injured. The injury may explain why this strongly migratory bird has remained in the north. The gray rump, strong eye-line and superciliary (eye-brow line), and two-toned bill are important fieldmarks.

The 'clincher' fieldmark is found just in front of the eye: The 'lores', between eye and bill is dark, continuing the strong eye-line evident behind the eye. This one fieldmark separates the Chipping Sparrow in winter from other similar species.

Note the wing-bars and streaked crown.

Summertime chippers are more boldly colored. The crown becomes rich chestnut bounded by long white superciliaries and black eye-lines, a striking pattern, to be sure. I look forward to their return every spring.

Chipping Sparrows are familiar springtime and summertime birds of lawn and garden, park lands and cemeteries, throughout Ohio. Their cheery trill announces their spring return with the emergence of showy wildflowers in April. Chippers are likely to nest in your yard and mine annually. With the advancing season their strong migratory impulse compels them to move well south of Ohio, most leaving by late October. Very few linger into December. January records are accidental to casual in Ohio. Warming climate and the proliferation of feeding stations are two possible reasons more and more Chipping Sparrows are reported each winter in Ohio and other northern states.

A view of crown and nape detail.

"Squirrel plagues" and 'side-hunts'...

2009-01-08T10:04:00.027-05:00

American history as presented to elementary students offers an heroic view of wilderness settlement. Our founding fathers and pioneer ancestors "carved" civilization from trackless "wastes" as they "conquered" wilderness North America; its flora and fauna and its native peoples were swept aside. They called it progress. We celebrate these "victories" still.

Conversion of North American ecosystems to support agriculture and development continues today, though our values and our challenges have changed. Today, we seek to preserve and recover remnants of the wilderness and the wildlife now mostly gone while attempting to sustain continued economic growth--the present economic "correction" notwithstanding.

Our pioneer ancestors faced challenges that we can't appreciate, today. Biological abundance was a fact of wild America. Spectacular wildlife populations and vast forests assured a prevailing mythology of inexhaustible abundance. Frequent depredations brought on by overwhelming hordes of gray squirrels or Passenger Pigeons, and some large carnivores, particularly wolves, to row-crops, orchards, and livestock excused excesses; regular slaughters ensued.

Squirrel plagues...

This account of a squirrel migration, by Christian Schultz, is typical of early accounts. He described countless squirrels swimming the Ohio River, or drowning in the attempt, while he floated down the Ohio River during 1807.

The mast forests of eastern North America; our abundant oaks, hickories, chestnuts (formerly abundant), and beech supported huge populations of squirrels and giant flocks of Passenger Pigeons, long ago. White-tailed deer and Wild Turkeys, Ruffed Grouse and Rusty Blackbirds consummed abundant mast, too. Mast trees, particularly the oaks, produced massive crops some years followed by small crops other years, regionally. This boom and bust crop was critical for vertebrate wildlife, and caused population growth, declines, and migrations on a grand scale.

Synchronized masting over large areas ensured superabundant crops would overwhelm ravenous wildlife populations so future forests could seed from mast left behind. Abundant years were followed by years offering hardly any mast. These sometimes unpredictable and irregular masting cycles challenged squirrels, intractably bound to the earth and trees by gravity. Passenger Pigeons, on the other hand, enjoyed the freedom of flight. Massive pigeon flocks simply flew away from barren areas to discover abundant crops elsewhere. When pigeons found a heavy mast, they descended like a "plague of locusts" and devoured it in a "biological storm" of foraging.

This combination of cyclical synchronized masts and random "biological storms" occasionally left squirrels with empty cupboards, empty stomachs, and an itch to flee to abundance elsewhere: The great squirrel migrations followed. As settlement spread, squirrels were pressed further, and the inevitable intersection with human agriculture followed by crop depredations made these migrations "plagues" in the view of settlers.

Side-hunts...

Local pioneers gathered seasonally for spirited competitions to see which 'side' could kill the most squirrels, pigeons, deer, rattle snakes, or a mixed-bag. The objective of these 'side-hunts' often centered on a local scourge, frequently superabundant squirrels, and anything else passing in front of their gun sights.

Frontier hunts were important social gatherings where men exhibited their hunting prowess, and women and families sometimes gathered to barbecue the bag, put-up food, and consider future pairings. The results of frontier side-hunts occasionally made newsprint, if first-hand reports made their way to distant printers.

An 1801 'side-hunt' for squirrels, near Lexington, Kentucky, was reported in an early regional paper printed in Chillicothe, Ohio:

Scioto Gazette vol.II No.58 Thursday, May 28 1801.

Lexington, (Kentucky) May 18.
SQUIRREL HUNT.

"On the 8th inft. the citizens of the

counties of Mercer and Lincoln, had

a hunting match, for a barbacue. The

match was to have been 25 hunters on

each fide, but only about 20 on a fide

met ; in the courfe of the day, they kil

led 5,442 fquirrels, and bets were offered

that the fame company could kill double

that number the day following. We have

the above information from one of the

party."

Happy New Year, naturally...

2009-01-01T00:00:00.001-05:00

"And this, our life, exempt from public haunt,
finds tongues in trees,
books in the running brooks,
sermons in stones,
and good in every thing..."

William Shakespeare

Find yourself in nature in 09.

A New Year is here...

2008-12-31T16:02:00.012-05:00

Make a resolution...

To see a world in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

William Blake

It's never too late!

"A Christmas Bird-Census" and "that ornithological millennium"

2008-12-21T13:20:00.004-05:00

Ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, Editor of Bird-Lore, the "official organ of the Audubon Societies," revived and revamped a quintessential American frontier tradition, the 'side-hunt', and launched a new millennium for bird conservation, "that ornithological millennium when the value of birds to man will be common knowledge."

Bird-Lore, the "official Audubon Societies publication" at the turn of the 19th Century

Frank M. Chapman launched a new era of public involvement with wildlife a century and eight years ago. The December 1900 issue of Bird-Lore (Volume 2, Number 6) carried Chapman's proposal to a growing readership of popular conservationists, particularly women:

"Now Bird-Lore proposes a new kind of Christmas side hunt, in the form of a Christmas bird-census, and we hope that all our readers who have the opportunity will aid us in making it a success by spending a portion of Christmas Day with the birds and sending a report of their 'hunt' to Bird-Lore before they retire that night."

Chapman's genius was to reawaken a popular frontier social event, long past, by way of substitution, a gathering for a bird count in place of a bird and wildlife shoot.

Chapman explained,
"It was not many years ago that Sportsmen were accustomed to meet on Christmas Day, 'choose sides,' and then, as representatives of the two bands resulting, hie them into the fields and woods on the cheerful mission of killing practically everything in fur or feathers that crossed their path--if they could.
These exceptional opportunities for winning the laurels of the chase were termed 'side-hunts,' and reports of the hundreds of non-game birds which were sometimes slaughtered during a single hunt were often published in our leading sportsman's journals, with perhaps a word of editorial commendation for the winning side."

Chapman continued,
"We are not certain that the side hunt is wholly a thing of the past, but we feel assured that no reputable sportsman's journal of today would venture to publish an account of one, unless it were to condemn it; and this very radical change of tone is one of the significant signs of the times."

Competitive indiscriminate hunts, side-hunts, for all manner of winged and wild things already were mostly a thing of the past, in large part, a victim of the Sportsman's ethics movement that had increasingly vilified indiscriminate slaughter during the later decades of the 19th Century. Side-hunts were a frontier phenomenon; they were tamed as the frontier was tamed.

Sportsmen were prominent among leaders of the early conservation movement. Up until the late 1800's nearly all conservationists were Sportsmen, and visa verse. There were social divisions over hunting wildlife during those times, but these divisions were not so much between hunters and non-hunters as between recreational sportsmen and the massive commercial kills of market gunners and pot-hunters feeding the public hunger for food and fashion among America's exploding population.

Legions of ladies launched a new century of bird conservation...

Chapman made poster-children of colorful birds, and engaged a growing army of concerned women to battle the millinery trade which fueled massive worldwide bird kills for colorful and elegant quills to adorn stylish ladies' hats. Extravagant urban bonnets might feature whole birds and even their nests with eggs arranged atop a fashionable lady's head!

Popular reaction to costly slaughter of birds for bird-adorned hats may have resulted in much more than the elimination of bird quills from bonnets; public reaction to the slaughter of beautiful birds moved a generation toward conservation and environmental concerns beyond birds and wildlife.

The Condor 3 (March 1901), 55.

A cartoon published in The Condor, a leading ornithologist's journal, pictured Chapman leading an army of women!

Chapman was buoyed by successes during that "red-letter year," 1900, which brought several giant leaps in bird conservation, capped-off by passage of the Lacy Act, the first federal law criminalizing the interstate transport of illegally acquired wildlife for sale.

Chapman's genius engaged conservation-minded people in conservation-related actions from active protest to bird-counting. This was a great leap forward from parlor-gossip and editorializing.

The first Christmas Bird Count was held Christmas Day 1900 by 27 participants in 25 locations throughout North America. The count did not immediately attract legions of bird watchers, but grew steadily, and over time became more structured and pervasive.

Today, the Audubon Christmas Bird Count (the CBC) is the largest and longest-running wildlife census, ever. This year's count period between December 14 and January 5 will involve close to 60,000 birders in thousands of counts worldwide (mostly in North America) in the 109th consecutive CBC. The CBC is an important social event for birders and naturalists, annually, much as were the seasonal side-hunts of frontier America.

Hats-off to Frank Chapman and the men and women who launched the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, and to all who helped to curtail the mass slaughter of North America's wildlife so that we may know it today!

2008: What a cool year...

2008-12-19T09:47:00.005-05:00

It's official, 2008 was the coolest year this century! Several major worldwide climate monitoring networks have recorded the subtle cooling. The cooling is not being felt everywhere, but here in the Midwest United States it's definitely noticeable, and it's a relief.

But, wait: 2008 was very warm compared with the 20th Century. It was the 9th warmest year since 1880 according to Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss). I guess we are just getting used to the balmy greenhouse climate of the 21st Century.

Global warming has not reversed, but we are getting a breather from the really warm preceding decade as La Nina, a minor climate cycle driven by Pacific Ocean temperature and current flow variations, wanes. Her partner, El Nino, is full of hot air and may be just around the corner: Fingers crossed. Let's hope the cool trend lasts a while longer.

"Peter Scott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the UK Met Office of which the Hadley Centre is a part, suggested that in previous decades 2008 would have stood out as unusually warm."

Quoted by the BBC, speaking of 1998, the warmest year on record, Scott suggests, ""Human influence, particularly emission of greenhouse gases, has greatly increased the chance of having such warm years," he said.""

Rising greenhouse gases and exceptionally strong El Nino conditions pushed thermometers to an average of about 14.52C for 1998.

The ten warmest years since 1880:
1998 - 14.52C

2005 - 14.48C

2003 - 14.46C

2002 - 14.46C

2004 - 14.43C

2006 - 14.42C

2007 - 14.40C

2001 - 14.40C

1997 - 14.36C

2008 - 14.31C

Data: Met Office Hadley Centre

A BTU conserved is more than a BTU earned!

Read more from the BBC here.

Great white squirrel...

2008-12-11T09:42:00.012-05:00

Well, not really white...

A golden-white fox squirrel visiting our Delaware County, Ohio yard.

This beautiful fox squirrel (Sciurus niger) was a one-day wonder, it did not return. One fuzzy photo was all I could manage.

The leucistic* fox squirrel visited our yard recently, envious of the feeding station access our local gang of four fox squirrels enjoy. Its repeated attempts to approach our feeding station failed. The locals were decidedly unfriendly! This squirrel appears to lack some dark pigments but retains others.

* I use the term leucistic as a catch-all for all light-side pigment irregularities, reserving the term "albinistic" for completely white, red-eye wonders with two recessive genes causing total lack of pigmentation. I'll welcome a recently published reference offering a set of definitions clarifying descriptive and genetic terminology about these integument irregularities.

FLOW through a winter watershed hike...

2008-12-08T16:29:00.036-05:00

FLOW members (Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed) hike Deer Run through Camp Lazarus.

Wintertime opens our temperate landscapes for easier viewing while deciduous leaves are down. Landscapes and landforms are much easier to see when they are not veiled under summertime green. This is the best time to explore geology. Members of FLOW joined Jackie and I in exploring the fresh white winter landscape and geology of Camp Lazarus Saturday, December 6.

Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed exploring Camp Lazarus. Left to right; Joe Brehm, Joanne Leussing, Megan Zale, Mike Welsh, Greg Hostetler, Joanne Wissler, Rich Wissler, your blogger. Photo by Jackie

FLOW is a 501C3 non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Lower Olentangy River watershed quality while hyper-development spreads through the watershed's landscape. They partner with stakeholders and work with decision-makers to guide responsible development of the watershed to protect watershed resources for all of us.

Jackie is Education Coordinator with Preservation Parks of Delaware County, and an occasional host of FLOW hikes. I joined the hike to offer geoecological insights and just to explore and have fun with fellow naturalists.

We hiked Deer Run, a small tributary of the Olentangy River south of Delaware, Ohio from near its origin along State Route 23 near the entrance to BSA's venerable Camp Lazarus, to its junction with Lazarus Run near the Olentangy River terrace.*

Topographic map of Lazarus Run and Deer Run, Delaware County, Ohio. Lazarus Run courses east-west. Deer Run joins from the north. The Olentangy River at far left.

Snow fell throughout our two-hour scramble along the steep waterway. Birds were mostly quiet, the usual cast of characters made brief appearances, Downy Woodpecker, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Dark-eyed Junco, Eastern Tufted Titmice, Carolina Chickadee, and so on. Squirrels and cub scouts were abundant.

Our walk assembled on glacial till, a flatish ground moraine left by the last ice sheet at least fifteen thousand years ago. The ground moraine supports remnant vernal pools, dry this time of year. Scattered pin oaks flag the dry vernal pools area. Shagbark hickories and a few shellbark hickories mark the slightly drier areas.

A constant crunch of hickory nuts underfoot announced a really abundant mast crop this year. Sugar maple and American beech thrive among red oaks and scattered white oaks as we approached the steepening slopes. Soon we stepped off of the thin ground moraine and onto slopes formed of shale bedrock. Oaks dominated the steep dry shale slopes.

It's a fairly short walk behind the camp nature center to where the slope begins to increase as the terrain descends westward toward the Olentangy River 120 feet below. Deer Run begins as a small drain easily straddled by a hiker near the roadway. It's dammed along a short segment for a small pond used by scouts for nature programming, then it runs free to the Olentangy River.

Deer Run deepens and steepens dramatically over a short distance. Its steep youthful profile exhibits the rapid down-cutting and headward erosion caused by the rapid cutting of the Olentangy River Valley.

Geologically speaking, Deer Run formed fast and furious and continues to form, today, more slowly. Its meandering path suggests it first found its course on a fairly uniform and low slope moraine surface before down-cutting quickly deepened the channel, greatly slowing meander-widening.

Glacial meltwater cut the Olentangy River Valley quickly through about ninety feet of shale bedrock, the Ohio Shale and the Olentangy Shale, then through about thirty feet of Delaware Limestone, a silty dark limestone with fossil beds. The resistant Columbus Limestone beneath it greatly slowed down-cutting as it is a very resistant bedrock.

The geo-speak for the pattern of watercourses in this area is "consequent drainage." It happened this way: The Olentangy River Valley formed as the Wisconsin ice sheet (or earlier ice sheet**) melted, its channel carried immense volumes of water and glacial outwash sediments southward to the Scioto River. While draining the huge volume of meltwater the river eroded deeply quickly, forming steep slopes flanking its course. Drainage along these steep slopes quickly consolidated into the tributaries we recognize today which cut down quickly to keep pace with the deepening Olentangy.

Along the way we noted the jointed (regularly fractured) Ohio Shale and we snapped pieces of fresh black shale from the streambed to smell the organic echo of long ago life (The Ohio Shale here was deposited about 365 million years ago). The Ohio Shale is 30 percent organic by volume.

The streambed was littered with glacial erratics, rocks not of the immediate area, which were originally left in moraine high above, and since have eroded free and rolled or slid downslope to the streambeds.

Our journey continued to the geological contact between the Ohio Shale and the gray silty Olentangy Shale, then back up slope through the camp.

The geological contact between two bedrock formations where Deer Run joins Lazarus Run. Above, the brownish weathered organic Ohio Shale formation. Below, the grayish silty Olentangy Shale formation. This is a sharp contact exhibiting abrupt change in sedimentary conditions.

Watch the Preservation Parks of Delaware County website and the Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed website for future opportunities to explore Delaware County nature and geology.

*Camp Lazarus is private property. Permission must be obtained in advance from The Boy Scouts of America to visit the camp.

**At least four major ice sheets advanced into Central Ohio based on sediments described. More ice sheets probably visited the area before these but their sediments do not survive to be described. The original formation of the Olentangy River Valley might have occurred much earlier. The valley might have been cut into bedrock, then filled with glacial sediments, then eroded again several times during the Pleistocene.

Crossbills and kames, nomads from the north...

2008-12-03T17:21:00.001-05:00

We visit with White-winged Crossbills visiting a "marble orchard" on a glacial kame in Wyandot County, Ohio...

White-winged Crossbills feasting on hemlock seeds, Oak Hill Cemetery, Wyandot County, Ohio.

Old fashioned cemeteries are great birding spots, and there's something touching about beautiful birds visiting our beloved. Oak Hill Cemetery, located a few miles due south of Upper Sandusky, Wyandot County, Ohio is a great example, a wintergreen garden full of mature spruce, hemlock, and arbor vitae. Just find the community of Upper Sandusky, Ohio, then leave town going south on Route 67 a short distance to county highway 119. Go left on 119 to the first curve and enter at the gate.

Birding begins as you drive along the gravel entry passing a long hedge of tall arbor vitae ("tree of life") watching for Pine Siskins. Next, head for the nearest magnificent spruce and hemlock trees shading the "marble orchard" (That's areal photo interpreter jargon for old cemeteries, often placed on glacial kames. Kames really 'pop' when viewing 3D stereo images for terrain analysis. Cemeteries were often placed on hilly glacial kames as were orchards--both uses required well-drained soils).

Monday, Jackie and I, with naturalist Kim Banks stopped by Oak Hill Cemetery to glimpse the visiting White-winged Crossbills reported by Rick Counts and others on the Ohio Birds listserv this weekend. Rick was there and he commented that he'd been stopping by this cemetery for ten years looking for birds; perseverance pays! Through birder generosity and the internet, we all net benefit.

We saw a flock of crossbills as soon as we entered the cemetery, even before we could lower our windows to hear their cheery calls. We followed the flock to a large hemlock where birders already had them staked out. We got the low-down as we approached the observers, Ben Warner was there with Rick. There were about 40 birds total, earlier, including a Red Crossbill in the morning, and a few Pine Siskins, too.

We saw at least two flocks of White-winged Crossbills during our visit. The larger flock of 26 birds included both sexes and cooperated nicely. Red-bellied Woodpeckers were vocal, too. The red-bellied's are local but the crossbills are rare visiting nomads moving south to the tune of melodies we can't hear, but we think they are conducted by the northern cone crop cycles and such. This year is shaping up as a good invasion year--watch the listserv for a sighting near you!

Our most rewarding sighting unfolds like this: First, we hear cheery calls as a noisy flock wheels overhead passing this evergreen and that until they choose a cone-laden tree to visit. They drop in, spreading throughout the treetop and vanishing instantly among the green boughs. Next, we approach the tree and scan. Soon we begin seeing one crossbill after another high in the tree. Their antics tickle smiles across our faces. There are lots of raspberry males and limey females busily wedging cone scales. They bring to mind little parrots, the way they cling in all manner of positions, bouncing and swaying in the wind, while getting at the cones.

As time passes we see more and more as they descend the outer boughs of the evergreen, lower and lower, until nearly in reach; these guys are tame. Rick comments, "I bet these guys have never seen a human." They are seeing plenty at Oak Hill Cemetery, the word is out.

Ohio's landscape offers interested observers limitless lessons in glacial geology. It's Glacial Geology 101 everywhere you look. Geology is womb to biological diversity, even when humans intervene with evergreens. This cemetery was placed long ago by people who had to dig graves the old fashioned way, by hand. Like many older cemeteries in central Ohio, it's on a steep-sided glacial deposit, a pile of sand and gravel called a kame. Kames are ice-contact stratified drift, that's geo-parlance for water sorted coarse sediments deposited in irregular piles or terraces at the snouts of melting ice sheets.

Cemeteries often sprout on glacial kames, and grow glossy headstones and tall evergreens thanks to our cultural practices! The crossbills are attracted by the evergreens we plant, our symbols of everlasting life growing alongside our loved lost, and the birds are fed as we are comforted!

Glacial kames often grow prairie plants, too, a flora preserved in remnants today only because these cemeteries have unkempt brushy margins. These are search-central for rare plant hounds looking for new records of remnant prairie flora. Here's a tip, look closely at those hard to mow steep slopes, especially along the margins of those out-of-the-way plastic flower dumps found nearby every cemetery! I'll bet locals named this pretty spot "Oak Hill Cemetery" because it was formerly a bur oak savannah.

Glacial kames are nomads moving to a different drummer. Their scale of motion is measured in ten-thousand year intervals, a glacial pace. They are nomads nevertheless. Their rocky mix is carried from the north and left piled until the next ice sheet advance punches its travel ticket for a more southerly location. Ice sheets will came again. Our sins will be erased, and North America will begin again (less a lot of today's species), so sayeth those pesky geologists.

Sandhill Cranes migrate over Ohio Young Birder Club visiting Blues Creek...

2008-11-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

Young birders explored Blues Creek Preserve, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Ohio Saturday, November 1.

Over one-hundred American Goldfinches and dozens of Eastern Bluebirds foraged weedy parking area fields heavy with ripe seed and ornamental fruits. Bluebirds under blue skies in crisp air flavored the clear autumn morning--birding was beautiful beginning in the parking area.

Sapsucker sap wells drilled into the base of a maple tree last year no doubt provided sweet water for migrating Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Sapsuckers often linger to tend their wells and glean insects. Young birders learned to watch tree trunks and listen for the "Morse code" tapping of sapsuckers drilling wells.

Quiet steps and low voices stalked the nearly dry gravelly creekbed of Blues Creek dissecting the Central Ohio Clayey Till Plain in western Delaware County alongside venerable Ohio birder, Charlie Bombaci, and Park District Education Coordinator, Jackie Bain, with your blogger in tow.

The riparian belt along Blues Creek was laden with wild fruits attracting frugivores. Creekside common hackberry treetops peppered with round fruits drew hundreds of American Robins and small flocks of Cedar Waxwings.

Chicken of the woods, a.k.a. rooster comb (Laetiporus sulphureus), a common fungus found on a dead stump along Blues Creek. Identifying the fungus among us is not one of my strengths but I'm pretty sure this is a small dry growth of rooster comb. This fungus grows large bright sulphur-yellow clusters of wavy fleshy shelves. Some say the fleshy parts are good to eat.

Eagle-eye Charlie spotted cranes high overhead and counted 35 birds so high up we could not hear the croaking calls characteristic of Sandhill Crane flight chatter. Others busy inspecting an interesting tree could not pick out the high specks in the endless blue sky.

Several deeply scoured meanders along Blues Creek were found holding deep pools of water though the last rain and runoff were long ago. Young birders concluded that small fish in these pools survive long bitter winters by staying deep in water warmed by the slowly flowing groundwater. The water seeps into pools from upstream channel reservoir then seeps through and into the gravelly streambed downstream again.

Modern water tables are lower than when local fields were first cleared. Some streams dry up entirely, ground water is too deep nowadays to keep them wet: ground water is below the deepest meander scours. Many of today's dry stream miles used to support diverse small fish species and mussels year-round which have since gone the way of our once upon a time giant trees.

Lots of birds were found feeding along Blues Creek; Eastern Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Ruby-crowned Kinglet (one), Golden-crowned Kinglet, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, White-throated Sparrow, Blue Jay, American Crow, Red-tailed Hawk, Hairy Woodpecker, Song Sparrow and so on.

A gnarled survivor (the tree) along a dry flood swale beside Blues Creek. Long ago windfall partly pinned the much smaller younger tree. It survived by sending two rapid growing leaders toward sunshine to fuel recovery and return to vigor. Trees retain their mangled shapes from long-ago injuries. Your gnarled blogger below for scale.

Young birders discover new birds and bent trees...

2008-10-21T16:04:00.000-04:00

Eager young birders found life-list birds and oddly bent trees while exploring the growing trail system at newly opened Deer Haven Preserve, a new natural area restoration taking shape in old farm fields and wooded ravines near the Olentangy River, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Ohio.

The Ohio Young Birders Club, Delaware affiliate, gathered with parents still young at heart and Education Coordinator for Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Jackie Bain with her geoecologically-bent husband (your blogger) to explore and learn new skills Saturday, October 18.

A name-sake tree along Bent Tree Trail.

Big birds like Great Blue Herons make big impressions for new young birders, but a star emerged from among mixed-species foraging flocks: Ruby-crowned Kinglets, little bundles of supercharged feathers wing-flicking and chasing through the shrubbery close-in along the new wetlands pathway. Jaws dropped behind awkwardly held binoculars trying to follow the busy kinglets.

A flurry of foraging Yellow-rumped Warblers made a great show, too. Curious minds are eager for new tidbits and tales so our small group learned to look past the birds to see much more and to question what they saw. "Why do they have yellow rumps?" "Why do different kinds of birds fly around together?" "How can you tell those black birds flying up there are Red-winged Blackbirds and Brown-headed Cowbirds?"

Cedar Waxwings whistled overhead in small flocks while we discussed invasive bush honeysuckle. It's bright red fleshy berries carry just enough sugars to keep the birds coming. Seeds are dispersed in bird droppings along fencerows and woodlands, everywhere. It's taking over!

Blue Jays congregated in American beech tree-tops scurrying for ripe sunshine-filled beechnuts and raining them to the ground around us while we discussed family chores and family economy long ago when abundant beechnuts were important food for American Indians and early settlers.

A Belted Kingfisher rattled from the pond nearby, a good beginner's song to get young birders thinking of bird listening, not just bird watching. "How do you know that was a kingfisher?"

Young birders found curious caddisfly larvae cases made of little bits of stone glued together on the undersides of dry streambed rocks as we discussed the erratic rounded rocks we overturned--those rocks and boulders so out of place on slopes and collecting in the streambed. "Where did they come from?"

The crystalline igneous rocks rode glacier ice all the way from Canada. Young birders turned their binoculars to see backward through objectives magnifying the interlocking crystals gleaming on a freshly chipped granite boulder. "How did they get here?"

We searched tree trucks for the diminutive Brown Creeper calling nearby but could not find the little camouflage expert as we talked about the anachronistic honey locust pods, scattered trees were drooping under their burden of long leguminous pods. Many pods already had accumulated on the ground under the trees and remained uneaten, though some were nibbled by seed predators that kill seeds rather than distribute them.

Mammoths and Megalonyx (the giant Jefferson's ground sloth, extinct) are no longer around to chew the sweet pods and swallow the small slippery seeds whole then distribute them in their dung*. Curious young minds devour tales of giant beasts of yore; just don't use words like, "anachronistic" and "leguminous" during the telling!

A Hermit Thrush scolded gently from the brush in the ravine where Eastern Towhees called repeatedly for tea, "Drink your tea!" American Robins "laughed," Downy Woodpeckers pecked, and huge Turkey Vultures raised from nearby roosts to ride early thermals just over the heads of young birders discovering bent trees.

Bent Tree Trail, a tree story...

A mangled tree along Bent Tree Trail, Deer Haven Preserve, Preservation Parks of Delaware County, Ohio. This old sugar maple is a survivor. The major limbs were broken-off close to the trunk during an extreme weather event. It survived by sending fast-growing leaders from the broken limb-tips toward the sunshine (candelabra shape).

Injured trees don't heal wounds, they wall them off to protect undamaged wood and bark near the wounds. Mangled trees retain the scars of their battles with weather and wildlife even when fully recovered.

Our recent hurricane Ike brought record winds to central Ohio and left behind a new pattern of damage to trees, extreme in places, light in others. Our young birders discovered Ike-damaged American beech trees among older fully recovered beech and sugar maple trees with severe damage from long ago, still obvious.

This huge American Beech along Bent Tree Trail lost its top forty-percent or so to Hurricane Ike. Several large trees nearby are severely damaged. Their location along a ridge slope leading toward the Olentangy River valley put them in harms way as high winds tore through the valley during the hurricane remnant's assault.

Badly mangled trees take on curious shapes inspiring wonder and begging explanation. Some large unique mangled trees inspire folklore tales. Surely they must have been manipulated by people. Didn't American Indians intentionally shape trees to signal the entrance to trails, or the direction of important pathways? No, says my professional archaeologist friend.

Nature has shaped wondrous trees in central Ohio with wind and ice many times since Pleistocene glaciers retreated and forests spread northward from southern refugia to raise their grand nearly continuous leafy canopies over the Midwest.

The old sugar maple pictured below is one of the bent trees that inspire wonder and it's one of the trees for which Bent Tree Trail is named. It was a young sapling before the oldest of the tree-watchers among us were born, but not by much. It certainly was not around when American Indians might have had reason to mark trails.

A closer look explains this tree's recovery. Look at the navel-like ring scars at the bends of large limbs, the successful leaders at the tips of limb stumps, and the failed leader close to the trunk on the large limb.

A careful look at this tree, and at damaged trees nearby, suggests a long ago severe weather event is the origin of the damage. The view pictured above is brightened and tightened from the first image to more easily see the scars holding the secret to this tree's recovery.

The close-in heavy branch pictured retains an obvious ring scar at the bend, as does the more distant limb. These scars closed-off damage around the breaks where limbs severed long ago. The nozzle-like protuberance leading to the ring scar is smaller in diameter and offers us a good clue to the size of the branch at the time it was broken-off.

Most of the large limbs of this tree show evidence of breaking-off at the same time and close to the trunk due to the same extreme weather event decades ago: Likely caused by very heavy ice-loading and high wind. I'll give odds it was an ice storm.

The major limbs were broken-off so close to the trunks of several damaged trees that all the determinate-growth bud sprouts (limited growth twig buds that produce annual growth in healthy trees) fell away with the limbs lost. The fast-growing tree-tip no doubt fell away, too. The living limb stumps sprouted indeterminate-growth leaders (fast and tall growing sprouts like the tips of fast-growing saplings, triggered by reduced hormones which normally suppress fast growth below the tips of trees). The leaders bolted upward to spread leaves in the sun.

Only the successful leaders remain these decades later, with one exception. Two indeterminate-growth leaders are visible on the large branch in the image above. A successful leader near the tip of the limb gives the tree its odd shape. An unsuccessful leader closer to the trunk was shaded-out after some years and remains in evidence because the dead stump has not yet fallen off the tree limb.

Horizontal limbs tell a tale of habitats. The unique tree pictured likely sprouted from its whirly-gig seed blown by the wind into a cut-over brushy habitat or a successional pasture with widely spaced larger trees very unlike the small tall-trunked trees of the young forest growing around it today. It's near-horizontal original limbs suggest that it bolted above surrounding competition to open a wide crown at moderate height with major branches reaching broadly outward from the trunk to capture sunlight above the brush and smaller trees surrounding it. Sugar maples are prone to crown low; given a chance they do so.

The combination of horizontally spread major limbs and vertical recovery leaders give this tree its unique appearance. Its bizarre shape will continue to inspire wonder and folklore tales for thousands of visitors for many years to come, along Bent Tree Trail.

When did a storm mangle the tree...

An increment borer drilled into the trunk of a tree can sample a pencil-thin core of tree rings for counting without stressing the tree very much. A core sample from our mangled tree would show an obvious series of very closely spaced rings for several seasons after the storm that mangled the tree, until it recovered its vigor. Undamaged older trees nearby would not exhibit the same cluster of closely spaced rings during the same interval.

American Beech trees recovered from historic damage.

Two American beech trees show damage and recovery that appears to date from the same historic severe weather event which mangled the bent sugar maples. The tree in the top image lost a major fork on its right side. A leader sprouting from near the old break has grown nearly equal in size to the undamaged fork, and has nearly obscured the old scar. The tree pictured below lost its top at the same time but retained a couple major limbs and was able to fill-in the crown with a cluster of awkward new limbs.

*Under the anachronism hypothesis, anachronistic fruits are those large fruits like honey locust pods, Kentucky coffee tree pods, and Osage orange "monkey brains" or "hedge apples" that are not wholly consumed by living large herbivores native to North America which swallow chunks of fruit with intact seeds, scarify (weaken the seed coat within the gut or between teeth) and distribute the seeds ready to germinate in scattered dung heaps away from the plant that provided the fruits consumed. Today, only horses and cattle (re-introduced with humans to North America) serve to distribute honey locust effectively (deer distribute the seeds somewhat poorly). The scattered honey locust trees we found during our walk are a clue to past land use in the area we visited. Anachronistic fruits evolved with an herbivore partner or partners which effectively distributed the species seeds, but now are extinct.
See: Barlow, C. 2000, The Ghosts of Evolution. Basic Books.

Wind power: New wings join raptors over Allegheny Escarpment...

2008-10-12T10:07:00.000-04:00

Wind power is taking flight on colossal white wings over the Allegheny Escarpment along Shaffer Mountain's skyline in western Pennsylvania. Photo by author 10/11/08.

Migrating raptors have owned the airspace over the Allegheny Escarpment for millions of years. Now, mega wind power is colliding with ancient raptor flight paths and with human sensibilities.

A world leader in wind power development is setting up housekeeping in PA. Giant Spanish turbine manufacturer and wind farm developer, Gamesa is bringing Union-friendly green collar jobs and wind-borne megawatts to PA. Not all citizens are pleased. Local roadside signs protest the wind farm project. One example found at the ends of dooryard drives beside both McCain--Palin and Obama--Biden signs reads, "Gamesa is harvesting subsidies, not green power."

Many two-megawatt turbines are spinning on towers already. One website claims forty are slated for erection along the escarpment to complete this pioneering project. Special agreements were written to allow launching the project. Regulations will be penned as experience with mega wind power demonstrates impacts. No legislation currently exists regulating numerical impacts on wildlife (birds and bats, mainly), or requiring remedies other than changing requirements for operation. Current agreements require monitoring and reporting.

Wind turbines along the southern Allegheny Front.

An aerial photo shows the close spacing of towers currently testing the winds and flight paths of birds and bats along linear Allegheny ridge tops. I drove by several similar clusters near Route 160 between Summerset and Center City, PA in early-October.

Both presidential candidates promise large investments in alternative energy development along with a slew of green-collar jobs. No doubt, wind turbines will become a common sight on windy landscapes throughout the United States. How will wind power development impact birds and bats? That depends on placement. The photograph of turbine assembly above was taken just a few miles from The Allegheny Front Hawk Watch...

Hawk counters with the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch search the sky for raptors from their Shaffer Mountain lookout.

More than twenty pairs of binoculars rose to observers' eyes in unison when someone first called out, "Heavy bird coming in over the notch." Excited hawk watchers found the large bird and followed its approach, waiting to see more as it grew larger in view with passing seconds. Someone braved a preliminary identification, "That's got to be an eagle." A murmur of agreement arose in the crowd of onlookers. Then, without bending a wing, the big bird tipped, exposing long white patches at the base of flight feathers of wings and tail. "It's a golden," voices called in unison. Soon its smallish head (compared to a Bald Eagle juvenile) and sunlit golden hackles on its nape became obvious to all. Someone called out, "It's a juvenile Golden Eagle," The official counter added a tic-mark to the list of birds seen this day. It was the third Golden Eagle for the day at the Shaffer Mountain lookout where the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch is supported and conducted by volunteers with the Allegheny Plateau Audubon Society and guests.

The Shaffer Mountain lookout is situated on a western bulge of Shaffer Mountain overlooking a vast valley 800 feet below. It's the leading edge of the Allegheny Escarpment, the eastern continental divide.

Migrating birds of many Families, particularly raptors, move eastward from as far west as Alaska before turning southward at the Appalachian Mountains. The Allegheny Escarpment and the knife-edge ridges of the Ridge and Valley Province, particularly the Kittatinny Ridge of eastern PA. These mountains greatly predate the Pleistocene glaciations and shaped the migratory movements of birds before multiple glacial advances reshaped North America and bird migration. The sinuous mountain chain leads birds to warmer climes on wind-assisted wings.

These ancient flight paths may be at risk. We don't have enough information today to guide choices beyond obvious avoidance of traditionally observed pathways. The vigilance of birders will help guide future placement of wind farms so we can reduce bird losses while gaining green jobs, and reducing carbon tonnage in the atmosphere.

Recreation ecology...

2008-05-05T16:03:00.000-04:00

The science and practice of Leave No Trace.

The footprints of humanity track our natural world in every corner of the globe and in many ways. We are part of the ecology of wild places. Outdoor recreation leaves tracks and traces on our green spaces and wildlands alike. Often our collective tracks and impacts coalesce into trails and social trail networks, campsites and campsite clusters, mud puddles, migrating fire rings, severely compacted and eroded soils, and establishment of invasive species brought into wildlands by our wheels, boots, and boats. Our favorite wild places are threatened by careless use.

Fragile beauty, whether a riparian ecosystem or a single flower, is too often impacted by careless recreational use, even in the most remote wild areas. Large white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) and many other native plants will wither away where frequent campers compact the soil.

The Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics offers outdoor recreation enthusiasts guidance for reducing impacts to natural areas. Their science-based materials offer suggestions for diverse user groups from horsemen and fishermen, to hunters and backpackers. Leave No Trace (LNT) was developed by experts with federal land management agencies and by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Agencies worked with NOLS to combine many agency and private initiatives for reducing outdoor impacts into one science-based approach.

We may view our personal impact in the great outdoors as inconsequential, but Virginia Tech researcher Jeff Marion sees our cumulative impacts through the prism of scientific investigations, and what Jeff sees threatens the quality of our recreation spaces from city parks to national parks, and our wild places from the back-forty to federal wilderness areas. "What we need is an outdoor ethics revolution" Jeff explains. Jeff traveled to BSA's Camp Oyo surrounded by Shawnee State Forest during April to offer professional instruction to LNT Master Educator trainees, your blogger included.

Recreation ecologist Dr. Jeff Marion instructing BSA scouting council leaders in the science and practice of low impact outdoor recreation during a Leave No Trace Master Educator Course, six days of theory and practice. Jeff 'wrote the book' (and many scientific papers) on reducing impacts to wild places while sustaining outdoor recreation opportunities.

One common misconception among backpacking enthusiasts is that spreading out their tent sites in popular camping areas is good for the environment. Unfortunately, sensitive locations become established campsites after as few as three uses in a season. Even more durable locations tend to become campsites after just a dozen uses.

Interestingly, campers tend to gravitate to the same locations when searching for a campsite. Quickly, after just a few uses, lightly disturbed locations become even more inviting to others seeking privacy and an easy place to set up away from the crowd. This casual site selection process results in expanding campsite clusters with many extraneous satellite camps in sensitive areas. The same thing happens with casual trail selection. A game trail becomes an eroded shortcut after surprisingly few uses.

The answer? When camping and hiking in popular remote areas or frontcountry parks and campgrounds, it's better to concentrate use on already compacted sites and on managed trails. Some sites and pathways must be sacrificed, then managed for use by frequent campers and hikers while surrounding potential sites are left to recover.

Many outdoor recreation enthusiasts recognize the wear and tear in their favorite wild places. Many do not realize their methods are damaging the resource. Recreation area managers deal with the damage daily.

Wildlife management is a huge concern in popular wild places. Unfortunately, slogans like, "Fed wildlife is dead wildlife." often fall on deaf ears because our individual impact seems so trivial at the time. Throwing those cold French fries out the car window to that bear gets us a great close in photograph. Did you ever wonder why that bear and her cubs are hanging out by the roadside?

The LNT message is summarized in Seven Principles:

Plan Ahead and Prepare
Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
Dispose of Waste Properly
Leave What You Find
Minimize Campfire Impacts
Respect Wildlife
Be Considerate of Other Visitors

Legendary through-hiker and Leave No Trace expert Charlie Thorpe offering guidance to trainers in training in Ohio's Shawnee Wilderness Area, Scioto County during a trail break.

Charlie Thorpe has carried the LNT message to tens of thousands, worldwide. And, he has logged many thousands of miles on the big trails like the AT (the Appalachian Trail, the whole thing), and the PCT (the Pacific Crest Trail, again, the whole thing), and so on. Charlie has lived the message from trail to trail, event to event. He is a passionate supporter of scouting, worldwide. Last year Charlie took the LNT message to world scouting's 100 year celebration in England where tens of thousands participated.

Scouting youth spend millions of camp nights in the great outdoors annually. Outdoor ethics have been integral to scouting from the beginning 100 years ago. Nonetheless, ethical practices have changed with increased use of wild places, and some scouting units have performed poorly in the past, by using old fashioned approaches like ditching tent sites or cutting firewood in inappropriate places. The shear number of youth going camping through scouting annually is a wonder and a challenge. An occasional bad example reflects on the whole organization.

Today, scouts are practicing LNT's scientific methods more and more. Scouting rank requirements are changing to require these scientific practices for all advancement levels. Each of scouting's traditional programs, Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, and the rapidly growing coed Venturing program for older youth, offer age-appropriate lessons and skills development.

There have been low impact slogans for thirty years, now; "Pack it in. Pack it out", "Give a Hoot. Don't pollute." "Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints.", and so on. LNT brings them all together through peer-reviewed science, and passionate educators.

Leave No Trace, outdoor ethics and skills are all about the conservation of wild places and recreation spaces. Check out LNT today.

A personal thanks to Charlie Thorpe (traveling from Alabama) and Jeff Marion (traveling from Virginia) for their extraordinary generosity in sharing their skills and message. Thanks also to Al "Yeti" Martin, course lead instructor, Clark Sexton (traveling from Georgia), instructor, Irv Martin, instructor, Bob Havreberg, instructor, and instructor and course director Dr. Kerry Cheesman.

Field of dreams... for ramp hunters

2008-04-21T15:38:00.000-04:00

A carpet of ramps greens the rounded hills of this eroded glacial terrace in Ross County, Ohio. Appalachian dreams conjure scenes like this...

Ramps (Allium tricoccum)

April is ramp season in Appalachia where communities celebrate ramps in songs, feasts, and festivals.

Pungent ramps are prized by accustomed connoisseurs, but they may be an acquired taste for the rest of us. Their sticky odor resembles onion, laden with garlic. After an Appalachian feast of fresh bulbs and leaves, their smell permeates the air in a moving cloud, following the man with a ramp-eat'n grin on his face. My friend Jimmy from Poca, West Virginia swears his wife keeps him in quarantine for days after a good feast of ramps. Some say it takes three days for the aroma to work its way through your pores.

Ramps with dogtooth violet (Erythronium americanum)

I'll bet readers can suggest recipes for newbies wanting to try a new gastronomical experience. Your blogger is not a connoisseur.

dogtooth violet (Erythronium americanum)

My recent short hike near home to confirm a Great Horned Owl (found tawny fledged young) for the Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas II, and to stretch an injured heel close to home, was rewarded by dappled colors of spring flowers under faintly blooming trees along the riparian corridor of North Fork Creek.

Common serviceberry (Amelanchier arborea)

Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica)

Cutleaf toothwort (Cardamine concatenata)

American Kestrels are beneficiaries of OOS partnership with AEP and The Wilds

2008-03-31T07:38:00.000-04:00

Jim McCormac, OOS President, pointing out a commanding hilltop on The Wilds where AEP ReCreation Lands staff will mount an elevated perch for birds of prey. The flag marks a roadside location for a kestrel box pole.

OOS (Ohio Ornithological Society) Conservation Committee members met with AEP (American Electric Power) staff, and staff members from The Wilds to flag locations where AEP will erect recycled utility poles for mounting nest boxes and raptor perches at The Wilds and on AEP ReCreation Lands nearby during the coming weeks.

The three organizations anteed-up, betting the birds will benefit. OOS is covering the cost of quality kestrel boxes manufactured by OOS member, NASA engineer Craig Rieker. AEP will bring in poles and heavy equipment to set them up, and mount the boxes and perches at about 20 locations flagged for kestrel boxes and another ten locations marked for raptor perches at The Wilds and on AEP ReCreation Lands.

Checking out International Road, The Wilds, to locate kestrel boxes and raptor perches at optimal positions. Left to right: Cheryl Harner, OOS conservation committee; Tom Bain, OOS committee chair; Al Parker, Education professional and naturalist at The Wilds; and Jim McCormac, OOS President and conservation committee member. Jim put the pieces in place for this partnership success. Al Parker will help install poles and work the constructions into the fascinating mission of The Wilds.

Birders will benefit, too. Raptor perches located on commanding hilltops will offer large raptors like wintering Golden Eagles a place to perch, in view of birders with scopes. Another project in the works; a birding trail offering birders guidance and enhanced access to The Wilds and to AEP ReCreation Lands' birding hotspots.

Checking out old nest boxes for second life opportunities at AEP's Windy Hill ReCreation Lands facility. Jim McCormac, right; your blogger, middle; and Dave Dingey, of AEP, left. Dave Dingey is making it happen by bringing AEP's resources and manpower to the mission.

American Kestrels are a common bird in decline. This partnership will work to help them remain common by adding nest cavities in the grassland habitat presented by reclaimed surface mining lands. Nest cavities are vital for maintaining the population of American Kestrels. OOS is developing education and research partnerships to study the next box success and bring lessons to light for keeping kestrels common.

Big businesses, from major power corporations like American Electric Power, to agricultural businesses, from family farms to global agribusinesses, are key to future successes in keeping common birds common in our changing environment. As human population grows, increasing demand for food and power worldwide, partnerships must help protect biological diversity. My thanks to AEP for their support of this project, and their many other committed actions toward reclamation, habitat improvement, and outdoor recreation development on the topsy-turvy hills of southeastern Ohio.

A Pleistocene Serengeti: A scene that might have been plucked from the Pleistocene wilds of Ohio just decades after deglaciation, found at The Wilds.

Waterfowl migration is a spectacle at The Wilds and throughout AEP's ReCreation Lands on scores of reclamation ponds. Distant Tundra Swans, Lesser Scaup, Ring-necked Ducks, American Black Ducks, Red-breasted Mergansers, Hooded Mergansers, Bufflehead, Common Loons, Green-winged Teal, Mallards, Canada Geese, and other species use the many ponds of The Wilds and of AEP's ReCreation Lands nearby during migration.

Cheryl Harner and Jim McCormac looking a bit Lilliputian in the gaping maw of progress, Big Muskie's bucket. This giant scoop turned Ohio's hills topsy-turvy to liberate fossil sunshine: Coal-fired energy powers most North American production. Big Muskie's bucket is exhibited at Miner's Memorial Park near McConnelsville, Ohio.

Big Muskie, a giant drag-line excavator, dwarfs its bucket. The bucket is seen at the end of the cables below ground level in this illustration displayed at Miner's Memorial Park. A series of mounted illustrations walk visitors through the 20th Century history of surface mining in southeastern Ohio.

Yocatangee: A view of nature and geology in southern Ohio

2008-03-20T08:13:00.000-04:00

Intrepid naturalists joined me in a mix of rain and snow for a geology walk at the Ross County Park District's Earl H. Barnhart Buzzards' Roost Nature Preserve, overlooking Yocatangee Gorge(1) March 22, 2008. Annually, we ponder the complex geology of this glacial boundary region while searching for harbingers of spring.

Naturalists puzzling over the geology of Yocatangee Gorge; the remarkable gorge of Paint Creek west of Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. Historian Kevin Coleman, left, with Gary McFadden, resident naturalist, viewing distant Paint Creek from a Berea Sandstone ledge along the south rim of the gorge*.

Dark crumbly Sunbury Shale is found exposed atop thick tabular Berea Sandstone along the gorge rim. Berea Sandstone forms the superstructure holding the rim in place. Hardy Virginia pine (Pinus virginiana) colors the gorge rim with green highlights, year-round.

Chestnut oak (Quercus prinus) is common on dry hilltops, and it's a dominate near the rim of the gorge on gentle slopes of Sunbury Shale. The rim is a harsh dry habitat during the heat of summer. Chestnut oak thrives on dry acid slopes, too harsh for many tree species.

Detail of deeply furrowed chestnut oak bark.

A wintergreen native orchid, Adam and Eve, a.k.a. puttyroot (Aplectrum hyemale), gathers sunshine when trees and most leaf-eating insects are dormant. Puttyroot is common in the wooded uplands of Buzzards' Roost Nature Preserve. Its green winter leaves are distinctive. Their prostrate habit and dry papery texture, resembling recently wilted dead leaves, may be adaptations to discourage grazing. The leaves will disappear as other plants leaf out. A solitary stalk will rise and flower later in spring.

Crippled cranefly (Tipularia discolor) is another fairly common wintergreen native orchid found in wooded uplands at Buzzards' Roost. The green leaves are thicker than puttyroot leaves, broad chordate (heart-shaped base), warty, and deep-purple underneath. The purple color comes from anthocyanins, pigment compounds that protect leaf cells like a sunscreen and may absorb heat, speeding chemical processes making sugars. The color may also signal unpalatability to grazers. Like puttyroot, cranefly orchid leaves disappear as other plants leaf out. Later in spring a solitary flowering stalk will bloom with cranefly-resembling flowers.

Cutleaf grapefern (Botrychium dissectum) is a winterbronze fern common on wooded and old field uplands of Buzzards' Roost, but often overlooked. Its succulent leaves blend with leaf litter. Cutleaf grapefern is lime green as it sprouts in fall, bronzing with freezing weather, overwintering, greening again in warm spring, and sending up a fruiting stalk late in spring before disappearing in summer heat.

Blocky "alligator skin" bark of common persimmon (Diospyros virginiana). This tree grew from underneath an old wooden sty where a mammal may have carried fruits from another tree nearby, leaving the seeds behind to grow up through the old wooden structure. The sty has been demolished, leaving the interesting tree.

Vernal pools and small ponds on "The Roost" are busy with breeding amphibians. Jefferson's salamander eggs, spotted salamander eggs, and wood frog eggs are abundant. Underwater egg masses are visible inside the observer's shadow.

Puzzling over geology...

A jig-saw puzzle missing many of its pieces and without a reference picture on a box-top would be declared a lost cause, the pieces thrown away by all but the most determined puzzleers. Now mix these random pieces with those of several other puzzles strewn in the bottom of a child's toy box and you have a useless collection of squiggly pieces-parts, by any reasonable standard. Even so, extreme puzzleers can't resist the challenge.

Yet, sorting these commingled puzzles into comprehensible images is child's-play compared with piecing together a view of the complex geological history of a place like Yocatangee Gorge, the gorge of Paint Creek just west of Chillicothe, Ohio.

Geology is a puzzle on a grand scale; a four-dimensional solution (three dimensions plus time) found without the benefit of a reference picture. It's a series of puzzles, really; a puzzle assembled from other puzzles. The solution is a time-lapse video, not a static image. Even simple landscapes tell convoluted stories. Every piece of each geology puzzle is as much a process as a material, and more inference than absolute. Most pieces of the original puzzles are missing, eroded away, lost in time like grains of sand in a mighty Ohio River flood. You can never really know if you have re-assembled geology puzzles correctly: and someone else will surely declare your solutions imperfect, no matter how comprehensive your effort. Nevertheless, the journey is a joy for the geologist-puzzleer.

A grand puzzle of stream piracy...

Yocatangee Gorge is a grand puzzle resulting from stream piracy(2), but how?. The existence of this new narrow gorge of Paint Creek, cut through a particularly hilly section of the Allegheny Plateau, makes no sense in terms of casual landscape logic(3), until we consider the impact of major glaciations. This beautiful gorge, and others found along Ohio's glacial boundary, are the result of at least two Icehouse climates(4), major glacial episodes in Earth's history.

Yes: The two most recent glaciations, the Wisconsin and the Illinoisan glaciations, were important formative events making the new gorges near the glacial boundary in southern and central Ohio. But, I'm not referring just to these fairly recent events of the Pleistocene. I'm suggesting a very ancient origin for parts of the Yocatangee Gorge puzzle(5), at least 350 million years old, a direct result of a Paleozoic glacial age during the Lower Mississippian Epoch of the Carboniferous; a Pleistocene-like time when continental glaciers smothered large areas of Earth long before the Pleistocene, near the beginning of the coal age. An up to date chart.pdf detailing the Geological Time Scale is found at Stratigraphy.org.

The shape of the gorge...

Look at the topographic map of the gorge seen here at 1:200,000 scale. The small red cross-hairs are centered on the map at the entry to the gorge. Chillicothe is seen at right. Route 50 is a bold red line trending SW to NE through the old broad valley of Paint Creek at left, the flattish white area. If you are new to topographic maps, just remember to see steep slopes wherever the brown squiggly lines are close together; where they are far apart, see flattish ground. The steep slopes and hills often are forested, indicated by green shading.

Now, zoom in to 1:50,000 scale to see more detail where the stream leaves its broad valley and enters the hills. You will notice right away that Paint Creek occupies a really broad mature valley along Route 50 as it flows northeastward. Abruptly, the creek turns, flowing southeastward among steep hills, through a young "V" shape gorge. WHY?

Some bedrock background...

Ohio exhibits pancake sedimentary bedrock geology. There is a 'basement' of mostly very old igneous and metamorphic rocks buried deep below a 'superstructure' of Paleozoic sedimentary rocks; multiple layers of flattish to somewhat tilted limestones, sandstones, and shales. And, a 'roof' of glacial deposits covering most bedrock in the northwestern two-thirds of the state. The layers of Paleozoic sedimentary bedrock are stacked like pancakes leaning on a breakfast plate margin. The pancake layers are exposed edgewise north to south through central and eastern Ohio as seen in the Bedrock Geological Map of Ohio. The layers dip toward the east just a few degrees in central Ohio. Yocatangee Gorge offers a view of Ohio's Devonian and Mississippian pancake geology and of deep time spanning 365 million years.

To be continued...

Notes:
*The gorge rim is a limited-access area reserved for science and interpretive programs offered by scheduled naturalists. Visitors, please don't approach the sensitive gorge rim. Stay on leaf litter well away from the edge. Foot traffic is erosive and destructive of rim-slope plants. Many rim rocks are thin sandstone block overhangs vulnerable to failure.

(1) "Yocatangee" is a name I have proposed for this deep gorge of Paint Creek found a few miles west of Chillicothe in Ross County, Ohio. The connection of the gorge with the Native American "Yocatangee" will be the subject of a future blog entry. The name derives from maps summarizing features noted in early surveys; contact-period names and descriptions applied to features in southern Ohio. These are from two sources: The first, a map of "Indian Villages..." and other features by Lewis, G. L. and Dawley, W., 1901, and the second from notations on Peter Kalm's Travels map of 1771. Today, the gorge is commonly called "Alum Cliffs" or "Alum Cliffs Gorge" or "Paint Creek Gorge." The former name is found on topographic maps, the latter name often results in confusion with the beautiful western Ross County gorge of Paint Creek cut into limestone and dolomite, now mostly flooded by Paint Creek Lake Dam.

(2) Stream piracy results when a stream intersects a second stream, diverting the second stream's drainage through the first streams channel, pirating the second streams water. Stream piracy occurs frequently as landscapes mature. Most stream piracy results from headward erosion. The headwaters of streams continually progress headward (the direction opposite the current flow-direction) by an erosive process bringing more and more elevated terrain into slope toward the stream through down-cutting, a high energy process where stream gradients are steep. The piracy of ancient Paint Creek resulted through a different process involving glacial lake formation and spillway down-cutting where the deepening lake breached a col between hills: Spill-over piracy. The earliest description (of which I'm aware) of spill-over piracy proposed for this gorge is described and illustrated by Jesse E. Hyde in Camp Sherman Quadrangle, 1921, Geological Survey of Ohio Fourth Series Bulletin 23.

(3) Landscape logic is applied common sense. Landforms evolve slowly through steady predictable processes, and occasionally by sudden changes like volcanoes, landslides and glaciations. Formative factors like rock type, climate, and elevation operate in predictable ways. Geologists often speculate on the evolution of landscapes by applying landscape logic.

(4) Icehouse climates are major cold periods of Earth climate during which series' of continental glaciations dominated temperate and polar regions for spans of millions of years. There were at least four Icehouse climate regime's prior to the the most recent, the Pleistocene.

(5) The Yocatangee Gorge puzzle solution attributing Bedford Shale and Berea Sandstone silici-clastic deposition to Devonian-Mississippian glacio-eustatic response, I present herein, has not been published in peer-reviewed literature and remains speculative (as far as I know-I'm not very active in research geology): Certainly, there are timing issues to work out more carefully. This solution was inspired by carbon isotope work suggesting a Kinderhookian-Osagean chill, like the work of Saltzman at The Ohio State University, a growing consensus around glacio-eustatic causation for Carboniferous and Permian cyclic sediments-the coal measures, and particularly by a published re-interpretation of the Blackhand Sandstone (Hocking Hills) as an incised-fill resulting from glacio-eustatic sea level changes with Lower Mississippian glaciations, a West Virginia University PhD dissertation by David L. Matchen, 2004.

Skunk cabbage, first flowering...

2008-03-03T19:02:00.000-05:00

Ross Lake Wildlife Area is an easy place to find the first flowers of spring. During February and March, hundreds of skunk cabbage flowers rise from muck found just a few feet north of the parking area at the end of Hydell Road, along the lakes west shore.

First flower; Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) blooms through snow at Ross Lake Fen, Ross County, Ohio.

Ross Lake Wildlife Area is just east of Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio. The fen is small, a little known slope-fen* formed along the northeast flank of a ravine cut into a sandy glacial terrace left by Illinoisan glaciation (the glaciation prior to the most recent Wisconsin). It's easy to find, but walking through it will be a challenge--you'll need rubber boots!

I call the place, "Ross Lake Fen" because I'm not aware of any other name used for this obscure group of seeps. This fen is located seven miles south, as crows fly, of Kinnikinnick Prairie, the more recognized but degraded fen frequently identified as the furthest south fen in central Ohio.

Skunk cabbage is exothermic, giving off heat***. Its warmth, and foul odor (often described as skunk spray with garlic) carried on the wind, are very attractive to early pollinating species looking for winter kill carrion. A plume of CO2 resulting from high plant respiration may also serve to attract pollinators. Pollinators are rewarded with warmth inside the flower.

Wetland botanists might classify this area as a series of forest seeps, more particularly, skunk cabbage seeps**. A close look, and we find the hydrological and chemical characteristics of a fen, but few calciphiles--plants that love alkaline conditions.

I'd classify this series of seeps, a fen, by functional definition. They result from geological influence driving groundwater flow. Here, groundwater seeps out of a ravine slope cut into a sandy glacial terrace. The unconsolidated terrace sand rests on a layer of clay, a hardpan. The hardpan prevents downward flow, pooling groundwater. Where the hardpan intersects the flank of the ravine, groundwater seeps out. A "perched" water table, atop the clay, drives the seeps. Organic muck is accumulating wherever seep water trickles out along the slope.

The wet green area seen here is a raised mound of organic muck accumulating where groundwater seeps out. The view is east from the western margin of the fen area. Ross Lake is seen at upper right. Skunk cabbage is found in many of these raised areas along the glacial terrace's north-facing ravine slope.

*Amon JP, Thompson, CA, Carpenter QJ, Minor J. 2002. Temperate zone fens of the glaciated midwestern USA. Wetlands 22: 301-317.
**Mack, John J. 2004. Integrated Wetland Assessment Program. Part 2: an ordination and classification of wetlands in the Till and Lake Plains and Allegheny Plateau regions. Ohio EPA Technical Report WET/2004-2. Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, Wetland Ecology Group, Division of Surface Water, Columbus, Ohio.
*** See here for discussion of exothermic plant physiology

Sugar maples in sunshine; how sweet it is...

2008-02-28T15:01:00.001-05:00

Steam rising from a sugar shack is a harbinger of spring, and a sweet celebration of the end of winter. Throughout Ohio's Beech-Maple forests sugar maple sap rises with the morning sun during February and March, when cold night temperatures rise above freezing during daytime.

The Camp Lazarus Sugar Shack.

American beech (Fagus grandifolia), with smooth gray bark, and sugar maple (Acer saccharum), with the red marker and sap bucket, both common on Camp Lazarus uplands, are indicators of Beech-Maple Forest.

The clangor of sugar maple sap dripping from tap-hole spiles into galvanized buckets, and the laughter and grins of hundreds of youngsters, announce the annual Sugar Maple Festival at venerable Camp Lazarus, in Delaware County, Ohio, just north of Winter Road along the west side of U.S. Route 23.

During the last weekend of February, through the first weekend of March, Boy Scouts of America volunteers, friends, families, visitors and community organizations join to celebrate the season and to introduce youth to the history and ecology of sugarbush at Camp Lazarus.

A three-tap sugar maple; about 150 years old, I'd say.

Professionals with Preservation Parks of Delaware County, and volunteers with The Boy Scouts of America, partnered to offer fun and environmental education for students and parents with the Sunbury Home School Educators, February 28.

Camp Lazarus sugar-makers Carl Russel, Bob Locci, and Bob Huddler invited youngsters into the sugar shack for a rare treat, the smell of wood smoke and sweet steam rising from the evaporator.

Camp Lazarus Boy Scouts of America volunteers introduce the sap evaporator.

Warmth and glow. The evaporator's hearth boils sap to syrup; its warmth and glow warms sugar-makers and youth from sole to Soul.

Preservation Parks' environmental educators; Jackie Brown, Education Coordinator, and Kim Banks, Naturalist, introduced the youngsters and their parents to the history of sugar-making, and the science of trees through the seasons. Your blogger volunteered as photographer and gopher for the morning.

Camp Lazarus is a high quality green space and watershed reserve amidst pervasive commercial development and suburbanization northward from Columbus, Ohio. The camp is a product of partnership, too. Preservation Parks of Delaware County purchased a conservation easement on Camp Lazarus to assure protections for quality watershed. The sale of the easement assured that B.S.A.'s Simon Kenton Council retains ownership of the camp, and preserves opportunities for youth, an 85-year tradition at Camp Lazarus. Today, comprehensive outdoor programing is offered through B.S.A. almost daily, and by Preservation Parks regularly.

Sugarbush--the manufacture of sugar products from tree sap, is a long tradition at Camp Lazarus. The Lazarus family (Lazarus Department Stores) donated the camp to B.S.A. in the mid-1920's when trees were already annually tapped on the property.

A sugar maple "tree cookie" saved from a harvested tree on Camp Lazarus preserves at least 101 years of tap scars within its 198 years of tree-rings. A "spile" is seen at upper right. Spiles are tapped into shallow drilled holes waist-high on trees to direct sap into buckets. Modern efficient sugarbush operations often use plastic bags, or even tubing to collect sap.

A walk through tapped trees, and a visit to the sugar shack made youngsters a part of the process. Next, off to the nature center for energetic introduction to energy flow through tree ecosystems, offered at appropriate depth, by naturalist Jackie Brown. Youngsters explored the nature center and checked-out sugar making equipment. They explored the history of sugarbush and the family economy of early pioneers gathering late winter calories from trees. Boys and girls tried-out a bucket yoke, carrying gallon jugs of water around to experience the kinds of chores their ancestors may have done during their youth.

Jackie Brown introduces energy flow through forest cycles in bite-size bits of information, weaved into an effective presentation for a mixed-age group of rambunctious home school youngsters.

Ohio's champion eastern cottonwood

2008-02-26T13:59:00.000-05:00

Ohio's champion eastern cottonwood* is inspiring, and easy to see along Cheshire Road at Africa Road in Alum Creek State Park, Delaware County. You will find easy parking along Cheshire Road at the north side of Cheshire Market. Just look north—you can’t miss this splendid tree!

Ohio State Champion Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides)
Circumference: 358 inches Height: 136’ Crown: 135’ Total score: 528
40.2391°N, 82.9620°W (NAD83/WGS84)

Cottonwoods are among the largest hardwoods of North America. Ohio’s champion eastern cottonwood is one of the largest of the largest, scoring nearly as high as the national champion eastern cottonwood found near Seward, NE. The Nebraska tree scores just a little higher at 563 points. The National Champion's magnificent double-trunk (see it here) is divided low near ground-level.

The trunk of Ohio's champion is even more imposing, I’d say. It's a multi-trunk tree as well, but the trunks are mingled seamlessly into a single cylindrical bole to well above ground-level before branching widely, reaching for open sky. It towers 136’ and emerges well above surrounding trees to intercept a lion’s share of sunshine.

Deeply furrowed warm-gray bark of eastern cottonwood is easily recognized at a distance.

No doubt, both champion trees sprouted in an opening where full sun encouraged growth of their divided trunks and full crowns. More often, cottonwoods grow straight or gently arching boles, and tall before branching into small to moderate crowns in a shared high canopy. Many cottonwoods grow together in even-age bands where they long ago pioneered open areas along streams and floodplains.

This magnificent tree is located near the head of a ravine opening into Alum Creek Reservoir.

About cottonwoods...

Cottonwoods obtained their name from early observers impressed by the copious quantities of seed “cotton” released from seed-pods during spring. In Ohio, during May, cottonwoods rain “cotton” along rivers and streams. Breezy tufts of delicate cottony strands carry seeds on the wind, and floating on water. A few land on sunny fresh mud where their rapid germination ensures a long first growing season free from competition with other species.

Cottonwoods are riparian trees, most successful where floods inundate low land burying woody and herbaceous competitors under fresh silt. Cottonwoods pioneer flood plain openings, sandbars, and migrating point-bars. Seedlings sprout rapidly, sending dense fibrous roots deep into silt. Once established, seedlings survive long inundation and burial in subsequent flood years. Cottonwoods mature rapidly, too, in about 35 years**.

Cottonwood ecology, the original river-dance...

Abundant cottonwoods partner with streams and rivers in an ancient meandering slow-dance of riparian renewal, the original river-dance. Spring floods renew the cycle annually. Flood water expands stream meanders. High banks erode along the outsides of meander bends while slack waters deposit fresh silt and sand on point-bars along the insides of bends. New sediment deposition is followed quickly by capture and stabilization by dense growths of cottonwood seedlings. The timing of cottonwood seed dispersal is choreographed with diminishing spring floods. Cotton-wafted seeds are certain to find fresh mud bathed in full sunlight.

Living natural streams are flanked by thin ribbons of cottonwood seedlings and saplings stabilizing fresh sediments. Landward, saplings form successively older bands. These ribbons of saplings are flanked by fewer and fewer increasingly large trees inland, often growing very large.

Many Ohio streams are dammed. They no longer follow the full, richly choreographed pattern of the ancient meandering river-dance because new sediment distribution is severely limited by modern flood-control operations. For some streams, the music has died altogether. The Ohio River is one sad example.

Ohio River "impoundments"...

The Ohio River of pre-settlement times was the central artery serving biodiversity in the Midwest, through seasonal rhythms of surging and waning waters that rippled to the headwaters of connected watersheds. Native Americans and early European pioneers found a vast verdant valley teaming with abundant and diverse life, and a tempestuous demeanor.

La Salle's "la belle riviere" ("the beautiful river") became legendary for both high water danger and low water struggle among frontiersmen, pioneers, and rivermen. It was the central artery for transportation and settlement in the Midwest until the iron age of railroads. And, it remains a waning resource conduit serving the mighty industrial heartland of North America through two centuries of immense growth. In service to economic growth, the Ohio River was dammed, dredged, leveed, and silted. Today, it is mostly a series of stabilized impoundments serving commercial transportation and flood control.

Many riparian ecosystems are impoverished today, from the loss of natural seasonal flooding—the slow heartbeat of watersheds. Long-term watershed benefits for humanity are reduced, and continue to diminish. Today, we draw diminishing dividends from ecosystem bank deposits made long before modern stream restructuring.

Cottonwood, monarch of the flood plain...

Cottonwood is king of the riparian pioneers. Abundant seed production and wind-dispersal, rapid germination, rapid growth, and the massive root-systems of cottonwoods provide important ecosystem services by slowing and reducing runoff and flood waters. Cottonwoods limit erosion of riverbanks and encourage silt deposition and stream bank renewal. Cottonwoods support migrating and nesting bird species. Cottonwoods are the most common among their guild (willows, notwithstanding). Cottonwoods construct a major framework in the superstructure of riparian ecosystems. They provide foundation and roofing, plumbing and air-conditioning; and they are beautiful trees.

*Ohio’s champion trees are detailed here:
Ohio’s 2007 Ohio Champion Trees – Native or Naturalized US

**Some P. deltoides details borrowed here:

Taylor, Jennifer L. 2001. Populus deltoides. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: http://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/ [2008, February 26].

Marking spring...

2008-02-09T15:16:00.001-05:00

Our spring season is regulated by our calendar, but nature hears a different drummer. Nature's phenological calendar cycles through reproduction and migration, growth and wilt, activity and rest, and life and death. Nature's seasons are not regulated by our calendar, but by the flow of energy through the biosphere.

February skunk cabbage, Ross Lake fen, Ross County

I mark the commencement of spring with the first big bubble of warm moist air carried on south winds from our Gulf of Mexico to my backyard in south-central Ohio. Warm rain comes with the moist air; its warmth soaks energy into cold soil: Life responds.

American Robins follow the rain north. Flocks become more common, particularly in woodlands, after these early warm rains thaw the soil. Troops of hungry robins glean the leaf litter, noisily tossing leaves over looking for squirmy protein: And they flock through scrubby growths and along forest edges gleaning the last of the dried fruits from last year's crop, under the watchful eye of the local wintering mockingbird.

Small numbers of male Red-winged Blackbirds return with the first warm rain. Quickly, they stake their claim on a good marshy territory sure to attract a mate. Not long afterward they begin their display and they sing across the subdued marsh as it slowly wakes to onrushing Spring.

A few first Turkey Vultures wing north on a friendly south wind, sometimes discovering a few hardy brothers lingering in the cold north, more often joining raucous Black Vulture flocks squabbling over space on shared winter roosts.

Throngs of waterfowl move north in increasing numbers, too. Dabblers find open water on melting lakes and ponds to rest, and scatter in the morning to feed over large areas of thawing farm fields. Divers arrive and join a wintering flock to raft and feed in open waters of thawing lakes, sometimes more than two-thirds feeding under water at the same time.

Night life thrives in the first warm rain. Saturated soil raises worms to wet roadways and wakes amphibians into surges of movement toward vernal pools. Life gleams in the headlights of vehicles and a sad toll is taken.

Plants respond in subtle ways. Tree buds expand as surges of sap rise during these first warm sunny mornings. Embryonic leaves and flowers develop in miniature under tightly sealed bud scales, ready to burst out later in the season when warmth lingers longer.

Skunk cabbage, the earliest bloomer, aided by consistent warmth from groundwater springs, and able to generate its own additional warmth through remarkable living chemistry, raises thick fetid 'flowers' above the muck of fens. Skunk cabbage blooms very early, melting its way through snow and thin ice to be ready for the first waves of insect pollinators rising with the coming of warmth. The odor and the purplish mottling of the enveloping spathe and the organ-colored spadix inside may be adaptations to attract specialized pollinators that seek out the smell and appearance of thawing winter-kill carcasses torn open by hungry scavengers.

There are skunks everywhere after the first warmth of the season. They prowl for food, and more so for mates. Skunks find speeding cars and soon roadsides are littered with black and white carcasses; another sad toll.

The cold always returns after this first warmth. Remarkable amphibians, especially the Ambystomidae, our local mole salamanders, spotted, Jefferson's, leave eggs in vernal pools and disappear for another year, or remain under ice until the next warmth. Birds reverse migrate just as far as needed to find food available. Tree sap drops and buds wait for the next warmth to continue their certain expansion. Skunk cabbage flowers endure in freezing muck by generating their own heat, while mammal skunks return to their burrows to enjoy geothermal warmth.

Skunk cabbage begins nature's annual phenological calendar in southern Ohio. Its blooming echoes the first tap of nature's different drummer; the introductory note of a new season's symphony of life. The first warm rain riding a Gulf breeze north raises the orchestra.

Balmy breeze brings Turkey Vulture return

2008-02-05T14:03:00.000-05:00

Today, three Turkey Vultures joined neighborhood Black Vultures on this cell tower; the first TUVU's I've seen in Ross County, Ohio for nearly two months. Turkey Vultures are decidedly migratory, few linger. Black Vultures don't migrate, though they may wander widely*.

Black Vultures in spread-wing posture drip-dry after heavy morning rain. Turkey Vultures seen on lower deck.
(39.3454°N, 83.0209°W (NAD83/WGS84))

South winds brought more than rain to the Southeast U.S. during the previous 24 hours: Vultures are on the move. Watch for waterfowl to increase movements north as well. A line of low pressure systems connected by a trough is staged to bring heavy movements north tonight, February 5, and tomorrow.

The Real-Time Weather RUC (Rapid Update Cycle) forecast model predicts uniform south winds over large areas of the Southeast as far north as Ohio.

Birds are not the only wildlife influenced by warm February rain carried by moist Gulf air masses: Watch for migrating salamanders! Rainy roadways near vernal pools are salamander crossings.

Black Vultures, pictured above, are increasing annually in Ohio, and throughout the Southeast United States. Soon after the end of the Little Ice Age** in the later half of the 18th Century this southeastern species began its inexorable expansion northward. Initial population growth and range expansion may have been stalled by pollution, pesticides like DDT, and by human persecution during the early and mid-20th Century.

Bruce Peterjohn (The Birds of Ohio, 2001) summarizes Black Vulture abundance in Ohio beginning with John J. Audubon's early 18th Century note of summering Black Vultures at Cincinnati. They have been local and uncommon, though slowly expanding, in southern and southeastern counties along the Allegheny front through the 1980's. During the 1990's through the present they are expanding more rapidly northward as well as increasing their numbers in southern Ohio. A look at Christmas Bird Count data and Breeding Bird Survey data shows consistent increases as well.

Black Vultures are gregarious: They often gather in large local winter roosts. Roosting sites sometimes alternate between several favored locations like large dead snags, cell towers, barn or lodge roofs (Hocking Hills State Park Lodge is a sure-thing), and utility towers. During daytime they separate into small groups and survey many square miles of terrain using their exquisite vision to find carrion or vulnerable living prey. During warm seasons, Black Vultures, unable to forage by smell, will keep an eye on local Turkey Vultures because they can find carrion at great distances by following the smell. The Black Vultures follow the Turkey Vultures to their carrion prize, often ganging up on them and running the Turkey Vultures off!

*Black Vultures in the northern extremes of the U.S. breeding range wander widely and appear migratory. Hawk Migration Association of North American: "its wide ranging habits and the presence of wintering birds at the northern limits of its range confuses its migratory status."

**The Little Ice Age was a climatic minimum, especially in North America and Europe, lasting from about the late 12th or 13th Century through the middle or late 18th Century. North America was explored and pioneered during this period. Descriptions of cold weather in period literature are very interesting. Begin with the Flemish paintings of Brueghel the elder, and be sure to see Meriwether Lewis' descriptions for the winter of 1804 among the Mandan on the Missouri River in your favorite edition of The Journals of Lewis and Clark. I recommend the portable Dover Publishing edition; a three volume set edited by famed ornithologist, Elliott Coues.

Videophilia trounces biophilia, tune in for details...

2008-02-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

Biophilia, Edward O. Wilson's label for our innate love of nature, as we express it through nature-based recreation activities, is losing ground to videophilia, the growing electronic media obsession shackling today's couch-bound youth. Parents are not far behind: Multi-media homes offer glowing media for every purpose and for all ages (this blog, for example) without those stubborn grass stains.

Conservation scientists released new findings confirming this prevalent suspicion, February 4, in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Authors Oliver, Pergams, and Zaradic present their new findings in Evidence for a fundamental and pervasive shift away from nature-based recreation. The title serves well as abstract for the larger article.

The Internet, movie rentals, general television programming, and video games are the clear winners over bird feeders, local woodlots, local parks, state parks, national parks, and maybe even the American backyard!

Our youth are participating in electronic relationships, developing electronic personae, constructing cyber-environments, and above all else, fighting cyber-wars: So much for old fashioned Capture the Flag: I'll bet there's an electronic version for couch-potatoes.

I'm certain biophilia is innate. I'm equally certain youth need heavy doses of direct hands-on nature to develop nature-based values. Biophilia is a seeding in need of sunshine. Adopt your local woodlot, visit your local parks, take your family and friends geocaching to get that techno-fix from your GPS receiver! Appreciation for nature, particularly biodiversity, rises from personal experience.

“My works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress.”
Leonardo da Vinci

Wind-dancers of The Wilds

2008-01-20T11:29:00.002-05:00

The Ohio Ornithological Society winter field trip to The Wilds

Open country raptors like Golden Eagles, Northern Harriers, Short-eared Owls, American Kestrels, and Rough-legged Hawks bring their ancient wind-dance to the new landscape of The Wilds seasonally. The Ohio Ornithological Society (OOS) visits The Wilds annually to witness the spectacle at its wintertime best.

About 120 OOS participants and guests scoured The Wilds Saturday, January 19, 2008. Organizers Marc Nolls and Cheryl Harner assembled eight teams with skilled leaders, and excellent maps and descriptions, and they scheduled teams in a rotation through commanding observation locations through the day. Everyone had a chance to see great birds. The great birds made their rounds, too. Team radios crackled updates and whereabouts: "A Golden Eagle is going east between Jeffrey Point and the Visitors Center." and "Merlin over the parking lot!"

It felt like a day on the high plains of Montana. An Alberta Clipper had descended on the Midwest with real Arctic temperatures and a wind to bring them. The sky cleared by lunchtime, and the wind steadied to a northwesterly breeze: And, the raptors were soaring and kiting: Skilled wings used the wind effortlessly.

Hawks and falcons scribe lines and spirals in the sky, and suspend high over mousy fields as if held in place by kite strings. A tweaking of wing angle and tail position, an occasional flurry of shallow wing-flaps, and their continuing exquisitely skilled fine adjustments of wing-extension and alulae position keep the soaring birds in place, no strings attached. The wings of raptors know the breeze, and it's a wonderful thing to watch them soar.

My team saw numbers of beautiful Rough-legged Hawks in both light- and dark-morph plumages. These boldly patterned chunky small-footed lemming specialists from the tundra seemed right at home in The Wilds.

Northern Harriers were especially abundant through the day. Their nonchalance; their buoyant frolicking, winging over grass-tips, teetering for better hearing of squeaky voles, allowed an easy close look and an entertaining spectacle. Occasionally, an immaculate white and ice-gray colored male sporting ink-dipped wing-tips wandered through our view and we were awed by nature's perfected art.

Raptor numbers are high in wintering areas this season, due to low rodent populations in more northern areas. We saw high numbers of raptors.

I most enjoyed the Golden Eagle as it perched on a large sycamore branch overlooking the stretched pond below the visitor's center. Wind ruffled its golden hackles as it peered eagle-eyed across the landscape. Maybe it was interested in the Ring-necked Ducks, the American Black Ducks or Mallards, or the collar-banded Trumpeter Swans? I wonder if eagle predation effects reproduction among any of the globally rare species conservation biologists support and study at The Wilds? I’m sure there is room for both eagles and rare ungulid grazers in these wide-open spaces.

The best show of the day came at lunchtime for the first lunch-shift. Al Parker, Conservation Educator for The Wilds presented his illustrated tour of raptors found through the seasons at The Wilds while birders lunched in warmth behind glass. Right on cue, stage-left, enters a Golden Eagle, flying at eye-level, peering into the center through the glass while a gathering of birders peered out at the passing eagle (So I was told: I was in the second lunch group).

The Wilds is a pond-spangled grassland spanning 10,000 acres in the topsy-turvy landscape of coal country in Muskingum County, Ohio. Several neighboring counties support many tens of thousands of acres of similar landscape. These hills were denuded, excavated, and turned upside-down; then re-contoured into rolling hills with ponded ravines: Their strip-mined coal powered Baby-boomer abundance.

History is the best window for viewing a place. The biological history of Ohio coal country once was defined by forest giants and giant flocks of pigeons, Passenger Pigeons, now extinct. Today, humans rule. Modern anthropogenic paroxysms have reshaped the hills of coal county. Within just two-hundred years, the collective half-life of the once-upon-a-time forest giants, we have seen landscape change rivaling the Pleistocene. We rout that change.

Throughout The Wilds and beyond award-winning reclamation converted mining spoil to grassy turf, and small rodents found the new habitat. Now microtine rodents tunnel the turf, and abundant raptors listen and watch for a favorite meal; chubby meadow voles squeaking through the grass: A new ecology is introduced here.

The enormous biological diversity of the original mixed-mesophytic forest will never return to these hills, but so long as there are wide open grasslands with voles, the wind-dancers will return, and these new hills will host their simple new ecology.

See OOS President, Jim McCormac's blog for great pictures and more detail about the field trip. Jim and his teams put together great partnerships and bring Ohio naturalists together in great places: Thanks, Jim, and everyone else working to make these events so successful.

Lightning makes kindling of hickory tree

2008-01-13T12:34:00.004-05:00

Lightning strikes about 100 times each second somewhere on Earth (see NASA's Lightning Primer).

About 2000 active thunderstorms rain electrical discharges at any given moment, mostly during spring and summer.

One of these thunderstorms found this Lawrence County, Ohio hickory tree, a ready conductor between airy thermal and moist ground.

This tree shows damage from a double-strike, right and left spalls. Lightning's strobe-effect results from repeat strikes separated by 40 or 50 milliseconds. Two of these repeat strikes hit this hickory tree last summer. Each strike lifted a series of long splintery spalls exposing sapwood.

Lightning's enormous current is conducted mainly along surfaces: This is known as the skin-effect. The skin-effect often results in damage to the bark and outer sapwood of trees, leaving the core of the tree relatively undamaged. The spalls seen here are about two inches deep, at most.

This hickory is alive today, and may repair the damage, or it may be stricken in years to come by secondary infestations. Many trees heal-over lightning damage, and go on shading the forest floor for decades or centuries.

Many forms of disturbance modify forests annually, opening niches for diverse organisms. What insects or fungi are adapted to exploit frequent lightning damage?

Hickory splinters raised by lightning strike.

The lightning bolt's current was conducted through the inner bark and outer sapwood of this hickory tree. Internal moisture was flash-heated and instantaneously vaporized. The super-heated vapor expanded so rapidly it violently splintered bark and wood into kindling still dangling from the tree from high on a major branch, down to ground-level.

Lightning strikes occasionally result in forest fires, a natural and necessary force shaping forest composition. Most natural fires occur during dry summer months when thunderstorms are frequent and woodlands are tinder-dry. Oak seedlings and saplings survive fires more frequently than other young hardwoods like maples. Many forest professionals believe that fire-suppression during the 20th Century resulted in shifting forest compositions.

Prior to the era of massive cataclysmic wildfires resulting from accumulated logging-slash in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, fire was a cultural tool, not a cultural fear.

Mixed oaks, hickory, maple, and pine on shoulder of hill,

Brushy Fork area, Wayne National Forest, Lawrence County, Ohio.

Native Americans and early settlers were fire-savvy. They used fire as a primary tool for clearing forest undergrowth, influencing large mammal populations, and for slash and burn agriculture. They used fire without devastating consequences: Frequent fires reduce the likelihood of destructive conflagrations.

Numerous references to fire frequency are found in contact-period literature. One early reference may be found in the Diary of George Washington*. During October and November 1770, our future first president led an expedition to the Ohio County to survey and mark tracts of land for service-grants to Virginia military officers. Washington valued Native American first-hand terrain descriptions and landscape information. In an entry for November 4, referring to Native American description of the hills flanking the Ohio River across from Millersport, Ohio, Washington writes,

"& to the Hills, wch. the Indians say is always a fire to which the Bottom from the Mouth of the Kanhawa continues & then ends."

*The Diaries of George Washington. Vol. 2. Donald Jackson, ed.; Dorothy Twohig, assoc. ed. The Papers of George Washington. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976.

Recommended further reading: Stephen J. Pyne's Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (1982; paperback edition, University of Washington Press, 1997)

American Pipits chill-out in Pickaway County, Ohio

2008-01-02T19:30:00.001-05:00

Fourteen cold American Pipits (Anthus rubescens) reluctantly left the roadway to allow my vehicle to pass, then immediately returned to the roadway along Pickaway County's Canal Road. Several chose the blacktop for landing, waddle-stepping, tail-pumping, then sitting on their legs, feathers ruffled for warmth, as if the blacktop offered just a little more warmth. Others landed along gravelly edges to peck roadside gravel. Weather brought them into view: A New Year snowfall drifted under stiff breeze (8-15 mph) while bitter cold (14 F) froze surrounding moist agricultural fields preferred by pipits.

Snowy weather brings pipits to the roadside where they are easy to see. At other times they remain in barren fields where they are easily overlooked. This bird was photographed along Canal Road January 2, 2008.

American Pipits are common migrants through Ohio during the Fall. Most depart by early December, though some linger and are counted on Ohio Christmas Bird Counts each year. American Pipits were found on zero to three Ohio CBC's 1970 through the 90's (six CBC's in 85th count, four in 95th), then in the 2000's more and more frequently (a high of 19 CBC's in the 104th count). Bruce Peterjohn ranks them casual to rare through the first half of January and accidental thereafter (The Birds Of Ohio, 2001).

Butcher birds seek larder in Ohio

2007-12-23T10:42:00.000-05:00

We find a Northern Shrike (Lanius excubitor) on Delaware Wildlife Area, Delaware County, central Ohio, and we comment on unusually frequent sightings in Ohio this winter.

A Northern Shrike (a.k.a. butcher bird), rare Ohio visitor, on the lookout for rodents and small birds, Delaware Wildlife Area, central Ohio.

See a beautiful closeup photo of a Northern Shrike at Michael McDowell's Birding and Digiscoping blog.

Northern Shrikes typically perch atop twigs reaching skyward from small trees and tall shrubs along shrubby edges and roadsides. They are rare visitors in Ohio; solitary sentinels keeping watch over our wintry old fields. During most years birders find very few Northern Shrikes in Ohio and these are usually found in counties near Ohio's northern coast along Lake Erie.

Typical Ohio winter shrike habitat mimics the vegetative structure of taiga openings: An elevated perch overlooks accessible thick turf and duff supporting abundant rodents. Note the shrike on uppermost branch of tree, at center.

Shrikes hunt from their perch, and they perch where they can see prey. During their southerly sojourns they find that they see well from roadside utility wires, too. Roadsides hold small mammals and birds starved for habitat and desiring roadside minerals or grit.

Their descriptive Latin name "Lanius excubitor" is translated "butcher watchman," a perfect description. Shrikes are skilled passerine predators with voracious appetites for small mammals and birds, especially during winter. Their large heads and muscular necks power their raptor-like hooked bills through the spine of their prey, sometimes leaving their prey alive but unable to muster a response.

A full belly will not tame this aggressive hunter. Like humans, shrikes kill more than they eat, collecting their prey like trophies on display in their thorny larder, in cold storage for a snowy day. Their larder might be found in a honeylocust tree festooned with branchy spines that serve nicely as meat hooks; and meat hooks they are: Shrikes impale mice, voles, shrews, and small birds, dead or alive, on thorns and spines, and even on barbed wire. Their larders serve them well during lean times such as when rodents remain hidden under crusted snow!

This is an exceptional winter for shrike sightings, and predictably so. Northern Shrikes are irruptive: Their southerly occurrences cycle with rodent populations in their northerly range where taiga meets tundra, and wherever the taiga canopy opens to let the Northern Lights cast their electric glow on grassy turf and undergrowth.

Rodents are scarce in the far north this winter. Speaking of food availability and owls in his winter forecast (September, 2007), Ron Pittaway of the Ontario Field Ornithologists predicted good movements of northern owls in response to plummeting rodent numbers. Ron didn't mention Northern Shrikes but I'm sure the same reasoning works for them.

"Small mammal populations were abundant this summer in northern Ontario, presumably increasing after the big seed/berry/fruit crops in 2006. However, crops this year are very poor in much of the north, partly caused by cold weather and snow in late spring that froze the buds and flowers of many plants. . . . The huge population of deer mice in central Ontario is declining rapidly now because of poor seed crops this summer, particularly sugar maple samaras, which they store for the winter."

Some of Ontario's Northern Shrikes have wandered as far south as central Ohio this year, I think. No doubt, there is slim pickings up north; the rodent cycle has bottomed-out. That's good news for Ohioans because we find it a little easier to see these northern wonders when they come to our back-forty. There have been at least 26 sightings reported to the Ohio Birds Listserv since October (several, at least, are repeats of the same birds).

Chasing birds and geology: Snow Buntings and Radnor kames

2007-12-08T09:24:00.000-05:00

We look at glacial geology while chasing Snow Buntings and Lapland Longspurs, with mixed success, near the glacial kames* of Radnor, Ohio in northern Delaware County.

View of Radnor Cemetery gate where Radnor Road crosses the crest of a glacial kame.

Kames are glacial landforms, piles of sand and gravel left by water flowing on a glacier or leaving the glacier's ice margin. Pioneers often used glacial kames for burial because they are easy to dig. Fruit orchards were planted on kames because sand and gravel under shallow soils ensures good drainage. Professional aerial photo interpreters sometimes refer to cemeteries as "marble orchards" because these cultural practices were so common and widespread in the Midwest, and so easily seen when examining 3D stereo photo sets used in drafting topographic maps.

The Welsh "Lych" Gate to Radnor Cemetery was constructed in 1910 of locally quarried limestone, another geological resource influencing settlement patterns in central Ohio.

Wintertime is great for geologizing* landscape while chasing seasonal specialties--birds that occur in Ohio landscapes only seasonally. Absence of foliage opens our view to landscape and birds alike. Snow cover is not only pretty, it makes finding some of our bird species of open-field habitats a little easier. There's no better time than the first big snowfall of the season to explore new landscape.

Snow Buntings are a wintertime favorite of mine so a recent Ohio Birds Listserv post about Snow Buntings and Lapland Longspurs seen near Radnor, Ohio inspired me to chase them.

Snow cover makes these two species easier to see. They spend much more time along the roadside berm when their preferred bare farm fields are blanketed with snow. And it's easier to pick out longspurs and flocks of Horned Larks sitting still on distant dirt clods of plowed fields when background snow frames their silhouettes. Finding Horned Larks is the first step in chasing Snow Buntings.

Snow Buntings are occasionally found with larks and longspurs. It's fortunate they often hang-out together because Snow Buntings are cryptically colored: Perched atop small rocks in a vast farm field, they blend well with the snowy landscape. Their white, tan, and black patterned winter plumage hides them very well until they fly, flashing their broad white wing patches tipped with black.

I didn't find Snow Buntings this trip. I did find a half-dozen Lapland Longspurs and numerous small flocks of Horned Larks. As usual, they were uncooperative when I reached for the camera. The image below is of our more common Horned Larks.

Two Horned Larks seen here in typical habitat, farm fields.

Horned Larks are common in central Ohio farm fields in winter. They often gather in small flocks along the roadside when snow cover blankets fields. These larks were found along Price Road near Radnor, Ohio. Radnor Road and Hedely Road were productive drives as well.

Reasonable speculations. . .

I envision Snow Buntings as strongly associated with Ohio's pre-settlement prairie regions. They still occur most commonly in the lake plains and central till plains of Ohio where wet prairies once reigned. I think they follow ancient winter routes to the south, over Lake Erie and over the former Great Black Swamp country of northwest Ohio, taking them to former prairie country where snow blows less frequently and where bison once trammeled vegetation and moved snow, exposing wide swaths of prairie grass and bits of larval protein excavated by bison hooves. Today, buntings find open farm country along these ancient flight-paths, a habitat bonanza. Most Snow Buntings remain in the northwestern third of Ohio today. Scattered flocks of hundreds of wintering "snowflakes" may be found in the windswept fields of the lake plain some winters.

Imagine along with me a once wild Ohio where Snow Buntings follow bison to forage the seeds uncovered by their great snow-plow snouts, and to pick seeds from their dung. In the distance there is a band of Native Americans led by a sage hunter possessing the cherished natural wisdom of his clan. He sees a distant flash of white of Snow Bunting wings over tall Indian grass and pointing, whispers to his band, "There! Bison are there."

A little glacial geology. . .

A very brief Primer: Continental glaciations have sculpted Ohio at least four times during the last 1.6 million years (probably seven, but as many as seventeen glaciations may have sculpted Ohio but sediments from only four events survive). Ice covered much of the Northern Hemisphere during each ice-time, for many tens of thousands of years each ice-time, with comparatively brief intervals of ice-free warmth in between the ice-times; like the ice-free warmth we now enjoy. Ice sheets were thousands of feet thick. They spread and thinned toward their margins from thick accumulation areas toward their centers. They reworked the landscape by scraping-up material at their bases and conveying it toward their margins; more like conveyor-belts than like bulldozers. Along the way, low areas were filled-in with drift and highs were scraped and flattened.

What's what: Drift is a general term for anything carried and deposited by glacial processes. The term "drift" includes ground moraine, mostly unsorted stony clay and silt materials deposited under the glacier; recessional moraine, more unsorted stony clay and silt materials dumped and mounded at the snout of the glacier as it paused its retreat for periods of time; and kames, piles of water-sorted sands and gravels deposited on, within, or against glacier ice by melt-water flow; and many more drift types we won't go into here.

Delaware County is a young landscape, likely less than 15,000 years young, formed of glacial drift. Thin ground moraine covers most of the county. Ground moraines and recessional moraines are dissected by several large river systems formed during deglaciation. Geologists have mapped the glacial geology of Ohio and of Delaware County.

The Glacial Map of Ohio includes county outlines. Look for Delaware County at the center of the map colored yellowish-green (ground moraine) with dark green arcs (recessional moraines) bending southward, and a few small pink blobs (kames) in the northwestern corner of the county. Do you see the cleft in the county's central moraine? Now look for that cleft on the shaded elevation map below and you have the county located. The shaded elevation map shows the moraines as raised elevation areas. We see the river systems cutting nearly straight north-south channels through the raised recessional moraines and ground moraines alike.

The Shaded Elevation map (large file (pdf)) of Ohio helps you see drainage at large scales. Click the "+" sign in the toolbar about eight or ten times and you will zoom in on the Radnor area. Do you see the shaded arcs indicating the recessional moraines? They are dark green on the Glacial Geology map above.

Now, look at the pink blobs mapped in the NW corner of the county on the glacial map. This is the terrain pictured below.

View of glacial kame from the north approach to Radnor, Route 203.

The flat ground moraine (foreground) abruptly terminates at the base of the kame where slopes rise steeply. Coarse deposits like gravel and sand piles hold steeper slopes than fine deposits like clay and silt. A home is built on the gravelly kame. Kames are elevated, easy to excavate, and are well-drained compared to ground moraine.

Now look at it on the topographic map found at this link:
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=40.3921&lon=-83.15488&s=24&size=l&u=4&datum=nad27&layer=DR

This is the map view of the kame and it is obviously narrow and long like a segment of the deposits in a stream channel. These deposits probably were laid down by water running through eroded channels on the surface of the ice sheet. When the ice melted away the supra-glacial stream deposits were piled on the ground where they remain today.

The hill in this view is a glacial kame left forested. The flatish ground moraine in foreground surrounds the kame as seen at distant left.

Cows guard access to a borrow-pit dug into the end of the linear kame. Unconsolidated sand and gravel is easily borrowed from kames and borrow-pits are common in the area.

Huge glacial erratic seen from Route 203.

Glacial drift includes erratic boulders, chunks of bedrock carried from somewhere else. This one found south of Radnor along route 203 is said to be the largest in Delaware County. It's height exposed above ground is around ten feet. Undoubtedly, as much as half remains hidden beneath ground. This large igneous rock was carried from central Canada.

Buttermilk Hill Road, west from the record bur oak tree pictured below at the entrance to Gallant Woods Preserve, ascends a recessional moraine. Many homes are built along the crest of the hummocky moraine. The ice sheet paused for a time at this position. Glacial drift piled at the snout of the ice sheet here.

State record (second place) bur oak tree at the entrance to Gallant Woods Preserve.

Ice sheets sculpted two-thirds of the state of Ohio. It's fascinating to think of the topographic impact of these behemoths on our state and beyond. Ice sheets reduced terrain, built terrain, and altered drainage patterns over huge areas of continents. The Ohio River is a product of drainage reversal caused by ice sheets!

An immense amount of drift is carried within creeping ice sheets. Many people imagine that ice sheets operated like bulldozers surging south from points north and pushing large chunks of Canada ahead of them before quickly melting away. A venerable local county extension agent wrote a history of my home county terrain that employs this misconception; and it remains assigned reading for school children today.

I read this account as a youth and I was thrilled to adopt the misconception that our latest ice sheet, the Wisconsinan age Laurentide Ice Sheet, had bulldozed spruce trees, nearly intact, all the way from Canada to my backyard. These spruce logs were uncovered just a few miles from my home!

Of course, we know this is not what happened. These spruce trees grew nearby along the ice-front for tens of thousands of years as the ice-front dominated the south-central Ohio region for tens of thousands of years.

The dynamic ice-front moved back and forth over meters and miles during this long span of time. When the ice surged forward occasionally it bulldozed the locally grown spruce trees into jumbled piles of logs buried in glacial drift. We use radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the drift in which we find these logs! In my area they date to around 17,000 or 18,000 years ago, the time when the Laurentide Ice Sheet reached furthest south just before receding northward permanently.

An ice sheet transports drift by picking it up at its base (called entrainment) and moving it toward its margin. Drift begins its journey as part of an ice-saturated mass of bedrock blocks, boulders, gravel, sand, silt, and clay frozen to the base of the ice sheet. The mass scrapes against bedrock along the bottom of the flowing ice sheet until the mass is thrust into the basal ice layers along shear-planes and zones of deformation rising downstream from the base.

The mass is raised into the ice slowly as it is pushed from behind by the inexorable flow of ice. The resistance of the ice downstream as it is scraping along the bedrock and freezing to it in places, pushes back enough to force upstream drift masses to shear upward at low angles into the ice sheet. The drift then rides the ice south.

Often, earth scientists refer to this process as a conveyor-belt. This is helpful for visualizing the mechanism by which ice sheets convey drift from places north to places south. The giant boulder seen south of Radnor, pictured above, was conveyed to its position in Ohio from its original position somewhere in Canada by this mechanism.

Ice sheets move forward toward their margins in a fairly steady way (though punctuated by surge-pulses) pushed by accumulating volumes of ice near their centers. The ice flows away from the accumulation zone by deforming under its own weight. The accumulation zone of the eastern portion of the Laurentide Ice Sheet was at about the position of Hudson's Bay.

Far to the south, ice sheets melt back along their margins at the same time the ice is flowing forward. If they flow forward faster than they melt back, the ice-front surges ahead over virgin terrain. When the ice sheet flows forward at about the same rate the ice-front melts back, the ice-front will hold an average position for as long as this continues.

The ice sheet is not sitting still even when the ice-front is not moving forward. The ice continues to move forward all the while until the very final stages of deglaciation when large areas of ice stagnate and just melt away in position.

Generally, as the ice-front melts, the material inside the ice sheet is exposed as melt-water drips away and flows along drainage outlets as sediment-laden runoff. This runoff deposits vast outwash plains along drainage valleys like today's Scioto River Valley.

Much of the drift remains along the ice-front as broad mounds. It piles up as if it were coming off of a conveyor-belt. This is how end moraines and recessional moraines form. Their position coincides with the position of the ice-front at the time they formed. End moraines tell us how far the ice sheet flowed. Recessional moraines tell us where the ice-front paused before continuing to melt back toward its center.

When ice sheets melt back faster than they move forward, they leave behind the material frozen inside as ground moraine.

Terms:

*Geologize: Applying geological principles to deduce and hypothesize geological process and history through direct observations of landscape, drainage patterns, bedrock, soil, land use, and so on.

*Kame: Steep-sided mounds or terraces of sand, gravel, and boulders. Glacial sediments laid down by water flowing on a glacier or leaving the glacier's margin, in contact with ice: Ice-contact stratified drift. Long kames are sometimes called eskers. One definition suggests that a kame ten-times as long as wide is an esker. The long narrow Radnor kames appear to have been deposited on the glacier surface as supra-glacial stream deposits, then dumped onto the ground as the ice melted away. A process definition would rank some of the Radnor kames as eskers.

Winged things wild and free

2007-12-02T13:58:00.000-05:00

The Ohio Bird Conservation Symposium

*Scott Weidensaul, author and bird scientist, rediscovers Wild America retracing Roger Tory Peterson's epic journey 50 years later.
*Jim McCormac, author and Ohio Ornithological Society president, shares new information in outdoor trends.
*Dr Amanda Rodewald explains the challenge of protecting the declining Cerulean Warbler.
*Paul Baicich, author and top bird conservation expert, suggests ten things YOU can do to conserve birds.
*Dr Dave Ewert shares models and visions for protecting the right habitat.
*Chris Bedel, preserve Director, introduces the amazing Edge of Appalachia.
and more. . .

Auspiciously, several flocks of migrating Sandhill Cranes flew over Deer Creek Reservoir in Pickaway County, Ohio Friday November 30 as conservation-minded birders and naturalists gathered for the Ohio Bird Conservation Symposium presented in partnership by the Ohio Ornithological Society and the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. Great presenters and the dedicated event-planning team made this symposium a great partnership success for the OOS and TNC. See OOS President Jim McCormac's great blog (link below) for more details and pictures.

Friday evening, Jim McCormac, President of the Ohio Ornithological Society (OOS), met with generous OOS supporters and presented a new and insightful talk about trends among outdoor user-groups to illustrate the importance and the potential of bird enthusiasts pursuing their interests. Conservation dollars are scarce and habitat protection sometimes requires habitat purchase or easement--both expensive. Bird and nature enthusiasts can do much more to provide for their resource, beginning at home.

The economic impact of bird-related pursuits, from bird viewing and bird-feeding to chasing rare birds, is very much under-appreciated. We who love winged things wild and free must share the beauty, deliver the message, and participate in bird conservation, or continue to lose our resource. Ecotourism happens near home, not just in far away exotic locations. Tell the world and your local Chamber of Commerce how much we spend: It's their resource too.

Biodiversity is undervalued because we don't account for its value!

Late Friday evening (and again Saturday) a caravan of birders traveled to see the Northern Saw-whet Owl banding operation at the Earl H. Barnhart Buzzards' Roost Nature Preserve near Chillicothe, Ohio. Everyone making the trip enjoyed seeing these delightful little bundles of wonder. Some birds wake the child in us all regardless of age and bring us into touch with our sense of wonder, so often forgotten. The saw-whet is the grand champion of all avian wonder-wakers. See Jim McCormac's blog for several updates with pictures.

These OOS-partner events always draw great speakers and this one was no exception:

Saturday morning Dr Amanda Rodewald, The Ohio State University School of Environment and Natural Resources led the day with her presentation, "A Bird of Two Worlds: The Challenge of Conserving the Cerulean Warbler." The Cerulean Warbler is the OOS icon, its image the OOS logo. Dr Rodewald shared insights and research results to help fill in missing puzzle pieces for the picture of rapid Cerulean Warbler population decline. More work is needed and the OOS was pleased to present Dr Rodewald a research grant of $1500.00 to help fund continued research in both worlds, the cerulean's summertime home in Ohio and its wintertime home in South American.

Dr Dave Ewert, Director of Conservation Science for the Great Lakes Program of the Nature Conservancy presented, "Stopover Sites of Migratory Birds in the Great Lakes Region: Identification and Protection." Dr Ewert uses landscape-level modeling to identify and prioritize habitats used by migratory birds. Scarce dollars for conservation are used wisely when we use them where they make a difference. Important migration stop-over locations in the western Ohio and southern Michigan flatlands are coming into focus through the efforts of Dr Ewert and his colleagues.

Paul Baicich is a central figure in birding and bird conservation. He is author, instructor, guide, and consultant for all who love winged things wild and free. Paul's book (with J. O. Harrison, Princeton University Press), "A Guide to the Nests, Eggs, and Nestlings of North American Birds" came out in second edition in 2005. Paul presented, "The Ten Most Important Things You Can Do for Birds and Bird Conservation" beginning with the big five problems impacting bird conservation, and concluding with ten practical approaches to bird conservation beginning in your own backyard.

Making Paul's list; make your property bird-friendly (food--cover--water), drink shade-grown coffee (the real thing), buy a Migratory Waterfowl Hunting and Conservation stamp (duck stamps buy habitat), support inter-American equipment transfer (retire your old optics and nature equipment to a new life in a less developed country), support birding and nature festivals--start a family oriented local festival to help make the bird-curious bird-committed, be a friend of a local park or refuge (volunteer), take a child into the outdoors (their parents follow), count birds and make it count (CBC's, Ebird, Breeding Bird Atlas), develop a congressional relationship with a staffer (just writing your congressman isn't enough), lights-out (use efficient bulbs--only as you need them).

Bald Eagles made an appearance for lunch and were easily viewed from the lodge's Rafters Restaurant. A large raft of diving ducks bobbed in the distance too far to identify but close enough for a closer look. During the symposium participants used free time Saturday and group birding trips Sunday morning to explore for birds--no sign of the Northern Shrike that likes the location, but ducks were well represented, and Sandhill Canes trumpeted the beginning of the event.

Chris Bedel led the afternoon and kept the after-lunch crowd wide awake through a dazzling fast-paced tour of the extraordinary Edge of Appalachia Preserve system in southern Ohio, co-managed by the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and by Chris, preserve Director with the Cincinnati Museum Center. "The Edge" is home to extraordinary diversity due to overlapping geology and biogeography. Professionals at The Edge pursue all-taxa biodiversity and share it with youth and adults.

Dinner-time is recognition time at OOS events and two powerhouse volunteers were recognized for their hard work in making OOS a success: Jen Sauter, OOS Executive Secretary and Board member, is always a big part of success and always in the background. Cheryl Harner, OOS Conservation Committee member, like Jen, works in the background to make everything happen, especially great vendors and exhibits at OOS events. Cheryl has set the bar high in conservation leadership through her work with Greater Mohican Audubon as well.

The OOS also recognized the birds by doing something for habitat: The Nature Conservancy, and all winged things wild and free, were beneficiaries of Ohio birder generosity. TNC's Pete Whan and Lucy Miller accepted a grant of $10,000 matching funds for acquisition of a great tract of neotropical migrant habitat with a globally rare white cedar plant community. This tract helps to fill an important gap in the huge and unique Edge of Appalachia Preserve system.

The evening keynote address presented by author and bird scientist Scott Weidensaul took us on a breathtaking tour of North America's wild places retracing the steps (30,000 miles) of famed ornithologists and authors Roger Tory Peterson and James Fisher in 1953 detailed in their book, Wild America (1955). Weidensaul's descriptive words and shared insights, more than his stunning images, carried his audience breathless through a fifty-year comparison of wild places tracked by Peterson and Fisher, then by Weidensaul. At the end of the journey we found a new beginning. There was no pot'o gold at the end of the rainbow; in its place we found a hope chest of mixed memories, on balance good memories, and reasons to be optimistic for conservation successes in the future. I bought Scott's book, "Return to Wild America: A Yearlong Search for the Continent's Natural Soul (Long Point Press, 2005).

Sunday morning breakout sessions offered something for everyone. Jim McCormac presented, Wonderful Waterfowl. Aarone Boone, Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas Coordinator, presented, "Sparrows 101". Paul Bacich presented, "The Five Best and Worst Things About the Duck Stamp."

Field trips Sunday mid-day canvased the Deer Creek area for birds. Look for reports on the Ohio Birds Listserve.

dkh, Big trees and young children

2007-11-28T06:07:00.000-05:00

Professional foresters measure tree diameter using a standard timber cruising measure known as "dbh" (diameter breast height). It's a great way to help youth learn to use measurement in the 'real world'.

A different approach will get better results when young children do the measuring. We suggest using the "dkh" (diameter kid height) method shown here.

Young tree-huggers practice the dkh method of tree measurement.
This is a three-kid white oak, a real nice tree!

Urban Metro Parks and County Preserve systems offer great nearby locations for youth to experience Ohio's woods and fields--most children today do not have access to a family farm and state parks are usually not in the local community.

The really great local preserve systems provide ample opportunities for youth to escape the beaten path, to tromp on fallen leaves and to get their hands on nature.

Let's face it; walking a manicured trail is more nature viewing than nature learning. Television nature programs would quickly lose their young audience if they didn't bring their viewers up close and personal using extraordinary close-up photography of nature. It's the same in local parks: The view from the trail is scenery. Off the trail opportunities are close-ups with benefits. Hands-on learning is an experience, not a program.

I volunteered to help offer some local youth a few close-up nature opportunities last Friday at Gallant Woods Nature Preserve in Delaware County's Preservation Parks. My thanks to Preservation Parks for the opportunity to volunteer. Professional Naturalist and Education Coordinator, Jackie Brown (behind the camera), creates hands-on nature learning for youth throughout the properties in the Preservation Parks system and in many community schools.

Your support is important to your local parks, wherever you are.

Mollusc madness

2007-11-27T07:41:00.001-05:00

A story of fresh water mussels: Will we lose the "snot-line fishing mussel"?

Ohio's diverse native fresh water mussel fauna has suffered extinctions, extirpations, and severe population declines while introduced species like Asian clams and zebra mussels have enjoyed population explosions in rapidly expanding ranges. And; more invasive species wait in the wings ready to invade. It's only a matter of time.

This sad story is not unique to Ohio. From Ohio's purple cat's paw mussel to Alabama's "snot-line fishing mussel", most species are in decline and many have already been lost in time like the fleeting brilliant glimmer of a raindrop splashing stream water above a sandbar mussel bed.

It's a mess!

Dr. Tom Watters, mollusc expert with The Ohio State University (GO BUCKS) brought his talk, "Freshwater Mussels: From Living Rocks to Mean Mothers" to Hopewell National Historical Park near Chillicothe, Ohio for presentation to the Scioto Valley Bird and Nature Club Monday night November 26.

G. Thomas Watters, PhD
Curator of Molluscs
Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology
The Ohio State University

It's a story of silent disappearance:

Freshwater mussels originated in North America long long ago in a place not very far away (right here in the Mississippi watershed) sometime during the Triassic Period when the biggest things disturbing them were dinosaurs. These dinosaurs were far less effective mussel killers than today's human poachers collecting for the cultured pearl trade--a continuing modern threat to rare mussels.

The Mississippi watershed is ancient, and throughout the undisturbed native river system there were riffles, rapids, sandbars, emergent vegetation like water willow, snags and sawyers, stream side shade trees, low silt loads, no industrial chemical pollution, and most importantly, seasonal rise and fall in river system water levels; the slow heart-beat of the continent.

The undisturbed heart-land offered habitat heterogeneity throughout ancient natural continental arteries, the streams and rivers of unspoiled North America. The Mississippi watershed supported the diversification of our mussels in diverse streams and rivers rising in diverse geology and physiography. North America once supported more than 300 species. The vast Mississippi river system, heart of our continent, supported great fish diversity too, and mussels rely on fish to complete their life cycle, and they rely on fish migration to disperse them.

North America is the center of diversity holding most of the world's species. The Mississippi River watershed is the heart of this diversity.

The life cycle of mussels may span decades yet aged individuals may never leave a particular sandbar. They are ingenious creatures--well, they have evolved ingenious reproductive strategies to ensure their propagation and dispersal--under natural conditions.

Pictured above is a fish mimic structure used by the mussel to bring host fish close enough to inhale larvae (original presentation photo by G. Thomas Watters, PhD)

My favorite species, introduced to me through video by Dr. Watters at our meeting, has an impossible Latin name so I'll toy with Dr. Watters' description and call it the "snot-line fishing mussel". It occurs only in Alabama, but we won't hold that against the creature.

Picture this:

The female snot-line fishing mussel, a fist-size denizen of river sand, spends most of her life softly filtering stream water for nutrients--just about anything biological that she can filter. At maturity, she is compelled to reproduce. When she has received semen, randomly released into the water by her local male mussel, she is soon ready to go fishing for her host, the Suwanee bass. She is particular about her host selection and no other fish species will do!

She grows a zillion little fertilized larvae called glochidia. She is expert at the small egg gambit wherein she plays the nickel slots rather than high stakes poker! She does this by making a zillion tiny glochidia for release--a zillion nickel bets. The slots need pay only once. Any given individual has a very very low chance of survival but by releasing so many she hedges; success through overwhelming numbers--small inexpensive (energy-wise) larvae.

She packs these zillion glochidia into a fish lure, that's right, a small fish-looking glochidia container, another hedge. Now she produces a long thin strand of mucus (snot-like) fishing line that is nearly invisible in the water and a good 18 feet long! Guess what's at the end of the line? Yeah, the fishing lure. It even wiggles in the current!

Well, the unwitting Suwanee bass can't resist the lure and when it bites into it the lure explodes in its mouth releasing the zillion glochidia. Some of these land among the gills where they clamp on like tiny bear traps and hitch a ride with the bass while they develop into small adult mussels. Eventually they will drop off and make a home in the sand for the next few decades, softly filtering stream water--and playing the nickel slots.

The story of loss of freshwater mussel species is dismal. Surely, we would have acted sooner and more effectively if these creatures were showy flights of fancy like many of our birds, for example (though we have lost wonderful birds like the Passenger Pigeon and the Carolina Parakeet).

The numbers tell the dismal story:

Of the nearly 300 North American species about two dozen are already extinct and about 20% of remaining species are federally endangered. Fresh water mussels are the most imperiled animals in North America by percentage. Only about one-third of North American species have stable populations.

Ohio has a large share of mussel diversity but of our 80+ native species we've already lost six species to extinction and several others are in precipitous decline. Another 13 species have been extirpated from our state.

Mussels suffer numerous threats. Among these the most profound has been the damming of rivers and streams into series of lakes that drown habitat heterogeneity. These dams are like clots in the heartland's arteries. They are good for boats and commerce but they attack the heart of our natural waterway system. Further, siltation of streams weakens and suffocates many species. Industrial and agricultural pollutions take their tolls, too. And, urbanization channelizes and homogenizes our once diverse headland streams.

Perhaps the most disturbing and surprising loses are due to commercial mussel harvest still legal in several southern states. Even more surprising is the commercial mussel poaching in Ohio and other states responding to the need to protect fresh water mussels. Teams of night-operators illegally collect tons of mussels to sell in the cultured pearl manufacturing trade--most of which go overseas. Our freshwater mussels are the magic secret to success of cultured pearl manufacture. Our mussels are collected for the fleshy lining of their shells that seeds the oysters making the pearls.

The harvest of native mussels should have ceased when the invention of plastic buttons replaced mussel shell buttons at the turn of the last century but vanity rules worldwide demand for pearls today just as vanity ruled the hat-making trade in days gone by when fancy-plumed hats were in such demand that plume hunters nearly wiped out showy bird species. Late in the Nineteenth Century the worldwide market for plumes lured commercial punt-gun and net hunters into all corners of the globe--but mostly in our United States. The trade stopped only after loud protest and a shift in ladies' fashions.

Unfortunately for our native mussels they are not showy charismatic creatures like North America's Snowy Egret or Indonesia's Birds of Paradise. Mussels don't demand our attention (until you see Dr. Watters' videos of mussel fish lures).

Who protests for fresh water mussels? How many women examine the origin of their cultured pearls?

Native mussels continue their silent decline. We may lose the rare snot-line fishing mussel unless we protect and restore the ancient rhythm, the rise and fall of continental waters, the natural heart-beat of North America. And, we may never restore the rare mussels until we reevaluate our fascination with cultured pearls.

The content above is based on my memory of Dr. Watters' presentation so if there are errors they are mine. Use these websites for additional authoritative information:

Visit the OSU Division of Molluscs at:
www.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~molluscs/OSUM2

Join the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society at:
http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu/FMCS/

Educators, this pdf is the place to start:
http://ellipse.inhs.uiuc.edu/FMCS/Outreach/ToolsForOutreach04.pdf

Additional agency resources:

http://www.fws.gov/news/mussels.html

http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/aquatics/zebramussel.shtml

http://nas.er.usgs.gov/taxgroup/mollusks/zebramussel/

http://www.fws.gov/midwest/mussel/

Maple leaves: beauty in function

2007-11-26T09:29:00.000-05:00

Seasons come and go and with them the ebb and flow of warmth and waters in Ohio. Our Autumn colors signal the time for the rains and rising waters of winter.

October maples ablaze in southern Ohio

The beautiful reds and yellows of maple tree leaves demand our attention every Autumn and paint glossy calendar and magazine pages year-round. These are brilliant colors for sure, but do we overlook the beauty of function in their exquisite leaf-shapes? When leaves are down and brown and gray trees pierce the cold blue sky of winter, do the leaves serve the resting trees?

Look at one great example, the silver maple (Acer saccharinum). This maple species is adapted to unconsolidated Recent alluvium (fancy geo-lingo for rocky-sandy-muddy stream deposits of Recent Era vintage) where its sprawling muscular roots reach shallow groundwater while grasping great globs of stream side silt to secure its foundation against flood. It grows fast and branchy along moist bottoms of our meandering stream ways. Its fast growth and broad shadow entices developers selling cheap landscaping for new homes, but plagues future homeowners with shed branches and massive leaf-falls.

It's the massive leaf-falls that suggest function in the shape of silver maple leaves; a function unrelated to photosynthesis. Look closely: The deep sinuses between leaf-lobes and coarse teeth identify the leaf as silver maple and suggest an adaptive function when you see them laying piled on the ground. The toothy sinuses interlock with each other forming a thick layer of slowly decaying leaves that resist wind and water.

The silver maple dominates vast stretches of Midwestern streams and I'm sure this results from the beautiful function of interlocking leaves blanketing silty stream banks and smothering seedlings of competing tree species. Frequently shed branches pile up under silver maples and slow flood waters assisting silty deposition while less adapted tree species are undermined by erosion.

Beauty is often beyond the eye of the beholder.